The Granular Envelope

The granular envelope is a four-stage ADSR that shapes the level of the entire grain cloud over the life of a note. It is completely separate from the linear playback ADSR, so the same pad can hit hard in linear mode and bloom into a slow swell when granular synthesis is on.

Where to find it

Open the Pad Properties for a pad, switch to the GRAN tab, and turn on Enable GRAN. The ADSR sits in the ENVELOPE section, below WINDOW SHAPE. You get a draggable envelope chart with a slider underneath for each stage.

The granular envelope is available on every GRAN-enabled pad — it is not a Pro feature. (On the free tier you have four pads; pads 5-16 and the per-grain jitter / Prob controls higher up the GRAN tab are Pro.)

Linear vs. granular ADSR

A pad actually has two amplitude envelopes:

• The linear ADSR shapes the sample when it plays back as a normal one-shot or loop.
• The granular ADSR shapes the grain cloud when granular synthesis is engaged.

They are stored and edited independently. Dialing a long granular release does not change how the pad sounds in linear mode, and vice versa. This lets you keep a snappy percussive linear hit while the granular layer drifts in slowly.

The controls

Control	What it does	Range / default
Attack	Fade-in time as the cloud starts	0.001-4.0 s, default 0.005 s
Decay	Time to fall from the peak to the sustain level	0.001-4.0 s, default 0.100 s
Sustain	Held level after decay, while the note is on	0.0-1.0, default 1.0
Release	Fade-out time after the note ends	0.001-8.0 s, default 0.050 s

The defaults are deliberately fast — a 5 ms attack and 50 ms release with full sustain — so a fresh pad just declicks the cloud without imposing an audible shape. Older kits saved before this envelope existed load with these same defaults, so they sound unchanged.

The envelope chart

The chart at the top of the ENVELOPE section draws the curve and gives you three draggable handles:

• The Attack handle (top-left) sets attack time as you drag it horizontally.
• The Decay / Sustain handle (middle) is combined: drag horizontally for Decay time, vertically for Sustain level.
• The Release handle (bottom-right) sets release time horizontally.

The A · D · S · R letters along the baseline mark which segment each handle controls. The four sliders below the chart do the same job with numeric precision — use whichever is faster for the move you want.

When to use it

Reach for the granular envelope whenever you want the cloud to evolve in time rather than start and stop abruptly:

• Pad-style swells. A long Attack (a second or more) turns any sample into an ambient pad that fades in under your part.
• Tails. A long Release lets the cloud ring out after you lift the pad, useful for granular reverb-like washes.
• Plucks. A near-zero Sustain with a short Decay makes the cloud decay quickly after the attack, for plucked or percussive granular textures.

To learn what each grain parameter does, see Granular Parameters. For background on the synthesis technique itself, read What is granular synthesis?.