Cave Granular

A granular synthesizer plugin inspired by Mutable Instruments Clouds, built with JUCE.

Features

Granular Engine

• Circular Buffer - Continuously records incoming audio (1-16 seconds)
• 64-Grain Pool - Dense granular textures with overlap-add synthesis
• Pitch Shifting - Fixed-point (16.16) pitch shifting up to ±24 semitones
• Freeze Mode - Stop recording and play from buffer indefinitely

Quality Modes

• Hi-Fi - Full 16-bit resolution for pristine quality
• Lo-Fi - 8-bit mu-law compression for gritty, lo-fi textures
• Mono - Mono buffer for maximum recording time

Main Controls

• Position - Playback position in the buffer (0-100%)
• Size - Grain size (10ms to 2000ms)
• Pitch - Pitch shift (-24 to +24 semitones)
• Density - Grain overlap/density (sparse to dense clouds)
• Texture - Window shape (attack/decay balance)

Blend Section

• Mix - Dry/wet blend
• Feedback - Feed granular output back into buffer
• Spread - Random stereo panning per grain
• Diffuse - Post-granular all-pass diffusion

Reverb Section

• Reverb - Griesinger-style plate reverb send
• Decay - Reverb tail length
• Damp - High-frequency absorption

Factory Presets (24)

Ambient: Frozen Clouds, Infinite Sustain, Shimmer Pad, Ethereal Wash, Slow Morph, Dreamscape

Rhythmic: Granular Stutter, Rhythmic Grains, Scatter Beat, Micro Loops, Pulse Cloud, Beat Slice

Textural: Vinyl Crackle, Tape Degradation, Digital Artifacts, Noise Wash, Grain Storm, Static Field

Sound Design: Alien Voice, Time Stretch, Reverse Grains, Spectral Freeze, Glitch Machine, Chaos Engine

System Requirements

• macOS 10.15+ (Intel & Apple Silicon)
• Windows 10+
• Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+)

Formats

• AU (Audio Unit)
• VST3
• CLAP
• Standalone

Installation

Download the installer for your platform from the Releases page.

macOS: Open the .pkg installer and follow the prompts. Plugins are installed to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/.

Windows: Run the .exe installer. Plugins are installed to C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\ and similar locations.

Linux: Extract the .zip and copy plugins to ~/.vst3/ or your preferred location.

Building from Source

Requires CMake 3.25+ and a C++23 compatible compiler.

# Configure
cmake -B build -G Ninja

# Build all formats
cmake --build build

# Run tests
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

License

Copyright Cave Acoustics. All rights reserved.