The grain size is set in Hertz (Hz) using the Frequency control, which you can think of as grains per second - higher frequencies mean more and smaller grains. You control grain size, pitch-shift amount, pitch and time jitter (randomisation) and output settings.

Grain Delay performs a fairly simple process: it samples incoming audio in very small chunks, called grains, and emits each grain after a delay whose time you can set in milliseconds or sync to tempo.

However, with a little care in choosing your settings, you can use Grain Delay to achieve subtle and very musical results that are beyond the reach of other types of effect - and that's what we'll be looking at in this month's article. If you've experimented with Live's Grain Delay Audio Effects plug-in or used other granular synths and effects, you may be left with the impression that granular processing is chaotic, hard to control and mainly useful for creating sound effects. The numerical box next to Grain Delay's Sync/Time button has different functions and separate mapping assignments in Sync and Time modes, and I've dedicated a knob to each. Spray (top-left) is actually a delay setting, but its effect is to add jitter to the grain spacing, so I think of it as a grain setting. I've colour coded the controls by function: orange for grain settings, green for pitch, blue for delay and yellow for output. 1: A Grain Delay embedded in an Audio Effects Rack with its controls mapped to the rack's Macro knobs.

Ableton live simple delay