Output Portal — Mac download

Two grains. That's the minimum number Portal can stack at any one time. It's a small detail, but it tells you this isn't a cloud-of-dust reverb masquerading as a granular tool. It's a surgical device for stretching and reshaping audio input.

Controls that matter

• Grain size and shape. Pull a snare hit into a slow-motion smear. Tighten it back to a flutter.
• Tempo sync or free run. Lock the grain engine to the host tempo, or let it drift unsynchronised.
• Envelope variation. Dial in natural, humanised movement across grain envelopes so nothing repeats exactly.
• Re-synthesis engine. Portal leans toward the original input. Sounds stay recognisable, not washed out.

Re-synthesis turns any source into glassy pads and splintered rhythms

As an effects plugin—not an instrument—Portal processes what you feed it. Run a vocal through it for glassy, time-stretched pads. Send a synth stab through unsynchronised grains and it splinters into a rhythm of its own. The re-synthesis keeps things anchored; you stretch a sound without losing its core.

Drenching everything in wet hides the dry source underneath

• Drenching everything in wet signal. Pull the mix knob back. Portal shines when the dry source still has presence underneath.
• Ignoring grain envelope shape. A sharp attack on each grain creates clicks. Soften the front edge on sustained material—voices, pads, strings—unless you want percussive artefacts.
• Forgetting tempo sync decisions. Leaving sync on for an ambient soundscape wastes the drift potential. Switching it off for a drum loop loses the grid. Decide early.
• Feeding it overly busy input. Portal works best with clear, single-line material. A full mix shoved through it turns to mush. Process individual stems.
• Not locking pitch to scale. Free pitch shifting sounds messy on tonal sources. Engage the scale lock and pick a key before you judge the result.

Bounce and nudge the processed track when dry/wet phasing appears

• Phasing when blending dry and wet. Some hosts introduce latency that misaligns the signals. Bounce the processed track and nudge it by ear, or use a sample-accurate delay on the dry channel to compensate.
• CPU spikes during grain-heavy passages. Lower the maximum grain count. Two grains often sound more deliberate than twelve. Freeze or bounce tracks once you're happy.
• Grains cutting off mid-tail. This happens when the input stops before the grain buffer empties. Extend the source region by a bar, or print a longer tail before you process.
• Re-synthesis sounding too close to the dry signal. Push the grain size further from the source duration. Counter-intuitive: smaller grains can sound less like the original because they isolate transient fragments.

Workflow: turning a guitar loop into a pad bed

1. Record a clean four-bar guitar arpeggio. No heavy reverb, no delay—Portal adds its own space.
2. Insert Portal on the track and set the mix to 50% as a starting point.
3. Switch tempo sync off. Drag grain size until the arpeggio notes blur into a sustained wash—around 200 ms works for most tempos.
4. Soften the grain envelope attack to 40% to avoid pick-attack clicks. Lengthen the release to 70% for smooth tails.
5. Engage pitch scale lock and set it to the key of your arpeggio. Shift pitch up seven semitones for a glassy shimmer layer.
6. Add subtle envelope variation (15–20%) so each grain decays slightly differently. This stops the pad from sounding static.
7. Roll off the low end with an EQ after Portal—grain stretching can introduce mud below 200 Hz on guitar material.
8. Blend the processed signal behind the dry arpeggio. The wet channel becomes a harmonic bed; the dry keeps the performance articulate.

• macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon supported)
• Host DAW supporting VST or AU formats
• Interface language: English