Granular + FDN + per-grain formant shifting. One tool that unravels audio into threads.
A 2-second circular buffer, four parallel grain voices, Hann envelopes, randomized start positions. GRAIN sets size from a 5 ms smear to a 500 ms stutter. FREEZE latches the buffer indefinitely — the audio keeps fraying inside the freeze, never static.
Spectral envelope estimation, then a different formant offset for every grain inside a range set by FORMANT. Not one uniform shift — many. This is what turns a guitar into a chorus of screaming voices and what made the technique worth fusing into one plugin.
A feedback delay network feeds the grain output back into itself through a Hadamard mixing matrix, with a 1-pole LP per delay line. Smooth, sustained, slightly resonant tails — not a reverb, not a delay. Push FEEDBACK past 80 % and the network begins to sing.
Fray is the last stage of the Signal Path creative-destruction chain.
Shapes tone. Filter and saturation.
02Crushes dynamics. Compression and bloom.
Unravels time and timbre.
Everything that matters is on the front panel. The five obvious knobs and the one that's the point of the plugin.
Audio examples live here. Dry on the left, Fray on the right.
Public release later this year. Drop an email and we'll send you the beta build, plus a heads-up the day Fray ships.