Descent

Name: Descent
Price: 29 USD
Author: Audio Damage

by Audio Damage · Delay · Granular delay and reverb

Not rated yet

Descent is a real-time granular effect that records audio into a buffer and replays it as up to 50 overlapping grains, working as a delay, reverb or pitch shifter.

It has six-axis randomization, per-grain envelopes and a 24-band FFT display, for $29.

Best for: Keys & Synths, Vocals, Guitars, Sound Design. Genres: Ambient & Cinematic, Electronic & EDM.

Keywords: granular, randomize, vocals, musical, pitch-shifting, reverse, ambience, electric guitar, sound design, cinematic, deep, freeze, glitchy, low latency, mixing, percussion, pads, synths, tempo-synced.

What it does

Descent is Audio Damage's real-time granular effect. It cuts incoming audio into up to 50 overlapping grains and plays them back, so one plugin can act as a delay, a reverb, a pitch shifter, a freeze or a glitch machine, with randomization kept musical through pitch quantization.

Grains and Size: up to 50 grains at once; Size sets grain length in note values from 1/32 to a whole note, or in seconds.
Envelope and Direction: the envelope shapes each grain from a percussive attack to a reversed swell, and each grain plays forward, backward or in a random direction.
Pitch: shifting up to ±24 semitones, with a quantization panel that limits pitch to chosen musical intervals.
Randomizers: six independent axes: size, count, amplitude, pan, pitch and position.
Chaos, Feedback and Diffusion: Chaos unhooks grain timing from the host transport, Feedback recirculates the output, and Diffusion smears it from a delay toward a reverb.
Amount: a send-style wet level control that can be locked.
Display and presets: a real-time 24-band FFT display, 35 factory presets, and XML presets that move between formats and operating systems.

A fully working demo with a 20-minute session timer (saving disabled) is available, and the product page has a browser-based live demo.

Source: Audio Damage product page

When to use it

Descent is the pick when you want granular echoes and clouds that stay in key and in time without much setup, at a low price. Compared with Output Portal or Sugar Bytes Graindad, it is a smaller and much cheaper tool with fewer modulation options, built around one page of controls. Unlike EchoBoy or Timeless 3, it has no tape or analog echo models and no conventional tap delay: every repeat is made of grains. Its Diffusion control lets it double as a reverb, which those delays don't. Within Audio Damage's own range, it is the real-time effect counterpart to the Quanta 2 granular synth.

Best for: granular echoes, pitched grain clouds, frozen sustains and ambient textures on pads, vocals and guitars.
Genres: ambient, cinematic, experimental electronic and sound design.
Look elsewhere if: you want a conventional delay; Audio Damage's Dubstation 2 or Soundtoys EchoBoy are better fits.
Tip: keep the grain count low to thicken sparse echoes, and try quantized pitch on reverse grains for evolving vocal sustains.

What producers say

Descent is new and has little in-depth coverage yet, but early write-ups are positive about its sound and ease of use.

AudioNewsRoom called it a granular delay that "doesn't demand a PhD", praising clean grains at high feedback, musical diffusion washes and low-latency processing suited to live use; it listed no drawbacks.
Usage tips (AudioNewsRoom): raise overlap for frozen soundscapes, and push the randomization axes high for abstract drones.

AudioNewsRoom review

Where to buy

Audio Damage: $29
Plugin Boutique: $29

Tutorials and reviews

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