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Tasty Chips Electronics GR-MEGA User Manual

Granular workstation
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Summary of Contents for Tasty Chips Electronics GR-MEGA

  • Page 2 This manual is written by Pieter van der Meer Luc Derks Illustrations Luc Derks 2024...

  • Page 3: Table Of Contents

    Panning..........31 Factory furnished AC lead......7 Scan..........32 Power specification........7 Direction..........32 Reading this manual........8 Granular Slice Mode......33 Warranty............9 Slices..........33 GR-Mega Quickstart.........10 Setting slices (Operation menu)..34 Global Overview........11 Add slices........34 Front Panel...........11 Auto slice.........35 Display..........12 Auto slice sensitivity......35 Position slider and Operation encoder Delete slices........36...
  • Page 4 Sample Crop........72 Firmware Updates........108 Saving & Loading........73 FAQ............111 Loading..........73 Troubleshooting........112 Supported sample formats....74 Firmware upgrades......112 Supported patch formats.....74 Crashes..........112 Saving..........75 Slow USB drive or stick....112 GR-MEGA Data types.......76 Credits for the GR-MEGA......113 Samples..........76 Development........113 Template..........76 Special thanks to.......113 Patches..........76 Contact..........114...

  • Page 5: Document Version Naming

    Document version naming This document’s version is written as: v<major version>.<minor version>.<patch level> v<number>.<number>.a-z The major and minor versions follow the GR-1 firmware versions. The patch level is separate from the firmware version’s patch level (a correction in the manual text vs a software fix in the firmware).

  • Page 6: Contents Of The Box

    Important safety and maintenance instructions Important safety and maintenance instructions Do not use an AC/DC adapter other than the one that comes with the GR-MEGA. Do not connect high voltage input/output connectors to the GR-MEGA. Avoid this product from falling. Avoid spillage of fluids. Keep it dust free, and keep it out of damaging environments.

  • Page 7: Power Supply And Power Lead

    “kettle plug”. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320] Power specification Please do not use an adapter other than included in the GR-MEGA box. Using another adapter or power source, may cause damage to your GR-MEGA. It is protected against reverse polarity and over voltage, but extreme voltage will still cause damage! The...

  • Page 8: Reading This Manual

    How to get the most out of this manual: The GR-MEGA is a powerful and flexible device, but it is designed to be easy to get into. The display and the controls directly next to the display speak for themselves.

  • Page 9: Warranty

    Warranty The GR-MEGA comes with a 2 (two) year warranty on factory defects. Warranty is effective from the date of shipping of the unit. There is no need to register your unit with us. You buy it, you own it, even second-hand. As the owner you’re always entitled to the unit’s warranty, within the limits specified in this chapter.

  • Page 10: Gr-Mega Quickstart

    1. Hook up the furnished power brick up to your power outlet. 2. Plug the power brick’s barrel jack into the GR-MEGA. 3. The GR-MEGA will now start up, moving through its LEDs one by one. This will take only 2 seconds.

  • Page 11: Global Overview

    There’s no signal flow represented in the front panel. Some synthesizers have their flow laid out in a line from left to right: VCO → VCF → VCA. The GR-MEGA doesn’t have this, but instead has the focus on the central screen. It’s easy to start there, and then work your way outwards, starting with the presets (on the bottom) and play button (on the bottom left).

  • Page 12: Display

    Display The GR-MEGA display is 7” full color and 1024x600 resolution. It is dimmable, to be suitable for low light conditions. There’s a perspex window on top that is also scratch proof. A new GR-MEGA unit comes furnished with an additional plastic screen protector on top.

  • Page 13: Position Slider And Operation Encoder

    Position slider and Operation encoder Directly underneath is the horizontal position slider. The travel of the slider is 100 mm. The position slider is essential for many things. First and foremost for setting play position in your samples. While zoomed in, hold [Shift] and move the slider to scrub through the entire sample.

  • Page 14: Menu, Navigation, Editing & Disk Access

    Menu, navigation, editing & disk access On the bottom left of there’s a group of buttons for menu navigation, and disk access. From left to right: Navigation: On the far left there are the arrow buttons: left, right, up, and down, as well as escape, and enter buttons.

  • Page 15: Presets & Banks

    Seq: used in conjunction with Play or Record buttons. Hold it and press Play to play the sequencer instead of just playing a single continuous note. Hold it and press Record to record MIDI notes into the sequencer. Delete: used to delete or initialize data. In the main screen it initializes the patch. In menu screens it initializes different things such as sequencer notes, mod matrix rows.

  • Page 16: Sound Engine Controls (Abc Knobs)

    These buttons can also be used to change the sequencer position (lower row) or bar (upper row). [Seq] + [▶] have to be lit. Sound engine controls (ABC knobs) On the lower right you have 8 knobs. These control granular parameters, and are fun and powerful to tweak.

  • Page 17: Amp Section

    The curve and tilt knobs control the grain window. Use shift with these knobs to tweak the window even more. Shift + Ratio mode button (directly underneath these knobs) to toggle between GR-MEGA window type and GR-1 type for compatibility. The envelop controls are amount + ADSR. There are several buttons to switch to Pitch, filter, amp, or aux envelope.

  • Page 18: Filter Controls

    Filter controls On the left there are 4 filter knobs: LPF cutoff, LPF resonance, HPF resonance, HPF cutoff. There is one LPF and one HPF filter per voice.

  • Page 19: Modulation Section

    Modulation section On the top left you’ll find 4 knobs and 4 buttons. These allow you to: Top row - knobs (Destination) Select destination [Shift] + (Destination) Select source (Rate) Set LFO rate 0..50Hz, set LFO rate division when sync (Phase) Set LFO phase [Shift] + (Phase)

  • Page 20: Sequencer Section

    Sequencer section In the bottom center there’s a row with a [Tap Tempo] button and 5 knobs: BPM, Rate, Position, Length, Play mode. Most speak for themselves. Rate sets the time signature: ¾, 4/4, 6/8, etc. Play mode does forward, reverse, random, etc. Press [Tap Tempo] 4 times to accept a new tempo.

  • Page 21: Back Panel

    Back Panel CV & Gate There are 2 CV inputs on the GR-MEGA, which can be used as mod matrix modulation sources. The inputs have the typical Eurorack -5V .. +5V range. The inputs are protected and buffered. The CV’s are modulation sources. They’re suitable for LFO speeds and low (sub-bass) audio range.

  • Page 22: Audio In (L/R)

    5VPP, to avoid damage. MIDI The GR-MEGA has full set of 3 DIN-5 MIDI sockets: MIDI In, MIDI Out, and MIDI Thru. MIDI thru is a hard thru, which means it has almost no latency (in the microsecond range).

  • Page 23: Usb C

    DAW to the GR-MEGA. It’s ideal to send many quickly varying automations. USB C is also used for file sharing. You can access the GR-MEGA’s files by hooking up your PC/Mac with a single cable. It also supports multichannel USB audio, but this should be seen as an experimental feature.

  • Page 24: Powering Up

    2. Insert the adapter’s barrel socket into the GR-MEGA’s barrel socket. 3. The GR-MEGA will now power up and show a Tasty Chips logo on the display. It will load the last used project, and then show the main screen with a sample waveform.

  • Page 25: Gr- Mega Signal Path

    GR- Mega signal path...

  • Page 26: The Main Screen

    The main screen Waveform The biggest part of the main screen is dedicated to displaying the sample. The view mode can be changed from time series to spectrogram using the [View] button. The sample can be zoomed ([Shift] + turn (Op enc)) and scrolled (using ← and → arrows and [Shift] + Horizontal slider).

  • Page 27: Window

    Window Directly underneath the envelope you can find the grain window display. This displays the shape of the window and the density, rate, and grain size in the equation: density (grains) = rate (grains/s) x grain size (s) “LFO” sidebar On the lower right the LFO’s, CV’s, and other information related to modulation is displayed.

  • Page 28: Sound Engines

    Sound Engines The GR-MEGA has 5 sound engines. Each one has different applications. It is primarily a granular machine (the primary engine), but the other engines are full featured as well. We designed each engine to have interchangeable controls. For instance, the Scan control will have the same function in almost every mode.

  • Page 29: Granular Mode

    Granular Mode Granular mode is the default engine of the GR-MEGA. It can be used for pads, to make massive spatial clouds, to scatter sounds, and for primitive 90’s Jungle style time stretching that works well on non-transient material. The highly complete and accurate implementation used in this engine opens up the world of micro sounds, where rate can control pitch, and window shape can act as a filter, but that’s only the start.

  • Page 30: Rate, Size, And Density

    Rate, size, and density Internally the granular engine only understands the above two parameters: * Rate * Size To measure how many grains are playing at the same time, we have Density: Density = Rate x Size This is also used to measure the density of a granular cloud, or sometimes how much overlap there is between grains.

  • Page 31: Spray

    Spray The spray parameter controls how much a grain’s start position is randomized. Pan Spray The Pan Spray parameter controls how much a grain’s stereo panning is randomized. 0 means completely centered. Maximum pan spray means a grain can appear everywhere in the stereo image.

  • Page 32: Scan

    Scan The Scan parameter sets the movement speed of the grain start position. It can vary from -2 times (reverse motion) the sample play speed to +2 times (forward motion) the sample speed. Scanning responds to stop and loop flags: looping, and pingpong is possible, it can be modulated, and can even be synced to the beat! Direction Grains can run in both forward- and reverse directions.

  • Page 33: Granular Slice Mode

    Granular Slice Mode Granular slice mode is very similar to granular mode, with the exception of the samples being chopped up into slices. Slices Slices are automatically mapped to the keyboard: C-2 and up. C-2 plays the left most slice, C#2 plays the neighbor directly to the right, etc. Almost all the knobs described in Granular mode also work in this mode, with the exception of the position slider and the scan knob.

  • Page 34: Setting Slices (Operation Menu)

    Setting slices (Operation menu) In slice mode, setting slices is key. This can be done in two ways, manually or automatically. We’ll now describe both: Add slices Manually move the position slider and use the (Operator) encoder and exec buttons next to it: 1.

  • Page 35: Auto Slice

    Auto slice Automatically, by turning (Operator), and exec button: 1. Turn (Operator) to “AddSlice”. 2. Hold Shift. 3. Press Exec. A lot of slices now appear. Auto slice sensitivity Maybe there are too many slices, or too few? You can adjust auto-slicing sensitivity in the Menu: 1.

  • Page 36: Delete Slices

    Delete slices You can delete slices with “DelSlice”: 1. Turn (Operator) to “DelSlice” 2. Use the position slider to stand inside a slide. i.e. right of the vertical slice line. 3. Press the Exec button. The slice will disappear. Combine DelSlice with holding down Shift: this deletes all slices! Deleting all slices is often useful before doing autoslice.

  • Page 37: Sampler Mode

    Sampler Mode Sampler mode basically emulates a traditional sampler, like the AKAI S-series, or Ableton’s Simpler. It is oldschool and can not do time stretching. In principle there’s just one grain per voice, but that can be extended up to 12 by using chord mode notes in the patch menu.

  • Page 38: Tape Mode

    Tape Mode The tape engine simulates an analog play head moving over tape. It operates much like sampler mode, but the play position now controls the play speed, and hence also the pitch. You can easily perform scratches like on vinyl. All position and scan modulation is supported, so scratching can be fully automated.

  • Page 39: Spectral Mode

    Spectral Mode This mode allows smooth time stretches. Super long “Paul stretch” style ambient stretches where material is slowed down a thousand times. It also allows auto tuning while preserving the timing. However, it is not intended to be a DJ tool. This engine does not accurately preserve vocals, and has significant ringing.

  • Page 40: Direction Knob (E) - Direction

    Direction knob (E) – Direction Not implemented at the time of writing. Potential to reverse playback of the block in randomized fashion. Scan knob (F) – Scan Just normal scanning. If scan = 0 and there’s no position movement the sound can bluntly loop through the FFT block, but it can still be randomized by phase smear! Pan knob (G) –...

  • Page 41: The Menus

    The menus Pressing the [Menu] button gets you here. Pressing [Menu] again will exit to the main screen. You are presented with 8 sub-menus represented by tabs: “Patch”, “Project”, etc. Use [←] [→] to highlight a tab. Press [Enter] to activate the tab. Pressing [↓] will enter the selected menu tab for navigation.

  • Page 42: Patch Menu (General)

    Pitch bend range: pitch bend range in semitones. NOTE: MPE mode will fix this to Env pile-up: By default this on. The GR-MEGA reuses the same voice if the same MIDI note is played repeatedly, and just piles up the amp envelope. This mostly works fine, but in sampler mode you may want to turn it OFF.

  • Page 43: Patch Menu (Voicing)

    Patch menu (Voicing) This displays the 12 chord notes and their fine tuning. You can add the same note twice or more to increase the number of times it’s played in the granular arpeggiator, or to increase the chance of getting played when the arpeggiator is set to random. Turn completely to the left (“-”) to disable the chord note.

  • Page 44: Patch Menu (Granular Settings)

    Patch menu (Granular settings) Grain Key trigger: When this is on, a grain will trigger directly when a note is played. When this is off the grains sequencing is independent from note triggers. Grain Sync: ON: let the grains spawn synchronized to the clock, and its clock division, OFF: use the knob setting.
  • Page 45 Grain stealing threshold: Grain stealing kicks in when the 128 grains per voice are used up. The GR-MEGA’s grain stealing is intelligent and results in no crackles or clicks whatsoever. Leave this at 0 to disable grain stealing. With a high combination of density and grain size the grain scheduler will start oscillating.

  • Page 46: Patch Menu (Scan / Slice)

    OFF: use the scan knob setting. Scan mode: The GR-MEGA scanning movement has three modes: [One shot / Loop / Ping pong] The scan knob influences speed and direction of all these modes. Loop clock sync: Synchronize looping to the beat.

  • Page 47: Project Menu

    BLUE is the actual active project. The one that’s enclosed by white rectangle, aka “highlighted”, is the one you’re looking to do something with. Use the GR-MEGA’s buttons to do the following: [↓][↑] Scroll through list, and highlight project.

  • Page 48: File Manager

    File manager The file manager allows you to do everything you’d want to do with files: * Backup your projects to USB stick. * Import folders of samples to internal storage. For instance to the user sample storage: /media/internal/user/samples. * Reorganize your user samples. For instance, delete groups of samples. Rename and move others.

  • Page 49: Navigation

    Features Here’s an overview of all the features of the file manager: Navigation The file manager has two sides: left and right. You can edit files on both sides. You can copy and move files from left to right, and also from right to left. You can easily move the focus from the left side to the right side with the cursor keys [←] [→] [↑] [↓] and [Enter].

  • Page 50: Sound Previews

    Sound previews Stand on the speaker [ �� ] icon end press [Enter] to enable sound previews for sample files. Stand on a sample file, and it will start playing it and also show stats like sampling frequency and number of channels. New folder Standing on the [+ ��...

  • Page 51: Rename

    Rename Stand on a file and press [Enter] to select it. It will be highlighted in BLUE. Standing on the [RN] GUI button and pressing [Enter] will open the renaming popup. Copy Stand on a single file and press [Enter] to select it. If you stand on a folder you have to hold [Shift] and press [Enter] to select it…...

  • Page 52: Move

    Move Pressing the [MV] GUI button will do the same but will delete the originals after having copied them! This is a powerful feature to organize your files, but beware that’s there’s NO UNDO or recoverable trashcan like on your PC! NOTE: Copy and move can transfer stuff from the left to the right, and also from right to left.

  • Page 53: Sampling Menu

    Audio source * ANALOG INPUT: use the GR-MEGA high quality balanced analog inputs * RESAMPLING: use the GR-MEGA engine output * Experimental USB C: use the multitrack UAC2 audio from the USB C port. This is an experimental source and may be prone to high CPU use and crackles.

  • Page 54: Looping Rec

    Looping rec With “looping rec” turned off, the recording of the sample will be a one shot recording. Turn “looping rec” on to do continuous recording/real-time processing. Record start mode You can turn on the ability to record here and select the start point for recording. The following start points are available: •...

  • Page 55: Step Sequencer

    When playing a sequence or when inside the sequencer menu, the preset buttons double as sequence position. The GR-MEGA’s sequencer can be used for chords, but in slice mode it can also be used to trigger slices: like a drum sequencer.
  • Page 56 The sequencer is polyphonic. Even a horizontal track is polyphonic. Meaning notes can overlap. When the patch is set to a polyphony of 1 (i.e. monophonic), notes can no longer overlap and will replace each other.. which is useful when glide is enabled.

  • Page 57: Modulation Matrix

    Modulation Matrix The GR-MEGA’s modulation matrix consists, at the time of writing, of 18 sources by 90 destinations. There’s 4 LFO’s, CV, MIDI and MPE, and 4 sequencer modulators as sources. The destinations are numerous and listed in table 2.
  • Page 58 Curve With the Curve column you can smoothly bias the modulation to either extreme of the range. Amount and polarity do speak for themselves, but [Shift] + (Op enc) maybe nice for fine tuning amount. Destination is best set with the horizontal slider and then possibly fine tuned with (Op enc).

  • Page 59: Effects Menu

    Effects menu The GR-MEGA has 4 simultaneous effects (FX slots) per layer. You can choose effects from a list of 7 effects (at the time of writing). Each effect can only be used once per layer. Enter the Effect menu by Holding [Menu] and pressing [7]. The menu displays the effects chain for the layer that is currently in focus (see and use the Layer buttons 1,2,3,4).

  • Page 60: Effect Types

    Effect types At the time of writing the GR-MEGA has the following effects: COMPRESSOR DELAY Mono delay PPDELAY: Ping pong delay DIST(ortion) REVERB: a simple reverb that is easy on the CPU LARGE REVERB: huge and organic reverb (including a 6 parameter EQ)

  • Page 61: Fx Parameters

    FX Parameters Highlighted here in RED are FX parameters. Use the horizontal slider to quickly change the value, and use (Op enc) to step the value, for instance by 1% for each encoder tick. Hold [Shift] and turn (Op enc) to change 0.1% for each encoder tick. Some effect parameters like frequencies, times, and amplitudes have a cubic curve on them.

  • Page 62: System Menu

    Enter the System menu by Holding [Menu] and pressing [8]. This menu contains settings that are global to the GR-MEGA: settings for how the front panel controls and display should behave, settings for your studio’s MIDI setup, and settings concerning loading, saving to/from disk, CPU usage, metronome and tuning volumes.
  • Page 63 Turning this OFF will wait for you to press the Preset button to finish the Bank, Subbank, Preset button combo. Display brightness Does what it says. This CANNOT go all the way down to black. The GR-MEGA will not let you operate blind. It will remain at a very dim minimum. LED brightness Does what it says.
  • Page 64 Send precision CC Turn ON to let knob turning send 14 bit CC’s (NRPN’s) instead of the normal 7 bit CC’s Save on shutdown Turn ON for the the newschool way that almost every app uses nowadays. The MEGA will save all unsaved changes to patches when it shuts down, and also it will save its system settings automatically.

  • Page 65: Recording Samples

    You can turn on “looping rec“ as well if you want to use the GR-MEGA as a granular effect: for live sampling and replay simultaneously. It will then keep looping through its sample buffer until the user manually stops it.

  • Page 66: Crop & Loop Confinements

    rop & Loop confinements All of the sound engines support looping and stop positions, and cropping. In granular mode, looping is intended for the scanning motion. These are marked by flags: Start End (loop) flags 1) Start flag : high, points to the right. Used for setting the start of the crop area. NOTE: this is not the grain start position.

  • Page 67: Sample Loop Confinement

    Sample Loop Confinement You can use the loop flags: loop start, and loop end, to confine sample playback to a specific region. While the loop flags are used in the Granular and Spectral sound engines to confine scanning, in Sampler and Tape sound engines they are used to confine sample playback.

  • Page 68: Scan Looping

    Scan looping When a MIDI Note ON message is received, the Scanning motion starts at the white vertical line. The white line is stored in the preset, or is set by touching the slider position. Depending on the Scan setting it will move forward or in the reverse direction.

  • Page 69: [Loop]

    [Loop Enters Loop confinement, wraps in same direction when reaching Loop Flag. [Bounce Enters Loop confinement, bounces against Loop Flag into opposite direction.

  • Page 70: Scan Looped Release

    Scan Looped Release When a MIDI Note OFF is received, the scanning motion either keeps looping or bouncing, depending on the [Looped release] settings in the Patch menu. If Looped release is ON, it will continue to scan inside the loop confinement. If Looped release is OFF, it will exit the loop area, but only if it has performed an even number (0, 2, 4, 6, …) of loops or bounces.

  • Page 71: Sample Editing

    Sample editing Sample Tuning 1. Go to Menu → Patch (Hold [Menu] and press [1]) 2. Navigate to the column called “Grain” and to “Transpose” 3. Use the horizontal slider and/or turn (Op Enc) to transpose your sample in semitones. [Shift] + (Op Enc) fine tunes. Using your ears you can now tune it using the on-board tuning sine.

  • Page 72: Sample Normalize

    1. Turn (Op Enc) to “Normalize” 2. Press the [Exec] button next to (Op Enc) Note: the GR-MEGA can automatically normalize samples when loading them. This means that you don’t need to normalize samples. You’ll probably only need to do it after cropping.

  • Page 73: Saving & Loading

    Saving & Loading Loading Loading (not to be confused with recalling, which is done with button combos) is typically done with the file chooser. Press the Load button to open it. On the top left there are navigation options, on the bottom left you can chooser the data type.

  • Page 74: Supported Sample Formats

    WAV: Loading and saving. Almost all variants, 8,16,24, integer, 32 bit float. AIFF: Loading only. Most variants, except proprietary Ableton encoding. At the time of writing sound previews are not possible for this AIFF. Supported patch formats GR-1: folders with .grp + .wav files. loading only GR-MEGA: loading and saving...

  • Page 75: Saving

    Save. You’ll then enter the file chooser (TODO: image) to select a suitable folder to save the sample. Typically this is the user sample folders in the GR-MEGA’s internal storage /media/internal/user/samples/ Patches can be saved to slots with the save dialog. Typically, you’ll just save your progress with the current patch this way.

  • Page 76: Gr-Mega Data Types

    The GR-MEGA is sample based device. Every sound it makes is made by using samples. The sample is the most basic data type the GR-MEGA understands. It can be loaded from disk as WAV or AIFF files, and saved as a WAV file.

  • Page 77: Projects

    Projects Projects are the biggest collection of data. A project is much like a project in a DAW on PC/Mac. To make things easier, projects are simply stored in a list of 50 slots. Projects can be easily loaded and saved by accessing the project menu, which is basically just a long list of project names.

  • Page 78: File Sharing

    Step 1 - A) USB C (Linux and Mac) Use a USB C cable to connect your GR-MEGA’s USB C port with your PC or MAC. If you have a USB C port on your Mac, it could be you need a USB C → USB A adapter and a USB A →...

  • Page 79: Polyphony

    The same principle applies to the spectral sound engine. Higher polyphony will never influence the timbre. Note hold The GR-MEGA supports the MIDI hold CC. All new notes will remain playing even if your fingers were lifted from the keyboard. This remains this way until hold is turned off again.

  • Page 80: Audio, And Avoiding Drop-Outs

    GR-MEGA also increases.. which, after a while, leads to higher temperatures. The GR-MEGA has an internal fan which is intelligent and spins faster at higher temperatures. At 20C room temperature and normal work loads it should be almost imperceptible.

  • Page 81: Tutorials

    * Setting up the GR-MEGA in slice mode to jam with a groove box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mav7oJWiswA&t=1003s .. and in the same video there are many other tutorials to make use of the GR-MEGA’s sound engines. Our earlier video tutorial for the GR-1 is also a good one to watch. It will teach you how to make typical granular patches.
  • Page 82 2.A. I. Exit back to main screen by pressing Menu. II. Hold down Shift and press delete. The preset will now initialize to 8 seconds of mono sample memory and defaults like granular mode, 120 BPM 4/4 time signature. Alternatively, to have more freedom over your sample buffer, you can go to the Sampling menu, and init the sample there: I.

  • Page 83: From Sample To Patch

    From sample to patch You can now record into the patch or load a sample into it from USB or internal storage. Let’s load a sample from internal storage: 1. Press Load, the file chooser will show. 2. Navigate to /media/internal/factory/ Use the arrow buttons to or Op Enc to scroll, then press the Enter button to enter a folder.

  • Page 84: Modifying A Patch

    Modifying a patch To modify a patch is easy. Just use the knobs and buttons to change sound parameters. Let’s say you’re in granular mode, and you want to reverse grain direction: 1. Use the Direction knob (knob “E” in the lower right section on the front panel), and turn it all the way left.

  • Page 85: Entering Text With Built-In Buttons

    Entering text with built-in buttons A USB computer keyboard can be plugged in to make entering names super simple, but the built-in controls also do the trick: Press [Enter] to enter the text field. Press [Enter] again, or press [Escape] to exit the field and resume navigation.

  • Page 86: Button Combinations

    Button combinations On board controls Control Screen/mode Function in screen Display Section Position slider Main Sample position Shift + Position slider Main Scroll through waveform Position slider Menus Set widget value Position slider Text box Scroll through alphabet Select sample / sound engine (Operator) Main operation...
  • Page 87 [Load] Open file chooser (for loading) [Load] Selecting a file Load file [Save] Open save dialog [Save] Save file dialog Confirm overwrite [↑] Main Fine tune last touched control [↑] Menu, dialogs Navigate up [↓] Main Fine tune last touched control [↓] Menu, dialogs Navigate down...
  • Page 88 Sequencer menu, not Set sequencer step, arm Preset,(sub)bank playing sequencer bar Sequencer Section Tap tempo Press four times to set BPM Shift + Tap Tempo Toggle metronome BPM knob Set BPM Shift + BPM knob Fine tune BPM Rate knob Set sequencer rate division Position knob Set sequencer position...
  • Page 89 ScanOverlap Cycle window types: PowAR, Shift + [Grain Ratio] Raised Cosine “Amp” Section Amount slider Set envelope amount [Invert] Invert envelope amount A slider Pitch, Filt, Amp, or Aux Set envelope attack time envelope. Curve and Layer Mix are OFF. A slider [Curve] button lit Set envelope attack curve...
  • Page 90 Master Master volume Modulation Section (Destination) Set LFO destination Shift + (Destination) Set MOD source (Rate) Set LFO rate [0 Hz .. 50 Hz] (Phase) Set LFO phase Shift + (Phase) Set LFO amplitude quantization (Amount) Set LFO amount Shift + (Amount) Set MOD amount [LFO Select] Cycle through LFO’s 1..4...

  • Page 91: Midi Command Table

    MIDI Command Table The following table contains all MIDI commands known to the GR-MEGA. This includes all the typical MIDI commands such as note on, note off, pitchbend, aftertouch, program changes, midi beat clock. Sysex is not implemented as the time of writing, but may be added for MTS (MIDI Tuning Standard) to support non equal temperament and non Western tuning.

  • Page 92: Midi Command Table

    MIDI Command table Parameter name Comm Value Range/description MIDI Contro and / msg. l curve Pitch Pitch bend see CC 2 (pitchbend range) bend 16383 Chann Aftertouch afterto Poly Aftertouch afterto MIDI PGM 0..7 -> Preset 1..8, Sub- bank 1, bank 1;  MIDI PGM 8..15 ->...
  • Page 93 clock pulse quarter note (PPQN) MIDI beat clock Start 0xFA Start at position 0 start Contin MIDI beat clock Start where internal sequencer left 0xFB continue Stop MIDI beat stop 0xFC Sequencer stop Active 0xFE If your sequencer or controller sensin actually sends this, please contact Reset...
  • Page 94 0, >= Grain key sync Scan key sync 0: OFF, 1: ON, 2: Legato, 3: Poly Max number of voices – 1 (meaning: Patch polyphony 0..19 set to 0 to get monophonic, set to 19 to get 20 voices max) Glide time 0 –...
  • Page 95 Window type 0, 1 0: RaisedCosine 1: PowAR Granular mode 0: Free, 1: DensitySize, 2: DensityRate, 3: ScanRate, 4: ScanOverlap LFP Cutoff 0 – 127 0: 0.0 Hz, 127: 20.000 Hz cubic LPF Resonance 0 – 127 linear HPF Cutoff 0 –...
  • Page 96 Aux env release 0 – 127 0: 0ms 127: 45s cubic time Index of row in modulation list (see Mod list row 0 – 49 matrix menu) 0, >= Mod row enable Mod entry enable. 0: OFF, >= 1 ON Mod source 0 - 18 Source for mod entry.
  • Page 97 MPE timbre LSB 0 – 127 LFO3 destination 107 0 – 90 See Table 10 LFO4 clock sync 0..2 0: free, 1: MIDI, 2: sequencer LFO4 frequency 0 – 127 0: Stopped .. 127: 50 Hz cubic 0: sine, 1: triangle, 2: saw, 3: -saw, 4: LFO4 wave 0..5 square, 5: random...
  • Page 98 LFO3 Amp 0 – NRPN Quantization 16383 0 – NRPN LFO3 Phase 16383 LFO4 Amp 0 – NRPN Quantization 16383 0 – NRPN LFO4 Phase 16383 NRPN LFO1 Polarity 0..3 0: +uni, 1: -uni, 2: +bi, 3: -bi NRPN LFO2 Polarity 0..3 0: +uni, 1: -uni, 2: +bi, 3: -bi NRPN LFO3 Polarity...
  • Page 99 16383 0 – 0.0: low flat → hollow → 0.5: linear → NRPN Amp attack curve 166 linear 16383 bulging → 1.0: high flat 0 – 0.0: low flat → hollow → 0.5: linear → NRPN Amp decay curve 167 16383 bulging →...
  • Page 100 NRPN LFO3 clock div 1012 0 – 127 1 - 128 NRPN LFO4 clock div 1013 0 – 127 1 - 128 Sequencer clock NRPN 1014 0 – 127 1 - 128 NRPN Layer 1 preset 0 - 127 1 - 128 NRPN Layer 2 preset 0 –...

  • Page 101: Rate Divisions

    Rate divisions Table 13: Rate divisions Index Division 1/64 1/48 1/32 1/24 1/16 1/12 12/1 16/1 24/1 32/1 48/1 64/1 Mod sources Table 14: Mod sources Index Modulation source LFO1 LFO2 LFO3 LFO4 Seq1 Seq2 Seq3 Seq4 Mod wheel Key tracking Note on velocity Pitch (pitchwheel, MPE pitch) Aftertouch...
  • Page 102 None (= modulation OFF) Table 15: Modulation destinations Index Modulation destination Tune Spray Grain rate Grain size Density Pan spray Sides Tilt Curve Direction Window AM Scan Tape slew Pitch env amount Pitch env Attack time Pitch env Decay time Pitch env Sustain level Pitch env Release time LPF cutoff...
  • Page 103 LFO4 amount LFO1 phase LFO2 phase LFO3 phase LFO4 phase Sequencer length FX1 knob value FX2 knob value Reverb room size Reverb dampening Reverb stereo width Reverb Dry Reverb Wet Large reverb time Large reverb size Large reverb dampening Large reverb M-S Large reverb early Large reverb tail Large reverb pre...

  • Page 104: Technical Support

    Technical Support GR-Mega Specifications Feature Spec Remark General Multitimbrality 4 layers Polyphony per layer 20 voices 3 in PV engine Total number of grains 5000 all layers combined, about 4 times as much as the gr-1 Engines Sampler (including loop, start end)
  • Page 105 Spawn modes Direct, gradual, recycle Phase vocoder Max polyphony FFT size 256..8192 Chord mode up to 12 notes per voice Mod matrix Number of LFOs 4 per layer Number of modulation sources Number of modulation and growing destinations Number of step sequencer modulators Filters Filters per voice...
  • Page 106 Max chord size Max steps Step sequencers per In multitimbral mode you’ll get up to patch 4 step sequencers total Connectivity Analog audio output Stereo TRS 1/4 ” 110 dB SNR balanced Analog audio input Stereo TRS 1/4 ” 110 dB SNR balanced Headphone 1/8 “...

  • Page 107: List Of Tested (Usb-)Midi Controllers And Keyboards

    List of tested (USB-)MIDI controllers and keyboards Akai MPK25 Alesis Q25 Arturia Beatstep Arturia Keystep Korg Nanokontrol2 Korg Nanopad2 Moog Sub37 Roli Seaboard Block...

  • Page 108: Firmware Updates

    2. Navigate down with the down arrow to the Update GUI button, then press Enter. When a LAN cable is connected to your internet router, the GR-MEGA will search for the latest firmware on the Tasty Chips site. If there’s no LAN cable, it will look for a firmware zip file on the inserted USB stick.
  • Page 109 It will then prompt you 3 choices: Escape to cancel, or choose “Online” or “USB” (if either of those are available). Assuming you choose Online or USB to upgrade: It will then show a popup that it will now reboot. The restart will take about 20 seconds.
  • Page 110 After this it will start the actual installation. After this is complete, it will show a popup that it will reboot again. After the second reboot it will show the new firmware version in the bottom of the screen. You’ve now updated your GR-MEGA’s firmware.

  • Page 111: Faq

    Only use an external power supply for the MIDI controller if you’re using DIN MIDI. If using USB MIDI, please let your GR-MEGA power the MIDI controller! This USB MIDI controller is actually misbehaving and does not conform to the USB...

  • Page 112: Troubleshooting

    * Please only use the supplied USB stick. There are very cheap, unreliable and slow USB sticks for sale. That’s why we supplied a decent one with the GR-MEGA. * Place the firmware zip file in the root directory of the USB stick. DO NOT UNZIP IT.

  • Page 113: Credits For The Gr-Mega

    Credits for the GR-MEGA Development Concept: Luc Derks, Pieter van der Meer Software & electronics engineering: Pieter van der Meer Prototype code, FX prototypes: Luc Derks Hardware prototyping: Joeri Braams, Mihail Keremedchiev MCU code: Joeri Braams, Pieter van der Meer...

  • Page 114: Contact

    Contact Web: www.tastychips.nl Email: info@tastychips.nl Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/tastychips Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tastychipselectronics Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tastychips_synth...

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