via Tasty Chips:
"There was the GR-1, then there was the bigger brother to extend the family, the GR-MEGA, and now there’s the GR-2.
The GR-2 is the direct successor of the GR-1. Similar size, similar price, but with a large touch screen, and many of the GR-MEGA’s abilities. As loyal readers of our mailing list, you are the first to know. We offer a limited amount of early bird units at 100 euro discount. We chose Kickstarter to reach a large audience and gauge interest, and you guys are the first the learn about it.
Visit us at Superbooth this weekend for a GR-2 demo, and of course you can also play around with all our other synths and effects.
For GR-MEGA owners: the GR-2 is like a little brother of the GR-MEGA. Both can run the same patches, and have largely the same abilities. The GR-2 has somewhat lower polyphony, lacks the amount of function-specific knobs and buttons, and lacks luxury interfaces like HDMI and balanced audio. The GR-2 firmware has the same “root” as the GR-MEGA’s. This means the GR-2 hitches a piggyback ride on the mature GR-MEGA for a great start.. and after a while the GR-MEGA will benefit from large amounts of sold GR-2’s: more user feedback, leading to more features, higher quality, and a large patch library.
If you want the best granular synthesizer and sound design tool out there, please support us.. and yourself. 🙂 Thank you! 🙏"
Additional details via Kickstarter.
The GR-2 is a granular synth, transformative sampler, and a portable sound design tool. It's ideally suited to stand-alone use. It can drone, you can use the touchscreen to play it like a live instrument. Attach MIDI gear or computer to use it like a traditional synth. Samples Samples want to be heard, but also seen, touched, and transformed. That's what the GR-2 delivers. Triggers, and manipulation are immediate. There's no setup, and there's visual feedback for everything.
Easy to use
The 7" touch screen, and high contrast GUI make life easy. There are spatially associated encoders along the the edges of the display. The most important settings are always visible, and they're big.
The most important settings are available from Quick Access (QA) menu buttons at the top. Using a touch gesture you can make them full screen. Deeper menus are accessible via the menu button. And rest assured, you're never more than 1 level deep + all GUI widgets are big and high contrast.
Power
The GR-2 is compact, no more than 25x19x7 cm, but it's powerful. While the touchscreen plays a large role, the knobs and fader are essential to the tactile, immediate, and precise nature of this synth.
Transformation is key. Load or record a sample, then mangle it through one of the many engines and effects. Long field recordings, transients, tonal material, the GR-2 eats them all. Make them unrecognizable, emphasize their inherent character, or add your own accents. Make them scatter in the granular engine, add subtle stutters, let it smoothly sustain forever, or make it whistle and bubble in the spectral engine. Using the many knobs and up-front menus, this quickly becomes like a second nature.
Polyphonic, multi-timbral, multi-engine, MPE capable, a dozen high quality effects, macros, and a deep polyphonic modulation matrix with over 120 destinations and 24 sources. Of course touch X,Y are mod sources. Our granular engine is the best you'll find in any hardware synth. A claim we dare make with ease. You can leverage the power of a touch screen, and play multiple notes and chords, along with gestural modulation accross 4 timbres. You can even record and transform touch gestures for modulation."
