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GRM Tools Atelier - Next-Level Sound Design!

Tutorial | May 12, 2025

Last week, I attended Superbooth in Berlin, where I checked out a lot of synth and software gear, including a standout product from GRM Tools called Atelier—a semi-modular VST focused on sound design and ambience that really impressed me with its intuitive interface and high-quality sound. Developed by just two people (one being a musician), Atelier reminds me of Bitwig’s modular approach and looks promising for creative sound exploration, especially with its excellent modulation options and channel routing features. Look out for its release in September—I’ve included a link to their site below if you want to stay updated!

You can watch the Video on Youtube

Summary

Maybe you don't watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

Hey everyone, welcome back! I wanted to share my experiences from last week’s Superbooth event in Berlin—a huge gathering for synthesizer and music tech enthusiasts. While it's exciting to see new products, catch up with people, and get hands-on with gear, I always find these events pretty exhausting. Unlike my usual routine—just talking to the camera or microphone—at Superbooth you’re constantly interacting with other people, which can be overwhelming, but it's also a nice change to meet the community face to face and discuss things you wouldn't normally get direct feedback on.

During Superbooth, I visited the Bitwig booth, which was really popular this year. I took some fun photos with the Bitwig team, including some of the developers (like Klaas, Placidus, and Fogar). They were showing off some cool stuff like the auto-pods, a DIY controller developed by Giro—which I had actually made a video about previously. The booth also showcased things like Roto control and Bitwig Connect, attracting lots of interest. I even made a quick, five-minute patch just to try everything out.

But what I really wanted to talk about was an accidental discovery: a company called GRM Tools, specifically their new software called Atelier. GRM is a veteran company but this is the first modern tool I’ve seen from them in a while. Atelier is a semi-modular VST effect instrument designed with sound designers in mind—think of it as a chain of specialized plugins or modules, each with its own parameters, much like devices in Bitwig. The UI is clear and visually appealing: you have a row of modules (the “devices”) and, at the bottom, a section full of modulators. You can drag cables from modulators to specific parameters to animate and morph your sound, and you can stack voices—similar to voice stacking in Bitwig.

Rather than being a “do everything” type of product like VCV Rack or Bitwig’s Grid, Atelier is focused specifically on crafting soundscapes, ambiences, and experimental sound design. For example, one module is a multi-voice comb filter, with visual feedback for each voice—super useful for making lush or complex textures. All the sliders on the interface are modulatable, and modules can be duplicated with different settings for each copy, which enhances the possibilities for generating thick, evolving sounds. Despite all this flexibility, it remains straightforward and user-friendly, which I really appreciated.

I spoke to the developers (it’s just a two-person team: one dev and one musician), and it’s clear that the product is shaped by musical needs, not just coder curiosity (“coding orgasms” as I joked). This practical, music-first focus really shines through in the workflow and overall design. There’s no feature bloat—just the right tools, implemented thoughtfully.

Another cool aspect is the robust multi-channel audio routing. Internally, everything is channeled-based, and you can send outputs to different channels (for ambisonics, surround sound, or complex speaker setups), which caught the interest of other DAW users like Reaper folks. The devs asked me about Bitwig’s multi-channel audio support, hinting at powerful integration possibilities if that becomes more standard.

I was genuinely impressed by the sound quality and potential of Atelier, even given the chaos and noise of the tradeshow environment. The product feels semi-modular like Unfiltered Audio’s Lion, but I find the sound quality and clarity of focus to be even higher, especially for cinematic or experimental work.

Atelier is slated for release in September, with this public demo at Superbooth being its first outing. There should be a beta by September as well, and I’m eager to get my hands on it—if you’re interested, there’s a link to their newsletter so you can stay updated.

All in all, Atelier feels like a modern, focused, high-quality tool from GRM—definitely something for sound design fans to look out for. If you want more info, Sonic State did an interview with Matthias Püch, one of the devs/musicians, which I recommend checking out.

So, that’s my main takeaway from Superbooth this year—besides hanging out at the Bitwig booth, it was mostly lots of small companies demoing their modules amid constant noise, which makes it hard to focus but is still fun. Sometimes you just need to find a quiet spot to catch your breath.

That’s it for this video. Keep an eye out for GRM Tools Atelier! The link for more info is below. Thanks for watching! Leave a like, let me know in the comments what you think of this kind of content, and subscribe if you haven’t already. See you next time!

Transcription

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00:00] Hey, folks, welcome back.
[00:00:01] So last week there was the super booth here in Berlin,
[00:00:04] this kind of big event for synthesizer and software nerds.
[00:00:09] It's always fun.
[00:00:11] It's always interesting to discover new things,
[00:00:14] talk to people, but it's also always exhausting
[00:00:17] because everyone wants to talk to you.
[00:00:19] You have to talk back, right?
[00:00:21] Normally I just talk to the camera, to my microphone,
[00:00:23] and that's kind of it.
[00:00:26] And then you have these three days and everyone wants
[00:00:29] to talk all the time, so it's always exhausting.
[00:00:34] But it's kind of nice to meet everyone and, you know,
[00:00:37] see the faces and talk about certain things.
[00:00:41] You usually don't talk because I don't have feedback.
[00:00:44] I just see comments and that's basically it.
[00:00:47] Anyway, I want to talk about a company that had the booth
[00:00:53] there and I just accidentally discovered this
[00:00:57] and I think it's actually a great idea.
[00:01:00] I want to show you this here.
[00:01:02] So I made some photos here.
[00:01:04] I also made kind of funny photos here with the Bitwig staff
[00:01:09] with the developers with Klaas and Placidus and Fogar
[00:01:12] showing off the auto-pods, this kind of DIY controller
[00:01:17] Giro made here and I also made a video about this a while ago.
[00:01:22] Anyway, so the Bitwig booth here,
[00:01:24] always lots of people there interested in the roto control
[00:01:28] and the Bitwig Connect there in the background.
[00:01:31] This is a patch I made here in, I don't know, five minutes.
[00:01:35] Yeah.
[00:01:38] So there was this booth, let me see here.
[00:01:43] Yeah, GRM tools, Atelier, that's how the software is called.
[00:01:47] And it's kind of a semi-modular VST effect instrument
[00:01:52] kind of thing and it tickles all my senses in a way
[00:01:59] because it's semi-modular.
[00:02:02] You can see here you have some kind of modules in here.
[00:02:06] They are kind of specialized.
[00:02:07] You can see them as plug-ins with parameters here, right?
[00:02:11] And you can add as many as you want in kind of a chain
[00:02:17] and it's basically exactly like in Bitwig.
[00:02:19] You have this big chain of plug-ins or devices
[00:02:23] and you can rearrange them.
[00:02:26] You can add here, you can click this plus button, right?
[00:02:28] Insert something.
[00:02:30] And they don't try to make devices for everything.
[00:02:35] It's just more like they have a focus on sound design
[00:02:39] and ambience and creating soundscapes here.
[00:02:43] This is a comp filter basically with multiple voices.
[00:02:46] So it's aiming more at sound design.
[00:02:50] So I'm kind of interested in this
[00:02:53] because it more or less looks like Bitwig in a way
[00:02:57] because you have a lot of modulators here at the bottom
[00:03:00] and then you have the devices
[00:03:01] and you can drag cables from these modulators
[00:03:05] to certain parameters here and can modulate them.
[00:03:09] So they don't try to do everything with this.
[00:03:13] So it's not like, oh, this replaces VCV reg
[00:03:17] or this replaces the grid.
[00:03:19] It's more like it has a focus on sound design, like I said.
[00:03:24] And it does this very well.
[00:03:26] Also the interface looks very nice in my opinion.
[00:03:30] Everything is clear and communicates what it does
[00:03:33] at the moment.
[00:03:34] You can see you have multiple dots.
[00:03:36] And these multiple dots basically show you
[00:03:39] that these are multiple comp filters
[00:03:43] with different fundamental frequencies.
[00:03:46] And you can create as many voices I think
[00:03:49] as you want more or less or at least over 20.
[00:03:53] And then you can see they just loaded up a different preset.
[00:03:57] And you can modulate everything you see.
[00:04:01] So all these sliders here are modulatable
[00:04:04] and also have different kind of, you can say voices
[00:04:09] or you can use multiple or you can stack
[00:04:13] kind of like voice stacking in Bitwig.
[00:04:16] You have multiple different virtual duplicates
[00:04:20] of these devices here with different settings.
[00:04:26] And it creates really nice sounds and ambiances
[00:04:30] and also the quality of these plugins
[00:04:33] are pretty high in my opinion.
[00:04:35] It sounded very nice, at least what I hear
[00:04:37] over these speakers and all the noise
[00:04:39] and the background from all the other booths.
[00:04:42] It sounded very good and also straightforward.
[00:04:45] So they have, I guess they said it's just two developers
[00:04:50] and one of them is actually a musician.
[00:04:54] So it's not like it's a developer having a coding orgasm
[00:04:59] and just putting in all that stuff.
[00:05:02] It's also led by some kind of musician
[00:05:04] with a practical background.
[00:05:07] So everything is just focused
[00:05:09] and it looked like everything makes sense, right?
[00:05:14] So you have like a voice generator here
[00:05:17] with different voices.
[00:05:19] This is just changing the gain for each of these voices.
[00:05:23] So internally they always talk about channels.
[00:05:28] So they have multi audio channels basically going out
[00:05:32] from these devices.
[00:05:33] You can also route the channels out of the device.
[00:05:38] So they asked me about Bitwig
[00:05:40] if they have multi-channel audio
[00:05:42] or they asked me if I could ask Bitwig
[00:05:45] for implementing multi-channel audio.
[00:05:48] And I guess you can also route the stand inside of Reaper
[00:05:51] for instance to different speakers
[00:05:54] and making BNR or maybe surround sound kind of setups with this.
[00:06:00] This is here a pitch device that you can see in the background.
[00:06:06] So you can take these voices or these channels
[00:06:09] and then apply different pitches to it.
[00:06:13] And everything sounded quite amazing.
[00:06:17] So I was impressed with this
[00:06:19] because it's semi-modular and kind of a Bitwig grid fan.
[00:06:24] And I like the visuals, I like how it sounded.
[00:06:28] I liked how the focus is.
[00:06:31] And yeah, it's kind of a plug in.
[00:06:35] You probably won't miss.
[00:06:37] So they want to release in September
[00:06:39] which is not too far away.
[00:06:41] And this was the first time
[00:06:43] they are showing this in public here.
[00:06:45] So I guess there will be maybe a beta in September.
[00:06:51] I hope so at least because I can't wait
[00:06:55] to put my hands on this.
[00:06:57] So this was something I saw by accident
[00:07:03] and I think this is actually going somewhere.
[00:07:06] So GRM tools is, or GRM is a pretty old company
[00:07:11] they're quite some time around.
[00:07:16] So this is the first thing I saw
[00:07:20] that's pretty modern from them.
[00:07:23] I think all of the old tools are very old.
[00:07:27] I have no idea actually about the company.
[00:07:29] But this is something here
[00:07:32] I really liked how it looked like.
[00:07:34] There's also a video on the Sonic State YouTube channel here
[00:07:39] and they made an interview with the musician here.
[00:07:44] He's called Matthias or Matthias Püch.
[00:07:48] So maybe it gives you more information here
[00:07:52] but this is a great, actually a great tool
[00:07:57] shows all the different devices here.
[00:07:59] I just made a five minute video
[00:08:02] and talk to the one of the devs.
[00:08:04] But yeah, this is something I'm looking forward to.
[00:08:11] It kind of reminds me a bit of this one here
[00:08:14] unfiltered audio lion
[00:08:16] which is also kind of a semi modular synthesizer
[00:08:20] with lots of different modules
[00:08:21] and you can apply some modulations to it.
[00:08:24] But I would say for this one here
[00:08:26] the quality is much, much higher
[00:08:28] and the focus is more on soundscapes, sound design
[00:08:33] cinematic stuff and high quality.
[00:08:37] So look out for this.
[00:08:38] I put you also a link in the description here
[00:08:40] to this web page where you can subscribe here
[00:08:44] to the newsletter because this one is coming soon.
[00:08:49] I think that's it.
[00:08:51] I just want to talk about this, show you this.
[00:08:54] I don't think I bore you with my stories about Super Booth
[00:09:00] and there was not much going on
[00:09:03] besides me being at the Bitwig Studio Booth
[00:09:06] and talking to some people.
[00:09:08] The rest of the Super Booth more or less like this here
[00:09:12] where you have like small companies
[00:09:14] showing off their modules
[00:09:16] and there's a lot of noise all the time.
[00:09:19] You just barely can't hear anything or focus on anything.
[00:09:23] It's just random noise everywhere.
[00:09:25] But it's still fun.
[00:09:27] Yeah, this is where I just chilled for a moment
[00:09:31] just to take a breath.
[00:09:32] Yeah, that's it.
[00:09:37] Look out for GRM tools.
[00:09:39] Link is in the description below.
[00:09:40] Thanks for watching.
[00:09:41] Leave a like if you liked the video.
[00:09:42] Let me know what you think about me talking about this stuff.
[00:09:46] I don't know.
[00:09:48] Like, leave a subscription.
[00:09:50] See you next time.
[00:09:51] Bye.