ADDAC 112 Looper Granulator (2021–)

A dual-mono looper and granular processor with a screen that shows every crack and flicker of the audio it chops up.

Overview

Press record and the ADDAC 112 pulls your synth drone into a five-minute buffer. From there it chops the audio into tiny grains and scatters them across the stereo field. It takes up 45HP of Eurorack space. Patch in a clean oscillator tone, turn the grain density up, and the OLED screen fills with thousands of small waveform fragments. The panel is dense, with knobs for grain position, size, pitch, randomness, envelope and deviation. It takes some learning, but the module is one of the most expressive granular tools in modular synthesis.

Many granular modules hide their workings behind minimal interfaces or cryptic menus. The 112 puts everything out front. It combines a full-featured looper engine with a deep granular processor, so you can record audio, manipulate it in real time, and feed it into a granularizer with voltage control over nearly every parameter. The looper can overdub, switch between multiple loops, and sync to external clocks. The granular engine slices the buffer into grains with adjustable timing, pitch, and spatial placement. You can nudge start points, stretch durations, and scatter grains in time with CV-controlled randomness. The screen is a rare luxury in modular gear. It shows the loop waveform, the grain cloud, and how your adjustments affect both in real time.

There is chaos here, and not only the musical kind. At high grain counts or with aggressive modulation, the 112 can stutter, freeze, or crash, especially under heavy CV load. Firmware updates have improved stability, but owners report occasional lockups that need a reboot. The module pushes a relatively modest CPU to its limits. Sound quality stays pristine at 16-bit/44.1kHz, but the processing overhead means you have to manage expectations in live performance. Many users treat the instability as part of the sound, with glitches becoming textures and crashes becoming transitions. Anyone after a bulletproof, set-and-forget granular module should look elsewhere. The 112 asks for attention, patience, and a willingness to deal with its firmware quirks. In return it offers a level of control and sonic depth that most of its peers don't match.

Specifications

Key Features

The Dual Engine: Looper Meets Granular

The 112 fuses its looper and granular processor into a single interdependent system. The looper is the foundation. You record audio into one of several onboard buffers, pitch-shift it, overdub layers, and switch between loops, all while feeding the same material into the granular engine. Every edit to the loop instantly changes the grain source. Record a guitar phrase and it can be granularized right away. Pitch it down an octave first and the grains follow. The SD card also holds a set of preloaded samples, including an Amen break, noise sweeps, and ambient pads, so you can start experimenting without patching in external sources. The looper also works as a live sampler. Capture an oscillator sweep, freeze it, then spend the next ten minutes dissecting it into microtonal shards. Loops can be saved and recalled, which lets you build a library of textures and reprocess them across different patches.

Voltage Control Without Compromise

Every major parameter on the 112 has a corresponding CV input, and most include attenuverters for shaping the modulation. You can voltage-control grain count, size, position, pitch, randomness, and even the deviation of those parameters, which means you can modulate how much the randomness varies over time. Many granular modules limit CV access to a few core functions, so this is rare. You can patch in an LFO to slowly expand grain size while a sequencer jumps the playback position and an envelope modulates the dry/wet mix for big swells. The patch bay has inputs grouped by function and color-coded. One warning: the module outputs hot signals, especially in granular mode, so running it into a mixer or effects often needs external attenuation. That comes from its high headroom design, which was built to handle extreme processing without clipping. You manage levels downstream.

Visual Feedback That Matters

The 112's OLED screen does more than show menu text. It displays the actual waveform of your loop, marks the current grain positions, and animates how changes in density or randomness affect the grain cloud. Scrub the grain start point and you see the playback head move across the buffer. Increase grain size and the individual slices grow longer. You can see when grains overlap, when gaps appear, and when the buffer is nearing overflow. The screen also includes a zoomed loop editor for precise start/end point adjustment, which users report as invaluable for tight rhythmic editing. Some purists argue that visual feedback breaks the "modular ethos" of tactile exploration. In practice it makes the 112 far more intuitive than modules that leave you guessing at what's happening inside.

Historical Context

The ADDAC 112 arrived in 2021, when granular synthesis in Eurorack was already a mature field. Mutable Instruments' Beads, Qu-Bit's Nebulae, and Make Noise's Morphagene had already defined what was possible in compact, affordable formats. The 112 didn't try to beat them on size or price. It aimed to surpass them in depth and control. Where Beads offered elegance and immediacy, the 112 offered granularity and transparency. Where Nebulae leaned into dark, textural mangling, the 112 stayed pristine and let the source material come through. Morphagene took a more abstract, sample-manipulation approach, while the 112 went for real-time performance and visual feedback. For ADDAC, a Portuguese company known for quirky, design-forward modules, it was a bold bid to compete at the high end of Eurorack's most complex category.

The module also fit a broader trend in modular synthesis, the growing appetite for "supermodules" that combine several functions in one unit. At 45HP and nearly 700mA draw, the 112 is power-hungry. It replaces what might otherwise take three or four modules: a looper, a granular processor, and a sample player. That kind of investment makes sense in a mature system, where the user has already explored the basics. Competitors like Instruo's Arbhar and Mungo's Hauler offered other takes on granular processing, but none matched the 112's combination of hands-on control, visual feedback, and integrated looping. It wasn't trying to be the easiest granular module. It was trying to be the most capable.

Collectibility & Value

The ADDAC 112 isn't a vintage classic in the traditional sense. It's too new and too tied to modern firmware and digital processing. Still, it has already found a niche among collectors of high-end Eurorack modules. Its original price of $699 put it in the premium tier, and it occasionally appears used for around $550 to $600. It rarely drops below that range. Units with clean screens, responsive buttons, and no firmware corruption hold value better. Repairs aren't trivial. A failed SD card reader or corrupted firmware can leave the module unusable without help from ADDAC's support team. Owners report that crashes are less frequent with updated firmware but still happen under heavy load, and a hard reboot (power cycling) is often the only fix. Reliability is a real concern for live performers, though many treat the module as a studio centerpiece instead.

Before buying, check the firmware version first. Anything before 1.4.3 is likely unstable. Second, test all buttons and knobs for responsiveness, especially the loop and grain selectors. Third, check the screen for dead pixels or flickering, which could point to a failing display driver. Fourth, confirm the SD card slot works by loading a sample. Finally, listen for audio glitches during high-grain playback. Crackles, dropouts, or freezes under load are red flags. The module's size and power draw also limit where it fits, since it needs a case with ample space and a strong power supply. For a high-end modular rig focused on experimental sound design, the 112 remains a compelling, if demanding, centerpiece.

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