Output Portal: The Wildest Granular VST Plugin for Creative Music Production
Updated: Sep 18
Output Portal is a granular effects plugin: it chops incoming audio into tiny grains and rebuilds them with new pitch, timing, direction and texture, all steered from one circular XY control. Output released it in 2019. It costs $149 (often discounted to around half that), runs on Mac and Windows as VST, AU and AAX, and comes with more than 250 presets. This review covers what Portal does, how it sounds, where it works on guitars, vocals and drums in band music, and when a simpler tool would serve the song better.
Most write-ups of Portal talk about EDM drops and glitchy beats. We use effects like this on bands: indie, shoegaze and post-punk records made by people with guitars. Granular effects are surprisingly good there, as long as you use them on one moment and not the whole song.
Output Portal at a glance
What it is: a granular FX plugin (it processes audio, it is not a synth).
Released: 2019, by Output (the company behind Arcade and Movement).
Price: $149 list, regularly on sale.
Formats: VST, AU, AAX on Mac and Windows.
Controls: circular XY pad linked to the grain settings, tempo-synced grain delay, scale-based pitch modulation, time stretch, a humanize function, 7 built-in effects plus master compressor and filter.
Presets: over 250, sorted by instrument type.
What granular processing actually does
Granular processing records a short stretch of your audio into a buffer and plays it back as hundreds of tiny slices, called grains, each a few milliseconds to a few hundred milliseconds long. Each grain can be pitched, reversed, delayed, spread across the stereo field and layered with others. Small grains sound like texture or shimmer. Larger grains sound like stuttering fragments of the original.
Doing that by hand is fiddly. Portal's selling point is that it hides most of it behind presets and one control, so you can get somewhere musical fast. Output's Portal page shows the full feature list.
How Portal sounds
At its gentlest, Portal adds a moving, pitched halo around a sound, a bit like a shimmer reverb made of fragments. In the middle, it turns a chord into a pulsing, tempo-locked pattern. At its most extreme, it takes a vocal apart and puts it back together as something that sounds like a broken memory of the original. The scale-based pitch modulation keeps the grains in key, which is why it sounds more musical than most granular tools.
The downside of that polish: Portal has a recognisable sound. Lean on the presets and your track will sound like everyone else's Portal preset. Treat the presets as starting points and change them.
How to use Portal in band music
Guitars: shoegaze swells and texture
Put Portal on a send from a clean or lightly driven guitar, choose a preset with long, pitched grains, and blend it quietly under the dry signal. You get a moving layer that thickens the guitar without the washy mud of stacking reverbs. Automate it up in the last bar before a chorus. More on building that kind of wall in how to mix shoegaze.
Vocals: one strange line, not a whole song
Print Portal on a copy of one vocal phrase, a backing vocal or an ad-lib, and fly it in as an answer to the lead. The main vocal stays human and the treated copy becomes an event. Using it on the whole lead vocal usually makes the song feel like a demo for the plugin.
Drums and percussion
Send a drum room mic or a loop into Portal with tempo-synced grains and short grain sizes. You get stuttering rhythmic fills that follow the tempo, useful in breakdowns and intros. High-pass the return so the low end of the kit stays solid.
Transitions and intros
Bounce a chord from the last bar of a song section, run it through a slow, pitched preset and use it as the bridge into the next section. It works well for records made live, where you want a studio moment without editing the performance itself.
Output Portal pros and cons
Pros: fast to get musical results, sounds good on almost any source, the XY control makes automation easy, pitch stays in key, large preset library.
Cons: $149 list price for one effect, a very recognisable preset sound, easy to overuse, and heavier on CPU than a basic delay or reverb when you run several instances.
Alternatives to Output Portal
If Portal is too much money or too polished, there are good alternatives. Freeware granular tools exist from several small developers, and many DAWs now include a basic granular effect. For glitch without grains, rhythmic effects like Sugar Bytes Looperator and Cableguys ShaperBox slice audio in time rather than into grains. For pitch and time mangling, see Unfiltered Audio Fault, and for a stranger multi-effect try Zynaptiq Wormhole.
Is Output Portal worth it?
Our honest opinion: for most bands, Portal is a luxury, not a necessity. The things that make a record good happen before any plugin: the song, the take, the room and the balance. We wrote a whole piece about that, the plugin isn't the problem, you are.
But if you already have those things and want one sound on the record that nobody else has, Portal gets you there faster than almost anything else. Buy it on sale, learn three presets deeply, change them, and print the results so you commit to them.
What an earlier version of this review got wrong
The first version of this post named presets and modes we could not find in the plugin, called it low on CPU (it is moderate) and pitched it mainly at EDM and hip-hop. We have replaced those with the verified feature list and a band-focused guide.
Output Portal FAQ
What does Output Portal do?
Portal is a granular effects plugin. It cuts incoming audio into tiny grains and rebuilds them with new pitch, timing, direction and texture, controlled from a circular XY pad and over 250 presets.
How much does Output Portal cost?
Portal lists at $149 as a one-time purchase and is often on sale for around half that. It runs as VST, AU and AAX on Mac and Windows.
Is Output Portal good for guitar?
Yes. On a send, blended under a dry guitar, Portal adds moving, pitched texture that works very well for shoegaze, dream pop and ambient parts. Keep the dry guitar dominant.
Is Portal a synth?
No. Portal is an effect that processes audio you feed it. If you want a playable granular instrument, you need a separate synth or sampler.
Is Output Portal good for beginners?
The presets and XY control make it easy to get results quickly. The risk for beginners is overusing it. Use it on one moment in a song, not everywhere.
Keep reading
Used strange effects on your record and want a mixer who keeps them strange? We mix shoegaze, post-punk and indie rock for artists everywhere. Send us the rough mix.
