Fracture is a stutter/glitch performance engine for audio. Import a track, then reshape it live by holding down performance gestures — stutters, reverses, bitcrushes, filter sweeps, granular freezes, delays, reverbs, and more. Each gesture is active only while held, and reverts the instant it's released.
66 presets are grouped into 11 categories, playable from a bank of Quick Pads or from a pair of Category/Preset selector knobs feeding a single performance trigger. Five continuous knobs — Filter, Crush, Delay, Reverb, and a master Mix — sit underneath as an always-on macro layer. A performance can be recorded as automation, replayed hands-free, and bounced to a 24-bit WAV file.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Presets | 66, across 11 categories |
| Hero knobs | Filter, Crush, Delay, Reverb, Mix |
| Trigger modes | Momentary, Latch |
| Export formats | 24-bit WAV (chain preview or full take bounce) |
| Session format | JSON (.json) |
From top to bottom, Fracture is laid out as a single performance surface:
Everything below the transport row responds live, whether or not a track is currently playing back — Fracture will start playback automatically the moment a gesture needs it to.
Import Audio… — opens the file picker (equivalent to clicking the Source Audio panel). Save Session — downloads the current knob positions and take as a JSON file. Load Session… — opens a previously saved session file.
Export WAV (chain preview, 24-bit) — see Chapter 12.
Fracture Manual — this document, always on hand from inside the app.
The installed desktop build additionally exposes these as a native File / Export / Help menu, with keyboard shortcuts — see Chapter 15.
Stops playback, clears any active gesture, and returns the Filter/Crush/Delay/Reverb/Mix knobs and the Category/Preset selectors to their defaults.
Toggles whether the imported track loops at its end. Loop can be changed during playback.
Starts or pauses playback from the current position. The Space bar does the same, from anywhere except a text field.
The automation take system — covered in full in Chapters 10 and 11.
Drop an audio file onto the Source Audio panel, or click it to browse. Fracture decodes the file directly in the browser (any format your browser can decode — WAV, MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC are all typically supported), draws its waveform, and estimates a tempo automatically using an onset/autocorrelation analysis over a 60–180 BPM range.
TAP lets you set BPM by hand — tap a few times in a row and Fracture averages the interval. ÷2 and ×2 halve or double the detected tempo, which is handy when the detector locks onto a half-time or double-time reading.
Tempo drives every beat-synced preset — a 1/16 stutter, for example, is always a true 1/16 note at the current BPM.
Two rotary selectors choose which preset the Perform trigger fires:
The readout beneath each knob shows the current selection. Both knobs are drag-to-turn: click and drag up or down to rotate.
FIRE SELECTED PRESET is the main performance trigger, sitting beside the Category/Preset knobs. It fires whichever preset those two knobs currently point to. Two modes, chosen via the Momentary / Latch toggle:
The preset is active only while the trigger is held down. Releasing it reverts instantly — or cuts a transitional gesture short and recovers immediately.
Press once to engage, press again to release. Useful for hands-free, sustained textures such as a filter sweep or a reverb freeze.
Quick Pads (Chapter 8) always behave momentarily, regardless of this toggle.
The pad grid gives one-tap access to all 66 presets at once, organized by category. Click the header above the grid to collapse or expand it. Every pad uses the same press-to-sustain, release-to-revert gesture engine as the main trigger.
| Category | Character |
|---|---|
| Classic Stutter & Repeat | Short slice repeats: micro stutters, ramps that speed up or slow down, triplets, machine-gun snares. |
| Reverse & Tape | Reverse flips and swells, tape-stop/tape-start speed ramps, vinyl brake, backspin. |
| Bitcrush / Lo-Fi | Bit-depth and sample-rate reduction, wave folding, telephone/radio/cassette-style degradation. |
| Granular & Freeze | Frozen grains, pitch-shifted freezes, cascading micro-loops, granular clouds and textures. |
| Scatter & Shuffle | Reordered, reversed, and pitch-varied slice scattering across a bar — from a gentle shuffle to full chaos. |
| Rhythmic Gate / Trance Gate | On/off rhythmic gating, probability gates, syncopated and ratcheted patterns. |
| Pitch & Ring Mod | Ring modulation, detuned doubling, vowel-ish formant glitching, pitch arpeggios, frequency-shift sweeps, pitched cascades. |
| Filter & Comb | Resonant sweeps, metallic comb filtering, auto-wah gating, a low-pass crush wall, a chord-tuned resonator. |
| Reverb & Space Glitch | An algorithmic reverb bus with freeze, gated-slam, reverse-swell, and shimmer presets. |
| Delay / Feedback Glitch | Runaway feedback, reverse delay wash, ping-pong bouncing, granular delay smear. |
| Full Combo / Signature Gestures | Bigger multi-stage moves: breakdowns, risers, breakbeat mangling, a hard crash-halt, and a wildcard that fires a random preset from anywhere in the library. |
Five rotary knobs sit beneath the pads as an always-on macro layer. Drag up or down to adjust; double-click any knob to reset it to its default.
| Knob | Controls | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Filter Cutoff | 80Hz – 10kHz low-pass, log taper | Fully open |
| Crush Depth | Bit-depth + sample-rate reduction | Off |
| Delay Feedback | Send into a feedback delay line | Off |
| Reverb Amount | Send into the reverb bus | Off |
| Mix | Master intensity (see below) | 70% |
Mix is not a simple wet/dry crossfade — it's a master intensity control that scales how far the other four knobs are allowed to move from silent/bypassed. At 0, Filter/Crush/Delay/Reverb are inaudible no matter where their own knobs sit; at 100, they apply exactly as dialed in.
Individual Quick Pad and trigger presets still fire at full strength when pressed, regardless of Mix, and settle back to the Mix-scaled baseline on release. Mix governs the instrument's ambient/idle character, not the performance gestures themselves.
Rec Take arms automation recording. Pressing it rewinds the track to the top and starts playback; every pad press/release and every hero-knob move is logged with its exact elapsed-time position from that moment. Press Rec Take again to stop.
This step only records the performance — the sequence of moves — not audio. That keeps a take lightweight, editable in principle, and endlessly re-playable without ever re-performing it.
Rewinds to the top and replays the recorded automation hands-free, exactly as it was performed, so you can audition a take without touching anything.
Does the same replay while capturing the real audio output, and automatically saves a 24-bit WAV once the take finishes playing.
Recording and bouncing are deliberately separate steps: record once, audition with Play Take as many times as you like, and only Bounce Take when you're ready to print a file.
For a quick, non-performance export, Export WAV (in the Export menu) renders the current static signal chain — Filter → Crush → Delay → Reverb send, at whatever the 5 hero knobs are currently set to — as a 24-bit WAV, instantly. No take required.
Save Session writes the 5 hero-knob positions, the detected BPM, and the current recorded take (if any) to a JSON file. Load Session reads one back in and restores all of it.
Sessions are plain text JSON — safe to rename, back up, or hand to someone else to open in their own copy of Fracture.
In the interest of not overselling what a handful of presets are doing:
| Shortcut | Action | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Space | Play / Pause | Everywhere |
| Cmd/Ctrl + O | Import Audio | Desktop app |
| Cmd/Ctrl + S | Save Session | Desktop app |
| Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + O | Load Session | Desktop app |
| Cmd/Ctrl + E | Export WAV (chain preview) | Desktop app |