Spunk [Sound, Mac]

Created by The Strange Agency, Spunk is granular synthesis using a particle system. The app that runs on OSX only for now allows you modify number of active particles, their lifetime, number, gravity and mass. You can also adjust the container size, the invisible box within which particles react. See movie below.

The app is still in development and the video you see below marks version 0.11. I kind of like the name too =]

thestrangeagency.com

In case you missed previous work by The Strange Agency, check out their iPhone/iPad apps as mentioned previously on CAN:
Sound Scope Space [iPhone]: Waveform synthesizer
Spoke [iPhone, Sound]: New sound toy / drum machine scratchpad
Slice [iPhone, Sound]: Slice, chop, rearrange, loop, echo beat …

// UPDATE 22.10.2010: Now available for download here.

The concept is this: each particle acts as a playhead, moving across a swath of sound. Presently the Y axis is temporal position, while the X axis is pan position. There is an attractor bobbing around pulling the particles, their Y acceleration controlling playback speed in accord with the Detune slider. The Container can contain the particles, by bouncing, killing, or trapping them. The long horizontal slider sets the initial position in the audio file from which sound is sourced.

The Strange Agency designs and builds sites and software. We focus on apps for mobile devices, and we make everything from rich media banners to heavily trafficked websites to small music-making robots. We love open-source, standards-compliant, platform-spanning code.