Impulse Research Group

Impulse Research Group

Sound technology,
from the studio to the stage.

We are a Belgian audio machine learning spin-off of the University of Mons. We turn our research into products for musicians, under two brands.

Discover Impulsia Follow Impulsaudio
Granulator Studio with a full mix on a waveform, a chosen passage, and a playable preset built for the piano and keys part.

Software · for producers and beatmakers

Granulator Studio

Turn a sample, a few words or a whole mix into playable presets, in the virtual instruments you already own.

  • Mix Extractor: drop a finished track, get a playable preset for each part, and get the MIDI for each synth track.
  • Web Studio today, VST3 / AU plugin coming next.
  • Works with Surge XT and Vital today, Serum 2 next.
  • Your audio is never used to train our models.

Online · beta

Visit impulsia.ai
Blurred photo of the pedal prototype. Watch the demo

Hardware · for live musicians

Guitar/Bass-to-MIDI pedal

A pedal that turns your bass or guitar into a MIDI controller. Play your synthesizers with your own instrument, through the usual cable, with no special pickup.

  • Neural polyphonic pitch tracking, running inside the pedal.
  • A MIDI note in a few ms, in real time.
  • Bass and guitar. MIDI and USB-C, true bypass.
  • Specifications defined with a touring bassist.

Prototype · in the hands of musicians · coming in 2027

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One sound, from the studio to the stage.

Granulator turns a sound into a preset for your virtual instrument. Our pedal turns your guitar or bass into a MIDI controller: design your sound in the Studio, then play it live.

  • Neural polyphonic pitch tracking
  • Assisted synthesis
  • An audio model with a sound engineer's ear

Built on published research.

Peer-reviewed

Our timbre research was presented at IEEE ICASSP 2026, the reference conference in audio signal processing. One model recognises each instrument inside a mix and finds the closest virtual instrument sound.

Our own data

Our models are trained on our own in-house made audio datasets.

Made for real time

Our pitch tracking is a neural network designed for polyphonic guitar and bass to MIDI, at lowest latency and maximum precision, in a pedal.

Hosted by the ISIA Lab, University of Mons, Belgium.

Engineers, researchers and stage musicians.

Portrait of Yannick Molle.

Ir Yannick Molle

Co-founder & CEO

Civil engineer, former integrated circuit designer, music producer.

Portrait of Gwendal Le Vaillant.

Dr Ir Gwendal Le Vaillant

Co-founder & CTO

PhD in automatic synthesizer programming, machine learning and audio signal processing.

Loïc Reboursière playing guitar.

Dr Loïc Reboursière

Co-founder & Product

PhD on the hexaphonic guitar, working on augmented instruments since 2009.

Advisors: Dr Brecht De Man, President of the Audio Engineering Society (Europe) · Stéphane Dorrekens, entrepreneur.

Let's talk.

Partners, programmes, investors and musicians: write to us.

Mons & Brussels, Belgium