Beads

Beads is a realtime granular processor with built-in CV-controlled random modulations.

A reinvention of Mutable Instruments Clouds, with hardware and software redesigned from the ground up, free of modes and bloat.

Audio acquisition

• Stereo I/O with automatic level detection.
• Manual override of the level detection.
• Automatic mono/stereo switching through patch cable detection.
• Recording time: 4s (48kHz 16-bit, stereo) to 32s (24kHz µ-law, mono).
• Four quality modes, with different tone and reverb characters:
  • 48kHz 16-bit
  • 32kHz 12-bit with Clouds emulation
  • 24kHz 12-bit with a hi-fi dry signal path
  • 24kHz µ-law with cassette emulation
• The FREEZE button and the gate input freezes the content of the recording buffer, allowing you to dive into its sonic details.
• Auto-saving of the FREEZE buffer.

Granular synthesis

Three grain generation modes:

• Latched (continuous), with a periodic or randomized rate, tracking V/O.
• Gated, with bursts of grains triggered by the press of the SEED button or an external gate.
• Clocked, with randomization or division of an external clock or trigger signal.

Four grain parameters:

• TIME. Temporal position within the buffer.
• SIZE. Grain duration from 0.03 to 4 seconds, forward or backward playback.
• SHAPE. Morphing between four key shapes of the grain envelope: solid rectangular, snappy decay, smooth bell, or reversed.
• PITCH. With V/O tracking.

Attenurandomizers

Available for each of the four parameters of a grain, sampled each time a grain is started:

• Direct CV control.
• CV control of the amount of gaussian randomization.
• Internal randomization with an independent, uniform or peaky, random source.

Delay

• Control of both the base delay clock rate (DENSITY), and its multiplication (TIME), with optional random taps.
• Tap tempo with the SEED button or an external signal.
• Enveloping of delay repeats, with the SHAPE setting.
• Pitch shifting of the delayed signal, controlled by PITCH.

Signal flow

• Feedback path delay: 1 sample.
• Independent knobs for feedback, dry/wet amount, and reverb amount.
• CV input assignable to each of these three parameters, or to variable combinations of them.
• When unpatched, the R output is summed to the L output.
• Optional generation of a gate signal on the R output.

Specifications

• All inputs: 100k impedance.
• Audio codec: 24kHz, 32kHz or 48kHz, 24-bit.
• 16-bit CV capture.
• Processing rate: audio-rate for the SEED and FREEZE inputs, 4kHz for the CV inputs.
• Latency: 0.25ms.
• CV input range: +/- 8V for grain parameters, +/- 5V for density (with V/O tracking) and assignable CV.
• Internal processing: 32-bit floating point.