Mutable Instruments Beads is a totally redesigned Eurorack synthesiser, inviting you to experiment with an expanded palette of sounds and parameters.
Mutable Instruments has released the Beads Texture Synthesiser — a reinvention of the legendary Clouds granular processor. According to Mutable Instruments, the Synthesiser has “a crisper and broader sound palette, more control, better playability, and direct access to big new features.”
Many know Mutable Instruments for their undoubtedly iconic panel design. While the popularity of the original Eurorack Clouds is undeniable, Beads has been improved essentially on every level. The concept and iconic layout have stayed the same, the hardware and software have been redesigned from the ground up.
Beads is a real-time granular processor with built-in CV-controlled random modulations. With improved hardware Mutable Instruments ensures higher audio quality, a longer buffer, better interpolation and anti-aliasing algorithms. The sound quality also gets more depth, as DSP blocks run at a faster rate. Without any audio input, Beads will granularize 8 internal banks of wavetables.
Creator Émilie Gillet has grounded Beads in three core elements: Character, Control and Chaos.
Character settings dictate the audio quality. You can customise anything from “amplitude limiting and saturation of the signal path, to the tone of the reverb, and additional media-emulation effects.”
Control lets you trigger or schedule grains. You can divide, randomise and adjust grain rate with external inputs. Meanwhile Chaos means the inclusion of an ‘attenurandomizer’, which allows you to control this randomisation with a voltage input.
As well as this, three modes for Density, Time and Seed allow for various features such as tap-tempo, beat slicing, time-stretching, or comb-filtering at rates tracking V/O.
Find more about Beads on the Mutable Instruments website.
