Mutable Instruments Beads Manual de usuario
Beads
Texture synthesizer
About Beads
Once upon a time there was Clouds. Then came the day to
clean up the mess.
Beads is a granular audio processor. It creates textures and
soundscapes by playing back layered, delayed, transposed
and enveloped fragments of sound (“grains”) taken continu-
ously from the incoming audio signal.
Installation
Beads requires a -12V/+12V power supply (2x5 pin connec-
tor). The red stripe of the ribbon cable (-12V side) must be
oriented on the same side as the “Red stripe” marking on
the module and on your power distribution board.
The module draws 100mA from the +12V rail, and 10mA
from the -12V rail.
Online manual and help
The full manual can be found online at
mutable-instruments.net/modules/beads/manual
For help and discussions, head to
mutable-instruments.net/forum
Please refer to the online manual for detailed infor-
mation regarding compliance with EMC directives
Beads in a nutshell
Beads does not use tape, but RAM. In this manual we use
computer-science terminology and refer to this virtual
piece of tape as a recording buffer.
One way of picturing how Beads operates is to imagine a
tape loop, on which incoming audio is continuously recorded.
Every time you request a grain to be played (in reaction to
a trigger, a button press, periodically, or randomly), a new
replay head positions itself along the tape.
If this replay head doesn’t move, the audio will be played
back at the original pitch and speed, but if it moves closer
to, or further away from the record head, the signal will be
replayed at a different speed and pitch. This replay head has
its own amplitude envelope, and it will leave the tape once
the envelope has reached a null amplitude.
Now imagine up to 30 replay heads flying along the tape.
Imagine you can stop the incoming audio from being record-
ed on the tape so that all these little replay heads can freely
move along and gather sounds. And there’s a reverb...
Recording quality and audio input
Recording quality is chosen with the selector button [A].
A
Buffer length
LED Quality Rate Resolution Mono Stereo
Bright digital 48 kHz 16-bit 8s 4s
Cold digital 32 kHz 12-bit 16s 8s
Sunny tape 24 kHz 12-bit 20s 10s
Scorched
cassette
24 kHz 8-bit 32s 16s
• The Cold digital setting most accurately reproduces the
sonic character of the late Mutable Instruments Clouds.
• The Sunny tape setting runs the dry audio signal at a
bright and clean 48kHz.
• The Scorched cassette setting emulates wow and
flutter.
2
Beads operates in mono or stereo depending on whether
one, or both, of the audio inputs (1) are patched.
When patch cables are inserted or removed, Beads monitors
for five seconds the level of the incoming signal and adjusts
the input gain accordingly, from +0dB to +32dB. The input
level LED (2) blinks during this adjustment process. The
input gain is chosen to leave some headroom, but in case of
big level changes, a limiter kicks in.
One can manually restart the gain adjustment process by
pressing and holding the audio quality selector button [A]
for one second. Holding this button [A] while turning the
feedback knob allows manual gain adjustments.
The manually-set gain is memorized and applied until a
long press on [A] re-enables automatic gain control.
The FREEZE latching button [B] and the corresponding gate
input (3) disable the recording of the incoming audio signal
in the buffer. Otherwise, Beads records continuously!
If FREEZE remains engaged for more than 10 seconds, the
content of the buffer is backed up, and will be restored the
next time the module is powered on.
Beads will not switch between stereo and mono operation,
or change the recording quality, while FREEZE is engaged.
1
3
Grain generation
Latched
Latched grain generation is enabled by holding the SEED
button [C] for four seconds, or by pressing the FREEZE but-
ton [B] while the SEED button [C] is being held. This is also
the default setting when the module is powered on.
The SEED button remains illuminated, and its brightness is
slowly modulated to indicate that latching is enabled.
B C
D
5
4
When grain density reaches audio rates, the DENSITY CV
input (5) applies exponential FM on this rate, with a scale
of 1V/octave.
In this mode, the grains are generated continuously, at a
rate set by the DENSITY knob [D] and modulated by the
DENSITY CV input (5).
At 12 o’clock, no grains are generated. Turn DENSITY CW
and grains will be generated at a randomly modulated rate,
or CCW for a constant generation rate. The further you turn,
the shorter the interval between grains, reaching at the
extreme the period of a C3 note.
Clocked
When latched grain generation is enabled, and when a
signal, such as a clock or sequence, is patched into the
SEED input (4), the DENSITY knob [D] is repurposed as a
divider or probability control. At 12 o’clock, no grains are
generated. Turn CW to increase the probability (from 0% to
100%) that a grain is triggered by the external signal. Turn
CCW to increase the division ratio, from 1/16 to 1.
Gated and triggered
Disable latched grain generation with a short press on the
SEED button [C].
Grains will then be generated only when the SEED button is
held, or when a gate signal patched in the SEED input (4) is
high. The DENSITY knob [D] controls the repetition rate of
grains. When DENSITY is at 12 o’clock, only a single grain
will be played at each press of the SEED button, or at each
trigger sent in the SEED input (4).
Grain playback control
Four parameters control at which buffer position, pitch, and
with which duration and envelope the grains are replayed.
More precisely, these parameters and their respective
modulations are read once, whenever a grain starts, and
remain unchanged throughout the duration of the grain. If a
parameter then changes, it will only impact the next grain.
For example, turning the PITCH knob will create a trail of
grains with different pitches, rather than change, in lock-
step, the pitch of all the grains that are currently playing.
E F
G H
I
6
Beads does not make use of any time-travel
technology: if you request a grain to be played at double
speed, one second away from the start of the buffer, the
grain will fade out and stop after 0.5s of playback, once
the replay head bumps into the record head. (Suggested
reading: “Light cones in tape recorder cosmology”).
E. TIME controls if the grain replays the most recent (fully
CCW) or oldest (fully CW) audio material from the recording
buffer – shifting the replay heads further apart from the
record head.
F. PITCH controls the transposition, from -24 to +24 semi-
tones, with virtual notches at selected intervals.
G. SIZE controls the duration and playback direction of the
grain. At the 11 o’clock position, a very short (30ms) grain
is played. Turn CW to increase grain duration up to 4s. Turn
CCW to play a reversed grain, lasting up to 4s.
Turning SIZE fully clockwise (∞) generates never-ending
grains acting as delay taps. Please refer to the “Beads as a
delay” section.
H. SHAPE adjusts the amplitude envelope of the grain.
Fully CCW creates clicky, rectangular envelopes, while fully
CW provides envelopes with slow attacks reminiscent of
reversed grains (Please note, however, that the envelope
shape is independent of the playback direction).
I. Attenurandomizers for the TIME, SIZE, SHAPE and PITCH
parameters. They control the amount of external CV modu-
lation on the corresponding parameters, or repurpose the
CV input (6) as a randomization or “spread” control.
CV
Attenurandomizers
When a cable is patched into the corresponding CV input
(6), turning the attenurandomizer [I] CW from 12 o’clock
increases the amount of external CV modulation. Turning it
CCW increases the amount of CV-controlled randomization.
With no CV patched into an input, the attenurandomizer con-
trols the amount of randomization from an independent in-
ternal random source with a peaky (12 o’clock to fully CCW)
or uniform (12 o’clock to fully CW) distribution. The random
values from the peaky distribution are clustered towards the
middle, with extreme values being infrequently generated.
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