Mutable Instruments Beads Texture Synthesizer

The Clouds clear, and a new day is upon us: Mutable Instruments is back with the successor to their highly sought-after Clouds texture synthesizer, Beads. Beads's theoretical approach remains the same—it is a real-time granular processor, but the improvements over the original module are vast. Higher audio quality, improved interpolation and anti-aliasing, longer buffer, and a faster DSP sampling rate make this a worthy successor. Mutable Instruments did away with the onboard menu system, bringing all controls directly to the faceplate, letting you focus on the module and not on the menu. The recording time ranges from 4 seconds at 48kHz/16-bit stereo to 32 seconds (24kHz µ-law, mono). The recording rate features a corresponding button that sets the quality. These include the Sunny Tape mode that runs cleanly at 48kHz, Scorched Cassette mode that emulates wow and flutter, or a Cold Digital mode that accurately recreates Clouds' character. Beads features four primary grain parameters. T