Beads

Review

Beads exists because Clouds, for all its cultural impact, had real limitations: noisy converters, a short buffer, and hidden modes buried behind button combos. Emilie Gillet's redesign is a masterclass in iteration — better audio quality, a longer buffer (4s stereo to 32s mono), superior DSP, and a more playable interface. It doesn't replace Clouds; it completes the idea Clouds started.

Feed it any audio and the DENSITY knob takes you on a continuous journey from pristine delay through granular scatter to dense textural clouds. The TIME knob scrubs through the buffer, SIZE sets grain length, SHAPE morphs the grain envelope, and PITCH shifts up or down with quality that belies the module's modest price. The four quality modes are each a different character: from clean tape saturation to crushed lo-fi and a faithful Clouds recreation for purists.

The design's secret weapon is how it handles the boundary between delay and granular. There is no mode switch; the transition is seamless, controlled entirely by DENSITY. At low density you have a rhythmic delay with tap tempo. Increase it and grains begin to overlap, smear, and scatter. Keep going and you're in full texture territory. No other module navigates this continuum so gracefully.