Mutable Instruments Clouds Manual page 2

About Clouds
Clouds is a granular audio processor. It creates textures
and soundscapes by combining multiple overlapping,
delayed, transposed and enveloped segments of sound
taken from an audio recording buffer.
Clouds differs from other granular Eurorack modules
in that it focuses on the real-time processing of audio
sources from your modular system itself, rather than
the playback of pre-recorded samples from a storage
device. It rewards the freezing, fragmentation and disso-
lution of the unexpected instant, rather than the careful
planning of what might very well not come.
Installation
Clouds requires a -12V / +12V power supply (2x5 pin
connector). The red stripe of the ribbon cable (-12V side)
must be oriented on the same side as the "Red stripe"
marking on the board. The module draws 10mA from the
-12V rail and 120mA from the +12V rail.
Online manual and help
The full manual can be found online at
mutable-instruments.net/modules/clouds/manual
For help and discussions, head to
mutable-instruments.net/forum
Front panel
Controls
A. FREEZE button. This latching button stops the record-
ing of incoming audio. Granularization is now performed
on the last few seconds of audio kept in memory in the
module.
B. Blending mode/Audio quality button. Selects one of
the four output blending modes or one of the four audio
quality settings. Please refer to the following sections.
C. Load/Save button.
D. Grain POSITION. Selects from which part of the re-
cording buffer the audio grains are played. Turn the knob
clockwise to travel back in time.
E. F. Grain SIZE and PITCH.
G. Audio INPUT GAIN, from -18dB to +6dB.
H. Grain DENSITY. At 12 o'clock, no grains are gener-
ated. Turn clockwise and grains will be sown randomly,
counter-clockwise and they will be played at a constant
rate. The further you turn, the higher the overlap be-
tween grains.
I. Grain TEXTURE. Morphs through various shapes of
grain envelopes: square, triangle, Hann window. Past 3
o'clock, activates a diffuser which smears transients.
J. BLEND control. Refer to the next section.
B
A
K
D E F
G H I J
1 3 4 5 6
2
10 11 12
7 8 9
K. Indicator LEDs. By default, they work as a vu-meter.
Soft-clipping occurs when the last LED is on. When
modifying settings, a green LED indicates the blending
mode; a red LED indicates audio quality.
C
Inputs and Outputs
1. FREEZE gate input. When the input gate signal is high,
stops the recording of incoming audio, just as latching
the FREEZE button would do.
2. TRIGGER input. Generates a single grain. By moving
the grain DENSITY to 12 o'clock, and sending a trigger to
this input, Clouds can be controlled like a micro-sample
player. A LFO or clock divider can thus be used to sow
grains at the rate of your choice.
3. 4. Grain POSITION and SIZE CV inputs.
5. Grain transposition (PITCH) CV input, with V/Oct
response.
6. BLEND CV input. This CV input can control one of the
following functions: dry/wet balance, channel crossfade,
feedback or reverb. Learn more about blending modes
in the next section.
7. 8. Stereo audio input. When no patch cable is inserted
in the right channel input, this input will receive the sig-
nal from the left channel. Both channels are processed
independently, it is thus possible to record textures from
different sources and crossfade or mix them.
9. 10. Grain DENSITY and TEXTURE CV inputs.
11. 12. Stereo audio output.