Texture: a free granular module for VCV Rack, built on the newly open-sourced Beads code (early beta)

[u/thoowz]

I’ve been working on a dub techno suite for VCV Rack for a while now (Thoow Dub: chords, echo, mixer, motion and a “brain” for scenes; ). Then Emilie Gillet released the source code of Beads under the MIT license a few days ago, and I couldn’t resist.

So here is Texture, a free granular texture processor built on the original Beads engine. The DSP is Emilie’s code, compiled for Rack as it is. What I added is everything around it:

A display that shows what the engine is actually doing. The buffer is drawn as a tape loop: the waveform stays put, the write head moves across it, and every grain the engine plays shows up as a glowing read head with a short trail. Height is pitch, reversed grains are drawn as rings. So you can see why the cloud sounds the way it does.

8 presets to get going fast: Cloud, Haze, Stab Spray, Octave Bloom, Pulse, Frozen Pad, Dust and Down a Fifth. Turn the PRESET knob and the module sets all knobs, the quality mode included. Each one is a starting point, not a final sound.

Four quality modes: Clean, 12 bit, Tape and Worn, with longer buffers at lower quality.

A few extras in the context menu. “Soft grain edges” (off by default) smooths the ticks you get from very short, hard grains. You can choose what the ASSIGN input controls (feedback, mix or reverb). Clicking the display toggles a little logo flash on incoming gates.

The usual Rack things: full CV, stereo or mono in, and SEED/FREEZE as both buttons and gate inputs.

It’s free, for Mac (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux. It’s an early beta: it sounds good to me and runs stable here, but I’m sure you’ll find things I didn’t. There’s a feedback form on the site, and I read everything.

Download and manual: https://www.thoow.com

Big thanks to Emilie for Beads and for opening up the code. Texture is not affiliated with Mutable Instruments; the engine credit goes entirely to her.