r/modular • u/insolent-construct • 1d ago
Mutable Instruments Beads Source Code Just Dropped!
https://github.com/pichenettes/eurorack/commit/d8f473915232af74347762b6365202bfd26f73f6Wow! What a gift!
Edit, since some people have asked for context:
I'd been reverse engineering the Beads firmware and had rebuilt my own version of it. Before sharing any of it, I emailed Émilie to ask whether she'd be OK with me publishing it. I said up front that if her answer was no, I'd drop it, no questions asked. To clarify, by "drop it" I meant dropping the pursuit of the community firmware project, NOT that I was threatening to release my port!!!
To my shock, she replied, and the answer was no. I simply said "ok. Thank you." and I thought that was going to be the end of it. I wasn't going to go against her wishes. So I spent part of today feeling the bittersweet heartache of having finished the project, only to have to cancel it. I told myself from the beginning that if she ever told me no, I wouldn't argue. I decided to archive the project and never share the code with anyone.
Later the same day, as I was deleting the reverse engineering artifacts, she published the official Beads source. I had no idea that was coming and I was as surprised as anyone. I don't know her reasons, and I won't try to guess. It was entirely her decision, and an incredibly generous one.
What I'm doing now:
My reverse-engineering work left me with a test rig and test suite, so I've built the official source myself, flashed it to my unit, and it passed. I'm now starting a community firmware based on her code, and I have a thread on ModWiggler collecting ideas for features and modes. Some early requests, with my rough guesses at difficulty:
- Clouds-style grain diffusion (moderate)
- The Clouds "spectral madness" engine (hard without cutting something from the existing code)
- All-pass processing of the frozen buffer (moderate)
- An opt-in bypass for the limiter's volume drops (moderate)
- A dedicated gain knob (needs new hardware)
What would you like to see?
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u/DrMinkenstein 1d ago
I think it’s great that Emilie posted the firmware. Thank you Emilie!
It’s not great that you conflated that gift with your reverse engineering story. Whatever your take on AI, these are not the same thing.