illustrated

Hidden modes & Parasite Firmware

PARASITES v1.3 : OLIVERB*

The Oliverb, a new, full-featured creative reverb mode based on
the reverb of the original rmware (itself based on a description
of the Lexicon 480L), and inspired in design by the Erbe Verb,
with CV control over all parameters. It is largely modeless,

This mode is only available aer you update the rmware by playing an audio
le into your Clouds per the instructions on Mutable Instruments website. The
parasites rmware leaves the default functionality of your Clouds mostly
intact* and adds 2 extra modes and features. As this is a third party rmware
the responsibility falls on you to research the risks. Refrain from contacting
Mutable Instruments should anything go wrong and instead direct your
questions to the appropriate forums on Muwigglers and Facebook groups.
*changes to default functionality are noted in pink like this on the aected
feature per conversations with Matthias, creator of the Parasites Firmware)

probably unrealistic and goes far beyond your traditional reverb.

BLEND KNOB FUNCTIONS

More information about this rmware at

Press the Blend button to select which function the Blend

http://mqtthiqs.github.io/parasites/clouds.html

knob changes the amount of. (this is the lemost small

pushbutton)

DRY WET

SWITCHED ON OLIVERB

The rst function of the Blend knob is dry/wet crossfading, as in the other modes.

Oliverb

DAMPENING

The second function of the Blend knob (called "stereo spread") controls the
dampening of the reverb. From fully CCW to 12 o'clock, a low-pass lter is
applied, simultaing the absorption of the room. From 12 o'clock to fully CW, a
high-pass lter is applied for unusual, crystalline eects.

MODULATION SPEED

Press and hold the Blend Function button

for 4 seconds release when LED turns yellow

The third function of the Blend knob (called "feedback") controls the speed of
these LFOs. It ranges from ~1/100Hz to ~100Hz. It has no eect if modulation
amount is null.

Press again to cycle through modes

go past the 4 default Modes until these LEDS
are lit

FREEZE

MODULATION AMOUNT

Each delay in the reverb can be individually modulated by 9 smoothed random

LFOs. The fourth function of the Blend knob (called "reverb") controls the amount
of modulation applied by the LFOs to the delay time. Small modulations result in
subtle chorus and ghost tones, large modulations in random pitch shis.

Oliverb

REVERB SIZE

The Size knob controls the lengths of all the delays

internal to the reverb, i.e. the size of the emulated room. It
varies from a small resonator to a huge hall.

The Freeze button sets reverb to (near) innite decay, and

mutes the input. This works best with no pitch shiing and
a large size.

PRE-DELAY

The Position knob controls the time it take for the

reverb to kick in aer a sound has gone in (from 0 to about
half a second). When a clock is fed to the Trig input, this
knob becomes a clock divider/multiplier for the pre-delay:
at 12 o'clock, the pre-delay takes the value of the clock
length; clockwise, this clock is divided, and
counter-clockwise it is multiplied following the rates: 1/16,
3/32, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4, 1, 3/2, 2/1, 3/1, 4/1, 6/1,
8/1, 12/1 (borrowed from the Echophon). Note that the
clock division is limited to the largest division not
exceeding the maximum delay; beyond this point, the
Position knob will have no eect. Changing pre-delay in
real time is smooth and does not aect pitch (it uses the
internal time stretcher).

PITCH SHIFT
PRE-DELAY

REVERB SIZE

DECAY

PITCH SHIFT

Each time the sound is fed back into the reverb, it can be
pitch shied. The Pitch knob controls, from -2 to +2
octaves how it is pitch shied. At 12 o'clock, no pitch
shiing is applied; fully clockwise, we get the classic
shimmer eect; lots of oddities can be found in between.
To hear the eect of the pitch shier, some sound has to
fed back by increasing Decay. Note that Size has an impact
on how well the sound is pitch-shied: the larger the room
size, the more accurate the pitch shi.

DIFFUSION

DIFFUSION

The Texture knob controls how much the sound is

"smoothened" by the diusers each time it goes through
the loop. Fully clockwise, you get the more dense,
continuous sound; fully counter-clockwise, you clearly
hear the sound being repeated like in a multi-tap delay.

DECAY

The Density knob controls the amount of sound fed back

into the reverb loop, i.e. the decay time of the reverb tail.
Beyond 3 o'clock, this signal is actually amplied and the
reverb enters self-oscillation.

THIS MODE IS MONO-IN, STEREO-OUT.

illustrated
PARASITES v1.3: RESONESTOR*
Resonestor is a dual-voice, four-parts resonator (or comb lter)

eect with built-in capability for polyphonic Karplus-Strong

plucked string synthesis, and more.

This mode is only available aer you update the rmware by playing an audio
le into your Clouds per the instructions on Mutable Instruments website. The
parasites rmware leaves the default functionality of your Clouds mostly
intact* and adds 2 extra modes and features. As this is a third party rmware
the responsibility falls on you to research the risks. Refrain from contacting
Mutable Instruments should anything go wrong and instead direct your
questions to the appropriate forums on Muwigglers and Facebook groups.
*changes to default functionality are noted in pink like this on the aected
feature per conversations with Matthias, creator of the Parasites Firmware)

More information about this rmware at

BLEND KNOB FUNCTIONS

http://mqtthiqs.github.io/parasites/clouds.html

Press the Blend button to select which function the Blend knob
aects. (this is the lemost small pushbutton)

DRY WET

Resonestor Mode

The rst function of the Blend knob is dry/wet crossfading, as in the other modes.

Resonestor

STEREO OUTPUT

Assigns each part and voice to an output (Out L or Out R). Fully CCW, each voice
goes to a dierent output. At 12 o'clock, both voices are equally mixed in both
output. Fully CW, parts of both voices are distributed on both output for a wide
stereo eect.

SCATTER

Press and hold the Blend Function button

for 4 seconds release when LED turns yellow

Controls the random delay times before the sound (input or burst) hits each
resonator of the current voice. Used for K-S synthesis with a chord, this will give
the impression that strings are struck with a slight delay. The delay times are
randomized at each voice switch.

Press again to cycle through modes

go past the 4 default Modes until these LEDS
are lit

FREEZE

HARMONICS

Simulates striking the harmonics on a string. Fully CCW, it has no eect. Fully CW,
the second harmonic will ring; at 12 o'clock, the third, at 10 the fourth etc.

Resonestor
Oliverb

CHORD

Switch the current voice, and inhibits further voice switch

by the Trig CV.

Chord selection for the current voice. Morphs gradually

between Unison, Fat, Superfat, Fat power, Fat octave,
Octaves, Power, Major, Major7, Minor7, Minor, Sus2, Sus4,
Minor9, Major9, Minor11, Major11, and Major11.

TIMBRE

Controls the timbre and duration of the noise burst. CCW, it

will be longer and more dampened; CW, it will be shorter
and more high pitched. At both ends of the knob, the burst
will be inaudible (too damped or too short), which you can
use to "mute" a voice.

PITCH
TIMBRE

PITCH

CHORD

Base pitch of the current voice. At 12 o'clock, the pitch is

A3 (220Hz).

DAMPENING TEXTURE
DECAY

DECAY

Decay time of the current voice. Beyond approx. 3 o'clock,

decay is innite and the sound sustains forever (you can
use it as a traditional oscillator)

DIFFUSION

Controls ltering in the feedback loop of the resonator. At

12 o'clock, no ltering is applied; CCW, a low-pass lter is
applied with a increasingly low cuto frequency; CW, a
band-pass lter at the frequency of the resonator is
applied with an increasingly high resonance.

TRIG INPUT

Sending a gate to Trig emits a short burst of noise, which

duration and spectrum is controlled by the Position knob,
and immediately switch the active voice

illustrated
PLEASE REPORT ALL ERRORS AND INACCURACIES TO KRIS@PHIDELITY.COM

EASTER EGG MODE: SPECTRAL MADNESS BLEND KNOB FUNCTIONS

DRY WET

SPECTRAL MADNESS

The rst function of the Blend knob is dry/wet crossfading, as in the other modes.

The Easter Egg modes are bonus sketches for advanced users leover from the
development process of Clouds. They are loosely hidden because they are not
meant to be full featured nor supported, yet they remain powerful tools in their
own right and are worth exploring.
The basic principle of Spectral Processing is that by means of FFT or Fast Fourier
Transformation - the incoming audio is reconstructed into a series of sine waves
which add up the original signal. Once audio is in this domain there are a handful
of mathematic functions that can be applied to these sine waves which could not
normally be applied to raw audio.
Most of the text on this page is either a loosely edited or direct copy of forum
comments from Olivier immediately aer Clouds release describing this hidden
mode. Blame for inaccuracy in naming of the knob functionality falls solely on
me.

Spectral Madness
REVERBERATION AMOUNT

This function acts as a macro of sorts for Reverb controlling the wet/dry mix as
well as size and timbre.

FREEZE

Spectral Madness

Freezes the current audio and writes several banks of FFT

coecients into the buer selected by the Buer (Position)
knob
(depending on your audio quality settings the number of
buers varies from 2 at the highest quality to 7 at the
lowest quality)

SPECTRAL WARP

Changes the coecients of a polynomial that determines

how frequencies are mapped between the analysis and
synthesis buers. It's like a 1-knob GRM Warp. Over the
course of the knob it'll do spectral shiing, but also
spectral reversal.

PITCH SHIFT
FFT INTERPOLATE

BUFFER

SPECTRAL WARP

PITCH SHIFT

The position of this knob selects in which buer the audio

is poured (when FREEZE is not active), or from which
buer the audio is synthesised (when FREEZE is active).
Example:
Set POSITION to minimum value. FREEZE. You get a rst
texture. Set POSITION to maximum value. UNFREEZE. Wait
for something else to happen in the incoming audio.
FREEZE again. By moving POSITION you interpolate
between the two textures which had been captured at the
press of FREEZE. So it's a bit like morphing between FFT
slices. (See note below about saving and loading sounds
from this mode)

BLUR

EROSION

SPECTRAL QUANTIZE / PARTIAL EROSION

Does two things: below 12 o'clock, it increasingly quantizes the
amplitudes of the spectral components, like a very low-bitrate
audio le. Aer 12 o'clock, it increasingly weakens the strongest
partials and amplies the weakest ones. This has the eect of
making the spectrum more noise-like.

SPECTRAL FREEZE / BLUR

Determines how results from the analyzer are passed to
the resynthesizer. Below 12 o'clock, there's some
increasing probability that a given FFT bin won't get
updated, causing a kind of partial freeze. Aer 12 o'clock,
adjacent analysis frames are increasingly merged together
(like a low-pass lter in the amplitude for each frequency
bin). At extreme settings, random phase modulation is
applied to smooth things - giving you dierent avours of
spectral muddling/reverb.

TRIG INPUT

The trig input creates various frequency-domain glitches

typical of corrupted (encoded) audio les. It works as a
kind of build-up/feedback eect - the shorter the pulse,
the smaller the eect. With a continuous gate, it'll really
start to rot...

In Spectral Madness mode, the memory is no longer used to store actual audio samples - instead it stores several banks of FFT coecients used for
spectral synthesis. This data cannot be converted back into an actual audio buer! Thus, if you hit "save" while in spectral mode, reloading the data later will
automatically bring back the module in spectral mode, because that's the only mode that can makes sense of it. And reversely, trying to load "time domain"
samples saved from the other modes while in spectral mode will cause the module to leave the spectral mode.

illustrated
PLEASE REPORT ALL ERRORS AND INACCURACIES TO KRIS@PHIDELITY.COM

BLEND KNOB FUNCTIONS

EASTER EGG MODE - LOOPING DELAY

Press the Blend button to select which function the Blend

knob changes the amount of. (this is the lemost small

The looping delay engine continuously plays back audio from

pushbutton)

the buer without any kind of granularization.

DRY WET

The rst function of the Blend knob is dry/wet crossfading, as in the other modes.

Looping Delay

FEEDBACK AMOUNT

has no function in the stock rmware. (*) in Parasite, sets which voice goes
where, depending on the quality setting (see manual).

Looping Delay
FEEDBACK AMOUNT
Press and hold the Blend Function button
for 4 seconds release when LED turns yellow

REVERBERATION AMOUNT

This function acts as a macro of sorts for Reverb controlling the wet/dry mix as
well as size and timbre.

Press again to cycle through modes

until the 3rd LED is lit.

FREEZE

LOOP SIZE

Looping Delay

When FREEZE is activated this knob controls the loop

duration, otherwise it c ntrols the size of the overlapping
windows used for pitch-shiing fully clockwise for a
smooth result that might smear transients, fully
counterclockwise for a grainy, almost ring-modulated
sound.

When FREEZE is activated, the content of the audio buer

is looped

PITCH

POSITION
Controls the distance between the playback head and the
recording head (in other words, the delay time). Modulating
POSITION will create eects similar to vinyl scratching or
manual manipulation of tape. When Freeze is enabled this
knob controls the loop starting point.

BUFFER

LOOP SIZE

PITCH SHIFT

*With Parasites Firmware:

when synced, acts as a mult/div of the delay time
DIFFUSION

LP / HP

LOW PASS / HIGH PASS

Below 12 o'clock, it acts like a low pass lter above 12

oclock it behaves as a high pass lter.

DIFFUSION

Applys a diuser - (network of all-pass lters like a

reverb without tail) which results in a blurry or smeared
eect

TRIG INPUT

sets the delay time when Freeze is o, and the loop time
when Freeze is on.

illustrated
PLEASE REPORT ALL ERRORS AND INACCURACIES TO KRIS@PHIDELITY.COM

EASTER EGG MODE -TIME STRETCH / PITCH SHIFTER

BLEND KNOB FUNCTIONS

This engine is quite similar to the granular mode, except that it

Press the Blend button to select which function the Blend

uses two overlapping grains synchronized with the most salient

knob changes the amount of. (this is the lemost small

period of the sound. The grains are carefully spliced so that they

pushbutton)

mesh well with each other (a technique similar to the

deglitching of early pitch-shiers).

DRY WET

The rst function of the Blend knob is dry/wet crossfading, as in the other modes.

STEREO SPREAD

This knob controls the amount of random panning / balance applied to each
grain.

Time Stretch

FEEDBACK AMOUNT

REVERBERATION AMOUNT

Press and hold the Blend Function button

for 4 seconds release when LED turns yellow

FREEZE

This function acts as a macro of sorts for Reverb controlling the wet/dry mix as
well as size and timbre.

Time Stretch

WINDOW SIZE
Controls the size of the overlapping windows used for
pitch-shiing and time-stretching from an extremely
grainy drilling sound to smooth bits of loops.

This latching button stops the recording of incoming audio.

Granularization is now performed on the last few seconds

POSITION

PITCH SHIFT

When buer is frozen the position knobs will scrub

through the audio buer. Clouds uses classic time-domain
methods which are not suitable for polyphonic or
percussive material (unless this percussive material is
breakbeats and you liked Akai samplers. Then: smile).

WINDOW SIZE

DIFFUSION

PITCH SHIFT

LP / HP

LOW PASS / HIGH PASS

Below 12 o'clock, it acts like a low pass lter above 12

oclock it behaves as a high pass lter.

DIFFUSION

Applys a diuser - (network of all-pass lters like a

reverb without tail) which results in a blurry or smeared
eect

TRIG INPUT
Sending a trigger on the TRIG input creates a
clock-synchronized loop (when FREEZE is enabled) or
stuttering eect equivalent to applying a
tempo-synchronized decaying envelope on the POSITION
parameter.

illustrated
PLEASE REPORT ALL ERRORS AND INACCURACIES TO KRIS@PHIDELITY.COM

MAIN MODE - GRANULAR PROCESSING

DEFAULT POSITION

BLEND KNOB FUNCTIONS

Press the Blend button to select which function the Blend
knob changes the amount of. (this is the lemost small
pushbutton)

DRY WET

The rst function of the Blend knob is dry/wet crossfading, as in the other modes.

To Enter Default Mode

STEREO SPREAD

This knob controls the amount of random panning / balance applied to each
grain.

FEEDBACK AMOUNT
Press and hold the Blend Function button
for 4 seconds release when LED turns yellow
Press again to cycle through modes
until the rst LED is lit

FREEZE

This latching button stops the recording of incoming audio.

Granularization is now performed on the last few seconds*
of audio kept in memory in the module.
*Size of buer is set by Audio Quality settings.

POSITION

Selects from which part of the recording buer the audio

grains are played. Turn the knob clockwise to travel back in
time.

GRAIN DENSITY

At 12 oclock, no grains are generated. 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 between grains.
The maximum number of concurrent grains is 40-60
depending on your audio quality settings.

TRIG INPUT

Feed a gate or trig into this input to manually seed a

single grain Any voltage over 1v will trigger a grain and
voltage must return to 0v before another grain will be
retriggered.

REVERBERATION AMOUNT

This function acts as a macro of sorts for Reverb controlling the wet/dry mix as
well as size and timbre.

GRAIN SIZE

Controls the size of the grains being sown

The range of grain size is variable from 16ms to 1s.

PITCH

At 12 oclock, the buer is played at its original frequency

GRAIN TEXTURE

Morphs through various shapes of grain envelopes: square

(boxcar), triangle, and then Hann window. Past 2 oclock,
activates a diuser which smears transients.

illustrated
PLEASE REPORT ALL ERRORS AND INACCURACIES TO KRIS@PHIDELITY.COM

BASICS
DEFAULT POSITION

To Enter Default Mode

Press and hold the Blend Function button

for 4 seconds release when LED turns yellow
Press again to cycle through modes
until the rst LED is lit