Ferrer-Font et al. showing side-by-side unmixing with bead or cell controls.

Konecny et al. using only cell controls for 50-color flow.

Bhowmick et al. comparing different beads. "It is abundantly clear that bead-based correction produces suboptimal results when applied to cells, compared with cell-based controls applied to cells."

A practitioner’s view of spectral flow cytometry (Sharma et al.). "We highly recommend the use of cells over beads as single-color controls for spectral unmixing".

Fluorochrome-dependent specific changes in spectral profiles using different compensation beads or primary cells in full spectrum cytometry (Shevchenko et al.).  "While most fluorochromes show the same spectral profile on beads and cells, we demonstrate that specific fluorochromes show a significantly different spectral profile depending on which type of compensation beads is used, and some fluorochromes should be used on cells exclusively."