Can $130 buy you more versatile digital musical studio hardware than (bizarrely) a Nintendo DS loaded with homebrew software? The software keeps rolling in.

The wonderful cellular automation synth glitchDS has just gotten its 1.3 update, with per-sound volume, a tap-able “pad play” page for triggering samples, quick snapshot saving, and other improvements.

Better still, the author has created a new tool, demoed in the video above. repeaterDS lets you draw on the DS screen to play a looped sample, with the Y axis impacting repeat length and X axis controlling playback offset.

repeaterDS

(Thanks, foosnark!)

dsmcu is an in-progress wireless mix controller, focused on wireless control of the mixer in the affordable Windows production app Reaper. (Eventually Pro Tools, Logic, and other DAW support is planned.) Right now, it works with the mcu protocol to support two-way fader control, VU meters (handily displayed on the top screen), track controls, banks, and scrubbing. Dan warns it’s a little tricky going getting it set up, but it looks well worth it for the brave:

Project page / getting started

Author Dan has also created a drum machine, synth, and sequencer program called bliptracker

If you’re having keeping track of all this goodness, Dan has put together a little list of the best music tools for DS:
DS music apps

And if you like wireless MIDI, be sure to check out DSMI, on which the other wireless implementations are generally based.

Finally, the Korg DS-10 DS cartridge got its launch in the UK last week, although there’s not really any news to report from the launch event and we’re mostly still waiting to get one. In the meantime, though, the 1UP Show has picked up the DS-10 in this video:

Hope to have CDM’s DS-10 hands-on soon, once I can get my hands on a DS-10!

Cockos’ REAPER, the lightweight audio and MIDI multitrack editor from the creator of Winamp, is coming to (Intel/PPC) Mac, too. There’s a full discussion of the update on the REAPER forum. It’s an “alpha” build, but comes as a surprise: REAPER may have a lot more appeal as the “standard” lightweight host as a cross-platform app. Finished version is due “Q4″ of this year.

REAPER has been getting endless updates of other kinds, as well, including this new “Stealth” color scheme which looks suspiciously like SONAR to me. (Sorry to be harsh, but it was fugly before. If it’s SONAR-y now, that’s a huge improvement.) If you want to try it, it’s downloadable as “uncrippled unexpiring shareware.” Remember when most shareware worked that way? That’s a retro trend I could get behind.

REAPER

Rather than praise or criticize REAPER, what I’d really like to know is, are any readers using it? What do you think so far?

Well, we knew that wouldn’t last. REAPER, the promising, lightweight audio software from the creator of Winamp, hit version 1.0 last week. (This week significant bugfixes and optimizations, plus editable keyboard shortcuts, were released in updates; the software now looks quite stable.) During the beta, REAPER was free, but now you’ll have to pay for it.

The basic price, US$39.95, is a bargain for what this software does:

1. Seamless, tool-less editing with arbitrary grouping of objects, automation envelopes, markers, and everything you’d expect
2. Unusually flexible routing, which allows any track to arbitrarily be a track and a bus, a sophisticated monitoring and matrix facility, and support for feedback routing
3. Looped recording
4. Direct multi-track recording to WAV/W64/BWF, MIDI, WavPack, FLAC, and OGG
5. MIDI support (not present in early releases), which lets you add MIDI to audio tracks, record MIDI from audio inputs, and other nice tricks
6. Configurable UI, keyboard shortcuts, and colors
7. VST and DX plug-in support (effects and instruments) with latency compensation, real-time and offline processing, and even supports for the Jesusonic (the crucifix-style computer shown below
8. Tasty bundled effects: a sidechain-enabled noisegate and compressor with look-ahead, an “FFT EQ+dynamics processor” (um, okay!), and a convolution reverb

REAPER now features music by Brad Sucks as a demo, giving it extra street cred. The real story here is how quickly the software has evolved, as seen in screen shots. There are some really powerful features in there as far as editing, subtleties that really have no direct equivalent in other software I’m seeing. But there are some caveats, largely having to do with the new commercial pricing:

Welcome back to another installment of “Straight Out of No Cash”. Despite repeated delays, death threats, acts of God, ElectroPlankton, and a laptop catching on fire, I’m finally back to give more bargain basement tips, tricks, and goodies for the Windows-centric set.

It used to be the case only 5 years ago that one had to spend money, sometimes several hundred for even the most basic DAW software. In recent years however, there has been such a large explosion in the amount of Windows freeware that it’s now gotten to the point where it’s possible to get a pretty good plug-in host sequencer without spending a single red cent. In this week’s article, I will examine four kick-ass free sequencer/plug-in hosts for Windows. Two free trackers, and then two free-while-in-beta sequencers.