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March 23, 2006
Nitrotracker - tracker for Nintendo DS
I'm perhaps a little too excited about this. I've been very keen to see music software evolve for the Nintendo DS - I have recently purchased Electroplankton which is lovely fun, but pretty much just that - lovely fun.
But what I'm really into as a concept, is independent music software for portable devices. I think there's plenty of potential for these powerful gaming and processing devices to be used as the logical successor to some of the music hardware out there.
Without further ado: Tobias Weyand has released a tracker for Nintendo DS. You're going to need a Nintendo DS that can run homebrew - that basically means a flash card adapter for the GBA cartridge slot, and passme or passme 2 for the DS slot. That'll set you back around $100AUD delivered (or $71.50 USD or $781.64 Mexican Pesos). I'm very excited about this, it seems like a fantastic extension of the Nintendo DS's strengths.
What Nitrotracker can do is pretty impressive. First up it makes use of the touch screen, allowing you to input using the touchscreen - and as well as that, you can swap around screens so that both main screens can utilize touchscreen input. This includes selecting, copying and pasting using the stylus. Yum.
Nitrotracker can load samples off your flash cart (in WAV format in any sampling rate as well as 8 or 16bit quality). In addition to this, it allows sampling via the inbuilt microphone which is logical and along with the touchscreen vindicates Nintendo for their wacky product design. The quality might not be astounding, but good enough for jazz. Regardless the ugly duckling of portable gaming is looking pretty compelling these days.
It allows you to view samples, 16 hardware channels, automatic standby when the lid is closed - very nice. Just like a normal DS cartridge, and a really good feature to have for the musician on the go.
Planned/Upcoming features include 32 or even more channels, and excitingly sample post processing - effects basically. Excellent. It's already looking really polished, and I cannot wait to see this develop. I can certainly see this unit attaining a cult following of the like that nanoloop and little sound dj currently enjoy. And the potential here is clearly beyond chiptunes and appeal to a wider music making audience is also clear.
I received my Supercard in the post last night which is a pretty good coincidence, however I'm waiting on a Superpass2 so that I can actually run this, but the moment it arrives in the post, I will post up my thoughts on Nitrotracker.
You can download Nitro Tracker v0.11 and read more about it here. via Create Digital Music - check out the comments as Tobias comments on his recommended flash kits for the DS.
Related Portable Music:
PSP Seq 1.00
Phoenix Studio
little sound dj homepage
nanoloop homepage
Posted by funnelbc at March 23, 2006 03:47 PM
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