Turn Your Nintendo DS into a Pro Audio Synthesizer

How many places can you use the words "Nintendo DS" and "professional retro-audio sound machine" in the same sentence? Just one I can think of, right here at AQ Interactive. AQ is actually the Japanese developer and publisher behind the action/stealth game Vampire Rain for the Xbox 360, and an upcoming action RPG no one knows much about yet called Cry On. Vampire Rain may be on a lot of folks' "worst of 2007" game lists, but this more than makes up for it, as you can see for yourself in the following clip.

Wuzzat-all-about? Take the KORG MS-10, a classic 1978 analog synth known for its bass and percussion sounds and used in contemporary synthesis by groups like The Chemical Brothers, then transplant it sans the keyboard to the Nintendo DS. Change up the interface to take advantage of the DS's dual-screen touch panel, throw in a six track sequencer, and add a "sensory input mode" for creative doodling and you've got a pretty stunning little block of audio power swinging around in your pocket.

The venerable KORG MS-10. Korg released it in 1978 as an entry-level, monophonic single-VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) analog synthesizer.

The only downside? Currently only announced for Japanese and/or region-free versions of the DS. (Bummer!) Release date: July 2008 for 4,800 YEN or about $50 USD.

UPDATE (3/18): Create Digital Music brings news from AQ that the DS-10 will eventually receive international release treatment. Hooray!

Here's the specification rundown:

- Two patchable dual-oscillator analog synth simulators
- Four-part drum machine that uses sounds created with the analog synth simulator
- Six-track (analog synth x 2, drum machine x 4) /16-step sequencer
- Delay, chorus, and flanger sound effects available from the mixing board
- Three note-entry modes: touch-control screen, keyboard screen, matrix screen
- Real-time sound control mode via touch-control screen
- Exchange sounds and songs and play multiple units simultaneously through a wireless communications link

Even if the MS-10 isn't your bag, the potential for portable professional quality audio composition tools that piggyback on handhelds suddenly looks incredibly enticing. For the record, the Nintendo DS has 4MB of "mobile RAM," while something like Sony's PSP has 32MB of main memory, plus the option to plug in multi-gigabyte flash cards that could theoretically store compressed sample data.

But wait, you're saying, 4MB? Isn't that incredibly limiting? Well sure, if you have a couple grand to drop on huge terabyte-sized sound libraries (and more to secure the computing oomph necessary to run them latency-free). Then you need the knack and/or know-how to put everything together. Speaking as someone who's doing this right now with Apple Logic Studio and a bunch of other gizmos, even in 2008 with a galaxy of audio at your fingertips, it still requires at least one or two PhD's in Patience.

Put things in perspective. The KORG 01/W keyboard workstation I owned back in the early 1990s, which to my ear still has some pretty terrific sounds, employed 254 real-world PCM sample instruments stored in a mere 6MB of ROM. You could probably get a lot of mileage out of the DS's 4MB of RAM doing retro-modeling, and just imagine what you could do with the 32MB in the PSP, especially if Sony ever elects to offer a version with a touchscreen interface.

What do you think? If something like this offered the option to export your compositions, say interface with a computer to grab the audio at professional sampling rates or store MIDI data or even link up with a controller via a MIDI interface, would you drop $50 on a portable professional-grade music lab? With a tip of my hat to all the homebrew stuff that's out there, is it time to start thinking about the DS and PSP as more than merely handheld game and video playback machines?

[Thanks, Create Digital Music]

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