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Nanoloop: GameBoy Advance Hard Disk Recording

parasew writes "Nanoloop 2.0 for GameBoy Advance is Out! The GBA-Cartridge features a 8-voice Synthesizer an 8-Track Sequencer, a Song Editor and a HD-Recording Option, rendering the GBA one of the most cool digital gadgets for musicians that travel a lot. Extra-gear is a GameBoy-MIDI-Adapter and a Lowpass Filter Cable. Some Reviews of Nanoloop are available in the Web from samplepoolz, HarmonyCentral, nanoloop.de and a German one from Parasew. Demo sounds in MP3 format can be downloaded from the site."

15 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Thug Passion by clinko · · Score: 4, Funny

    "rendering the GBA one of the most cool digital gadgets for musicians that travel a lot. "

    Nothing says Rock Star or Street Thug like a GameBoy.

  2. Things of the past by Lobishomen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know.. I remember when cell phones were used to make calls, and video game systems were used to play games. Is branching development truely that advantageous?

    1. Re:Things of the past by JThundley · · Score: 3, Funny

      development truely that advantageous?

      You need your web browser to branch it's development and get a spell checker.

  3. Out/Out of Stock by xanderwilson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did the site say it was "out of stock until mid-November" (as it does now) when his article went up, or did they sell out that quickly? I for one would like to see some photos of what it looks like, because my first thought is that it might be bigger than your average cartridge.

    Alex.

  4. Real Ultimate Power GBA workstation by Mulletproof · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "rendering the GBA one of the most cool digital gadgets for musicians that travel a lot.

    Unless you own a powerbook or some other laptop. And don't want to look like a fool in the process. And don't have time to load linux onto your toaster. And pardon me while I load my GBA emulator onto my alienware laptop.

    --
    You need a FREE iPod Nano
  5. Modem? by Tyrdium · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Besides normal line-recording, nanoloop also allows to transfer song data digitally through the audio port by playing a chain of rectangular pulses which represent song data bytes stored in the cart memory. These pulses can be decoded by a PC client software and then stored in the same format as on the cart.
    Sounds like a modem to me... Granted, the line noise is probably less than that of a telephone, but what kind of bit rate are they expecting to get with this? Wouldn't it be better to just stick a USB port on the thing? Also, I assume this means that the hard drive function is Windows-only? :-/
  6. Hmm, that is awesome, but by mcc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What made the first Nanoloop so incredibly awesome was its aphexy 8-bit glitch aesthetic. The new one looks like a great piece of software for music creation, but will it be able to have the same degree of crazy bleepy soul?

  7. Nintendo DS by lxt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Cool as it is, I'm wondering why they chose to release this product so soon to the DS being released...although the DS will probably be able to use the cartridge with no problems, the two screens and networking features the DS offers might have been quite useful...

  8. A Gameboy musician by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's actually a Finnish musician called Huoratron (roughly translated Whoretron) who uses Gameboys for making music. I saw him live once and the show kicked ass. He makes a sort of rough electro.

    He has also a web site http://www.huoratron.com/

  9. Re:Yes!!! 8-tracks!!! by PurdueGraphicsMan · · Score: 3, Funny
    Now I am wondering how many slashdotters even know of what the "Partidge Family" is?

    Well duh!!! Everyone knows who the Partridge Family is... I love the episode where Marsha gets hit in the nose with a football. She was so annoying.

    --


    The guitars sound good, now give me about 10db more on the cow bell.
  10. Harmony Central has some great reviews there by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Funny

    Price Paid: US $140 used

    Ease of Use: 7
    my bandmates and i call it "anal lube" if you have used one you know why. shave and a haircut, 4 bits. toggling thru the menus can be annoying but you get used to it, moving linear just like playing legend of zelda.


    Yep! Priceless!

  11. Gameboyzz Orchestra by Incadenza · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sure, this little guy would be fun to play around with, but it's a toy, it's not something that a musician would WORK with

    Well, these guys do. This Sunday, November 21st, 20.30 h, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam (from the STEIM website):

    Gameboyzz Orchestra
    The Gameboyzz Orchestra Project is an experimental sound and visual project, based on the use of GameBoy console as a music instrument.
    From a musician's point of view the GameBoy device is a kind of simple analogue synthesizer, with a raw and at the same time interesting retro-sound. While connected with suitable software, often self-written, it can be used as drum machine or groovebox.
    The console's interface is rather poor (just a few buttons), so the sound structures created by the Gameboyzz are rather simple, too. In order to have a certain amount of complexity in the music, the Polish Gameboyzz Orchestra exists of six people.
    The Gameboyzz Ochestra uses elements from archives and current pop culture, which in relation to their motionless choreography of their concerts, creates a kind of anti-performance commenting on the performance practice of avant-garde electronic music. The Game Boyzz Orchestra are also inspired by the aesthetics of 8 bit computers and old school games. And a sense of irony is never far away in their music.

  12. Doesn't sound like a hard disk recorder to me... by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The title is misleading. I read the specs page, and it doesn't sound like it's a hard disk recorder to me. It sounds like it's a basic MIDI sequencing program, of the type that could be used to create "classic" videogame soundtracks. The "hard disk recording" option is just a protocol that allows digital transfer of the raw sequencer data, and then a client program that turns it into a clean WAV file. This means that you can get a clean, noise-free recording of your cheezy retro music sequence, that's all.

    Not saying you couldn't have a lot of fun with one of those - heck, composing music is a lot more creative than playing a sidescroller, but this is NOT a tool for pro musicians to use to record jam sessions, which is what was implied.

  13. Re:GAMEBOY != ANALOG SYNTH - false (!) by faragon · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're, simply, not right:

    i) Both {Gameboy | Gameboy color} and Gameboy Advance have hardware analog FM synthesis capabilities.
    ii) Gameboy Advance features also digital sound processing (PCM).

    Sure you know that not al "chips" do digital operations, there are usually called "digital", "analog" and "hybrids". Every transistor produces an analog output, the point that make a circuit labelable as "digital" is the tollerance ranges that would convert/consider an analog value to "0" (aka false) or to "1" (aka true).

    (the meaning of this post is informative, not flamebait or whatever, sorry if I sound too much pedantic)

  14. Re:GAMEBOY != ANALOG SYNTH by marsu_k · · Score: 3, Informative
    this is not like the c64 that had a analog synth
    ...which didn't have an analogue synth. The sound chip (the beloved SID) did include a multi-mode analogue filter (which could only be used on one oscillator out of three), but the oscillators were digitally generated waveforms, not even DCOs (i.e. analogue oscillators driven by a digital clock, like Juno-106 for example). Which is not to say it wouldn't sound nice, it certainly does. But analogue, hardly.