Productivity has ground to a halt in the CM offices this afternoon, as instead of getting on with important magazine-related tasks, we're trying to out-acid each other with Hobnox's stonking Flash-based emulation of Roland's classic TR-909 drum machine, two of their equally legendary TB-303 synths, and a load of stompbox pedals. Just load it up in your web browser, drop in some virtual patch cables and get tweaking! It looks a little something like this…
Impressively, the beta version of Audiotool is a fully modular environment, allowing you to route each drum sound and the 303 outs into a variety of effects pedals, and finally into a mixer. You can program beats into the 909 and acid lines into the 303, and the knobs are all fully functional. It works a treat and is no doubt an indicator of what's to come in the world of net-based music-making. Now, if only we could find a way to sync up our office machines for one giant acid-fest…
There's a great guided tour of Audiotool, which explains how to use the Audiotool beta demo itself.
