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[Triplefox]

http://www.kidstechreview.com/2009/11/review-ucreate-music

It's a sampler+effects box with a USB connector and in/out jacks... for $30. GAS took over almost from the moment I lay eyes on it...thank you Amazon recommendations

[Triplefox]

Update: I got this yesterday and it is as much fun as I could have hoped for. You can just turn it on and start making some beats - and pretty soon, 20 minutes have gone by. I might even try doing a "real" track with it sometime, though it suffers one caveat in the limited number of loops available to work with - 18 on the device at one time, more uploadable over USB. It gets tiresome pretty quickly. As well, you can only work with one effect at a time, assignable to any or all of the loops; but everything's of a pretty good quality, the "x-y pad" is surprisingly sensitive, and you have a lock button if you want to hold an effect while you change loops.

The software is designed to allow potentially unlimited extension via firmware upgrades, and it even hints at the possibility of new effects in the future, but it isn't very "user-hackable" as-is - all you can do is swap out the sounds on the device and save recorded tracks.

[s0]

So, it's a bit like a Tenori-On except it doesn't cost hundreds of  and doesn't look as sleek? Sounds intriguing, but I have this weird feeling that it's one of these things that gets terribly boring und unwieldy to use once you try to do more than just "playing around".