Ross Bencina's AudioMulch 0.9b2 (www.audiomulch.com) is a shareware application that combines looping and other dance-music features with highly sophisticated real-time processing capabilities. The program is designed to be intuitive to use while giving the user a rich compositional palette to work from.

The various modules in AudioMulch-signal processors and sound generators-are referred to as contraptions. Sound generators include a drum machine-style sample player, a bass synth, an additive tone generator called 10Harmonics, and a sample granulator called BubbleBlower. The processors include effects (flanger, delay, ring modulation, and the like) and filters (comb filter, parametric EQ, Shepard/Risset filter bank, and so on).

Parameters are MIDI controllable, and AudioMulch can sync to an external MIDI clock source. It can process up to 16 channels of audio in real time, depending on the sound card used. Processing can be file based or done live.

You can also use VST plug-ins in AudioMulch for even greater processing power. Minimum requirements are a Pentium/100 MHz running Windows 95, 98, or NT (3.51 or later); 4 MB of free disk space; 16 MB of RAM; and a sound card that can handle 16-bit, 44.1 kHz audio.