Korg DS-10 for the Nintendo DS in-depth

Inspired by their mighty MS-10 monosynth, Korg have teamed up with AQ Interactive to deliver the Korg DS-10 software application for the Nintendo DS. It borrows the simple, effective semi-modular synth design of the Korg MS-10 and MS-20 and re-invents it to exploit everything the Nintendo DS has to offer.

Korg DS-10 is a dual voice synth with four analogue drums, effects and an on-board mixer. The sound is surprisingly good. It’s not quite the caliber of something like Reaktor, but there’s plenty of detail there and the analogue modeling sound is warm and convincing. If anything, the sound chip inside the Nintendo DS running the DS-10 software gives the resulting sound it’s own unique quality. The audio that’s output from the Nintendo DS’ internal speakers is near useless, particularly in the bass department, but that’s to be expected for an application like this. Suffice to say, headphones or a cable to an external amp is essential.

The interface looks quite deliberately reminiscent of Korg’s MS synth range. Everything is controlled with the touch screen and stylus and is extremely easy to use. From the launch screen you have the option of single play, multi play (wirelessly linking up to 8 DS’) and data exchange to send and receive song data. From the main program screen you have access to all your edit/controller screens and basic functions like BPM, (adjustable from 10-250) step (length of each bar in a pattern) and swing amount for introducing a more organic feel to sequences. It also shows the signal path through to the mixer so you never feel lost, helping those new to synths jump right in, (which will probably be a large number, given the fact that most users will be gamers first and foremost). Knowing a bit about synths will help you get the best from Korg DS-10, but it’s certainly not a prerequisite and complete beginners will find themselves making 70’s sci-fi sound effects in no time.

Note information for the synth voices can be input in a number of different ways: step sequence – entering notes onto a matrix grid, keyboard input, and Kaoss Pad note entry – X,Y style matrix input again, for those unfamiliar with Korg’s Kaoss Pad system.

With the exception of step sequence, all note info is input in real-time while in record mode. When you finish recording a sequence in real-time though, the note info appears in the matrix grid in your step sequencer should you need to make changes.

From the step sequencer screen you can edit note info like length, (25, 50, 75, 100% and legato) volume, panning (50, 100% left or right, or centre) and there’s Kaoss Pad X/Y automation control edit screens should you want to edit any controller knob movement (more about that later).

The keyboard input screen gives you one octave of a neat little virtual keyboard with octave +/- buttons to go up and down the scale, and the Kaoss Pad screen allows input by mapping note and gate time to X and Y. With some note information in our sequencer we can head to the synth edit screen where the fun begins.

Each synth voice is fed by two oscillators. Each oscillator has a choice of three waveforms or a noise source (triangle, sawtooth, square wave or white noise). There’s an ON/OFF switch to sync the two voltage contoled oscillators (VCO) together for some nice thick lead sounds. With a knob to control the balance between VCO 1&2 and the option to control the pitch of VCO2, some very nice detune effects can also be achieved by letting the oscillators run free.

Global controls for each synth voice include pitch, portamento and feed amount to the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) envelope. The voltage controlled filter (VCF) can be tweaked to be as savage as you want, but is easy to tame and has high-pass, low-pass and bandpass filters on offer.

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