DigicartPC

Digicart PC's developer modestly explains that his freeware plays audio samples using Windows (WDM) or ASIO drivers. A better description might be the easiest tool we've ever used for creating audio programs, which means party mixes, radio broadcasts, podcasts, iPod playlists, soundtracks, and any situation that calls for tunes. It has pages full of large, individually programmable buttons, each button representing a song, sample, or audio clip. You simply load your files in sequence and click each one to play it. With eight pages of 42 programmable buttons, you can program 336 different tracks. You can save, load, and play as many programs as you need. Digicart doesn't take a pass on audio, editing, and programming settings, either.

Digicart's user interface consists of a field of 42 gray squares, with eight pages accessible from the menu bar. The File menu includes not only controls but also a tool to select ASIO drivers, a song list, a CD burner, and a CD ripper. A Ports menu accesses MIDI, SMPTE, P-bus, and game ports for external devices. The excellent Help file is a separate download in .chm format. However, Digicart is easy to set up. Pressing Shift while left-clicking a square calls up the Setup Button tool, a detailed properties sheet for adding, editing, and playing audio files. Clicking OK added our clip to the square, changed its color (file types are color-coded) and displayed its time. Clicking the square played it, clicking it again stopped the clip, and left-clicking a running clip restarted it: totally easy, especially when we'd added a series of clips. We could program files as archives instead of sequentially, too. For example, you can create a page of go-to sound effects for improvising and audience response, or group all the most popular tunes on another page and announcements on another.

We loaded a series of late '70s punk rock songs recorded off LPs and saved as MP3s, and then saved our session. A neat feature is the ability to clone sessions; you can create a basic program that can be edited at need. While the quality of the audio playback depends on many factors, ASIO is known for low latency and good audio quality with a wide range of soundcards. Digicart PC impresses.