Moody DS (nds, lite, xl, 3ds etc)
A touchscreen & MIDI analog style synth and groovebox for the Nintendo DS.
Turn your Nintendo DS into a pocket synthesizer. Sculpt sounds with your finger on the filter pad, build basslines and beats on the step sequencer, chain them into a full song, and sync it all with MIDI.
Try it free
The demo is the real instrument, not a teaser. You get the full sound engine, the effects, the sequencer, song mode, and the touch keyboard, so you can sit down and make music with it right now.
Demo
The sound
moody-ds is a virtual analog synth with the warm, hands on character of a classic subtractive synthesizer: an oscillator running into a filter into an envelope, shaped with an LFO and a touch of effects, all in software on your DS. If you love that fat, filtered, knob twiddling vibe, you will feel right at home.
What you get
- A filter pad you sweep with your finger for instant movement and squelch.
- 32Khz, two voice polyphony, so chords and overlapping notes ring out together.
- Oscillator, envelope, and LFO pages to dial in your tone.
- Onboard delay and chorus for space and width.
- A 16 step sequencer with adjustable length and swing for groove.
- An arpeggiator that turns your held notes into rolling patterns.
- A 16 slot pattern bank, and a song mode that chains patterns into full arrangements.
- 16 preset slots that snapshot your whole sound and its sequence, plus an auto save that brings you back exactly where you left off.
- Sample drums on MIDI CH. 10.
- Full MIDI: play it from any keyboard, controller, or computer, and lock it to your DAW or hardware clock, in or out. It even plays nicely with arduinoboy and LSDJ rigs.
Demo and full version
The free demo is the complete instrument to play with. The full version unlocks the things you keep and connect:
- Saving and loading your presets.
- The automatic save of your working setup.
- MIDI, so you can play from outside gear and sync clock in or out.
What you need
- A Nintendo DS or DS Lite with a flashcart, to run it from an SD card.
- An SD card, to save your presets and setup (full version).
- For MIDI, the mDS cartridge that plugs into the second cart slot. It works on the original DS and DS Lite. The DSi and 3DS do not have the slot, but the synth, sequencer, and song mode still play on any DS.
mDS is a Nintendo DS / DS Lite slot-2 (GBA Game Pak) MIDI interface built on an RP2040. It bridges hardware MIDI into the DS over the slot-2 SRAM bus so a DS app can be a MIDI synth. The DS is the synth; the cart is the interface - see the sDS synth app, the baseline ROM that runs on it.
One firmware, two jobs: mDS speaks the mDS `"STDS"` protocol (MIDI clock + a MIDI event ring), so the same cart drives both the sDS synth *and* clock-sync apps (e.g. stutter-ds) with no changes.
Instructions:
- Place the sDS ROM on the SD card of your favorite R4 or SD DS cartridge.
- Plug the cart into the DS before you turn the DS on.
Currently compatible with:
- sDS synth app (General polyphonic synth - free.)
- Stutter-DS (Glitch sequencer.)
- PadMe-DS (Atmospheric groove generator.)
- Moody-DS (Virtual analog synth.)
- Break-DS (Coming soon.)
- MIDIO-DS (Coming soon.)
Specs
MCU RP2040 - dual Cortex-M0+ @ 133 MHz, 264 KB SRAM
Host interface - GBA slot-2 SRAM region `0x0A000000`, 4 KB window (12-bit address), serviced by a PIO state machine
MIDI IN - 31250 baud UART, opto-isolated (H11L1) from TRS-A
MIDI OUT - 31250 baud UART, 2×220 Ω to TRS-A
Indicator - onboard green LED (GPIO25): status + MIDI activity
Power - slot-2 3.3 V
Compatibility - DS / DS Lite only (DSi+ dropped slot-2)
