Giorgio Sancristoforo's concocted a wonderful sonic experimenter's toolbox in Max/MSP/Jitter. He's wrapped it up as a stand-alone program in the form of gleetchLAB.

It has the usual crazy interface created from native Max/MSP controls, but don't let that frighten you. It's fun and easy once you get past the lack of commercial slickness. If you're already a Max/MSP user, you'll feel right at home.

• four audio loop players
• a fifth looper with wavetable synthesis and "ectoplasm generator"
• granular, ring mod, reduction, eq, randomization, distortion from hell effects
• a modular routing matrix to connect anything to anything

I can't begin to describe how cool this app is. Sancristoforo has built it as a lab environment for immediate experimentation and recording. There's no saving of patches, no banks of presets... nothing but your own audio and creativity which is then recorded to file. And it's perfect like this.

It's freeware, but there's a PayPal account with a suggestion of nine euros. I've been playing with it all morning, and can honestly say I haven't had this much audio sculpting fun for such a small price since I bent my first Speak 'n' Spell.