Digital audio playground for OS9?

[G40]

I'm looking to set up a second workstation in the studio on a G3 iBook running OS9. I'd like to use this machine for sampling/recording short sections of audio, processing/mangling sound and creating loops. This setup won't be used as a fully fledged DAW, rather I'd like to use it for sampling from vinyl and other sources and coming up with interesting sounds which I can export as audio. Would be good to have some synthesis options and modular control to mess about with stuff. Also might be good to run midi into it from my main DAW (I have a suitable interface).

Currently I'm using a little Yamaha SU200 sampler in the role. I've been inspired by its ability to create weird glitchy lofi loops but it's also frustratingly limited.

I'd like something open ended but with not too steep of a learning curve. I've never played with Supercollider or Max, have always assume they'll require some serious learning. Similarly Audio Mulch on PC is something that's sounded fun for this sort of thing but which I never attempted to get into.

Browsing here reminded me of Modularing (again, never played with it but I remember reading about it and being intrigued), also I saw the post about Cloud Generator and Pulsar Generator which both look interesting.

In a way I could probably use Ableton live as an environment for this sort of thing, but to be honest it's never really inspired me.

Any recommendations or thoughts?

[IIO]

while max or supercollider have a certain learning curve, they would allow you to build applications with the functionality as you want it to be, including programs which you can operate headless using midi controllers only or remoting them from another computer.

if you do not like live, what about one of the other DAWs? it is legit to use cubase or logic to record short snippets, process them, replay them. not as flexible as hardwareboxes for live use of course, but within a production enviroment it should be ok.