The choice of Olympia for this year's fair proved to be favourable, and the response on the three public days was enormous. To be exact, this was a show concerned with music as a whole rather than recording in particular, but even so, the recording side of the industry was poorly represented. Tascam for instance did not even put in an appearance. What these manufacturers may not adequately realise is that most people who become interested in recording are musicians of one sort or another, so the two areas are closely interlinked.

Atlantex put on a particularly impressive stand with the main emphasis lavished on their range of Fostex equipment, most of which was on display at the APRS show earlier this year. Also on display was their new Accessit Aural Exciter which should be in the shops soon and there is a rumour that a budget auto panner will not be long in following...

MTR were showing the range of Vesta Fire and Cutec products in addition to the TAM multitapped delay unit and the new Aries multitrack mixing consoles. Cutec have a new cassette based 4-track recorder which we will be looking at in the near future, and MTR also have a new frequency conscious gate due to hit the market soon.

John Hornby Skewes were showing some new budget lines including a DDL and a spring reverb and their Rock Box guitar practice/recording amps were attracting a lot of interest. Audio Technica have also added further models to their range of microphones and these were again on show on the JHS stand.

Akai were demonstrating the revised S612 sampler which we look at in this very issue, and MIDI sequencers were popping up everywhere.

In addition to exhibiting a range of their established mics, Shure were also displaying their Prologue range of budget mics alongside the new boundary effect directional mic which we hope to get our hands on soon, (as well as providing my wife with free umbrellas - Ed).

AMR, which I believe is a subsidiary of Peavey, were once again showing what appears to be a very interesting 4-track cassette based system, but no date has been set for availability. We'll keep you informed as soon as we find out anything.

Beyer and Sennheiser mics were represented, as were AKG, and TOA are hoping to establish their professional microphones in the British recording and public address fields.

These are obviously only a small selection of the interesting items on show, but as previously pointed out, there was very little that did not also appear at the APRS show earlier in the year. One thing that you can be sure of is that we'll do our best to get hold of the most interesting goodies so that we can bring you in-depth reports and reviews.

From ADO distributors comes a new 19" 2U patchbay; the Adopatch. It features 32 standard mono ¼" jacks on the front and 32 phonos on the rear. Cables may also be secured on the rear of the unit. It retails for £48.30. Further information is available from Ado Distribution, (Contact Details).

A new company has been set up to supply recording systems, ancillary equipment and acoustic design to the audio industry. Stirling Studio Systems launched by Andrew Stirling, will also offer sales support and consultancy for producers, writers and commercial studios. For further information, contact Andrew Stirling at Stirling Audio Systems Ltd, (Contact Details).

KG Music have amended their trading title to KGM Studio Specialists Information is available from KGM Studio Specialists, (Contact Details).

Wrong!

Our resident gremlins were hard at work in last month's issue. In the article; MIDI - An Introduction. In the second paragraph of the section 'Opening channels', 'upper' should read 'lower' in the sentence 'A 'channel' within the MIDI context is defined by a four bit number in the upper half of the status byte.' The author of this appalling Freudian slip has been appropriately punished in a manner too indelicate to describe in a magazine of this nature.

Gremlins struck again in last month's Studio Mains Supplies. The paragraph on page 56 beginning 'When the detector van shows up...' should have appeared on page 58 just before the paragraph that rather inappropriately begins 'One part of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle which actually fits...'.