Despite the increasing importance of NAMM, the Frankfurt Musikmesse is still the biggest music fair of them all, and the one that still matters most to Europe's industry.

WHAT IS IT that makes Frankfurt-am-Main, a large-ish (though not enormous) city in West Germany the centre of the world's music industry for five days every February? Certainly not the local music scene, which relies heavily upon English and American imports for its inspiration. And certainly not the climate, which though incredibly mild this year, still offered visitors the odd shivery night or two, and more usually provides a snowy, slippery backdrop to the biggest music trade show of them all.

No. What makes Frankfurt special is the Messe. A huge, sprawling complex of exhibition halls, interlinked by a convenient and ever-expanding network of corridors and moving walkways. The Messe is bigger than any exhibition centre in Britain and, as far as I'm aware, the US, making such great monuments to the modern business conference as the Birmingham NEC and Anaheim Convention Center seem like Portakabins by comparison.

I exaggerate, of course, but the fact remains that the Frankfurt Messe is the cleanest, best organised venue for business meetings I have ever seen, and that as a result, the Frankfurt Musikmesse (the Germans have an infuriating habit of joining several words together to form a single word) is the cleanest, best organised musical instrument exhibition I have ever visited.

Yet for somebody who had already been to Frankfurt for the three preceding years, and who had also visited Anaheim the previous month to see much of the new music hardware that would be on show at the Messe, this year's show wasn't quite the mouth-watering prospect it ought to have been.

As it turned out, though, my expectations were exceeded, and I found myself leaving the Messe with the thought that if all music fairs were as richly enjoyable as this one, my job would be a lot easier.

What changed my mind? Partly, the presence of a surprisingly large number of interesting developments that simply weren't on show at Anaheim. And partly, it must be said, the opportunity to get a second helping of "hands-on" experience of some of the innovations I had already seen, albeit briefly, in the California sun.

MOST NOTABLE AMONG the NAMM absentees was probably Akai, whose American importer had decided not to support a winter exhibition, but whose European representatives clearly thought otherwise.

With a big injection of R&D capital from the huge Mitsubishi corporation back in their native Japan, Akai's musical instrument division (Akai Professional to you) is moving swiftly on several fronts.

First, there's the Akai/Linn Project, for which the inimitable Roger Linn - the man who brought us the digital drum machine - is developing a 16-bit beat-box and matching MIDI sequencer, loosely based on the old machines which bore his name, but equipped with a very much higher paper specification. Neither of the Linn machines was on show at Frankfurt - even in prototype form - so we'll have to wait until the summer for them.

We won't, however, have to wait too long for Akai's innovations in the recording arena, many of which will be in the shops by the time you read this. Of these, the EX series of compact outboard effects (compressor/gate, parametric EQ, DDL and so on) is the most easily accessible, while the DR series of digital patchbays - first seen as a prototype in Chicago last June - is the most striking.

The latter series comprises the DP2000 (an audio-video digital matrix patchbay), the DP3200 (an audio-only version), and the PG1000 programmer, which is included as part of either unit. As with all such digital patchbays, the DPs' purpose in life is to eliminate all that tedious chopping and changing of cables that is so much a part of daily studio life. They achieve this by accepting a variety of different input channels (16 audio, 16 video in the case of the 2000; 32 audio in the case of the 3200) and by being able to route any of them digitally to any of the others.

All routings are displayed in glorious Technicolor on a monitor screen, so you can see where you are at any given moment, and both units can store up to 64 different "banks" of configurations internally, with floppy disk storage also available. Programs are selected using the PG1000, which also doubles as a SMPTE generator - though the system can also be run from MIDI, RS232C, or its own internal clock.

All in all, Akai's system is not the most immediately easy to get to know, mostly because the number of permutations it offers is so vast. But then again, if you can work your way around a typical large-studio patchbay, you can probably do the same with a straightforward monitor display - only quicker.

And for large studios, the DP series doesn't represent too massive an investment, at £2300 for the DP3200 and just under £2000 for the DP2000.

For smaller studios, Akai have the MG14D, essentially a rack-mounting version of the MG1214 multitrack system that contains only the recorder section of the latter - you add the mixer yourself. Note that both machines are now proper 12-track systems, since Akais engineers have managed to find space for an extra two tracks for control and sync information, making 14 in all.

Both machines are impressively packaged and very sturdily constructed, things that are also true of the MG614 four-track cassette recorder, a home-based machine that has its own six-channel mixer built in. It's not quite instantly portable at 14.5kg, but it is compact and bristles with useful-looking features. Look out for a review of it in these pages soon.

Two Akai machines whose prototypes have been seen around for some while but which are only now beginning to filter into shops are the S700 sampler (a scaled-down version of the immensely successful S900, itself now upgradable with a hard disk option) and the MPX82O programmable MIDI mixer, which has been given a second auxiliary send and a number of other features since it was first unveiled as a pre-production model.

But Akai continued their tradition of "show-testing" prototypes by displaying two new rack-mounting MIDI processors whose production is "tentative", according to Akai spokespeople. The two units are both derived from the technology installed within the MPX82O. The PEQ6 is a programmable seven-band graphic EQ with MIDI control and a 32-bank memory, while the MB76 is a programmable "mix bay", which means it does for input levels what the PEQ6 does for EQ. Both units look interesting, and should be more immediately saleable than some of Akai's previous MIDI accessories, which have been useful but difficult for the average in-store demonstrator to show off to much advantage.

Stars of the Akai stand, though, were two unlikely-looking wind instruments linked to an ordinary-looking synth voice unit. Unlikely and ordinary, that is, until two American wind players began demonstrating them in front of crowds of initially curious - but ultimately enthusiastic - showgoers. It soon transpires that one of the Americans is Nyle Steiner, inventor of the Steinerphone, an ingenious MIDI controller based on the performance characteristics of the trumpet. Regular readers may recall the Steinerphone as being something of a scene-stealer at various electronic music festivals around the world during the last few years, at which it has romped home with any number of awards for Most Creative New Electronic Instrument. Or something. Well, the Steinerphone is alive and well and now living under the guise of the Akai EVI1000, EVI standing for Electronic Valve Instrument. An alternative model, the EWI1000, is an Electronic Wind Instrument designed to simulate the action of a saxophone or clarinet. Both devices look a little odd at first, since although they have the controls of the instruments they are trying to replicate (keys on the EWI and valves on the EVI), their non-acoustic nature gives them a slim, solid body, much in the manner of an electric guitar.

Both allow the player's breath to control the envelope, dynamics and modulation of the sound being controlled, while the supporting fingers take care of such parameters as glide, pitch-bend and octave shift.

Akai will be selling the EVI or EWI with a specially-designed programmable voice unit, the EWV 10. This is an analogue synth module whose design has much in common with that of two parallel AX73s. But as well as making synthesiser noises, the EWV 1O offers sample-modification facilities for connection to S700 or S900, as well as the vital MIDI link that enables the EVI and EWI to talk the same language as other electronic instruments.

With the obvious proviso that Mr Steiner has had the benefit of several years' experience playing his own creation, his ability to bring trumpet, horn, flute and violin samples from an S900 to breathtaking (sorry) life was extraordinary. Quite simply, you left Akai's demo room wondering why anyone would bother trying to play brass or woodwind sounds from a keyboard again.

So yes, the EVI and EWI were probably the instruments on show at Frankfurt that offered the greatest creative potential, and given that most woodwind or brass players who approached them seemed to have little trouble acclimatising to them, theirs is a potential that could be realised quickly, too.

ALMOST ALL THE demonstrations at Frankfurt this year suffered from one inevitable problem - heat. The Messe's own heating system was working overtime despite the mild weather outside, and inside the soundproof booths in which most of the demos took place, it was a case of too many people crammed into too small an area for a decently cool temperature to be maintained - despite the presence of air-conditioning on many stands.

Some demos though, like Akai's, made you forget you were sweating better than others. Like Dave Bristow's predictably virtuoso performance on the Yamaha DX7IIFD synthesiser, which lasted around half-an-hour, contained little in the way of detailed information, and included only two brief complete pieces of music, yet still walked all over its highly-charged American equivalent.

Talking to Bristow before attending his demo, it was interesting to hear him say that every time he went to a synthesiser demo on another stand, he always heard "a load of drum machines I don't want to hear" as an inevitable part of the arrangement.

And he's right: most hi-tech demonstrations at shows like Frankfurt - even those by companies who don't make any percussion equipment - are dominated by the sound of heavily gated, reverbed digital drum machines or electronic drum kits, reducing the poor synthesiser players to a few piano-type backing chords and the odd hideous leadline solo in order to make themselves heard.

The main features of Bristow's performance, on the other hand, were an extended guide through about a dozen of the new DX7's preset sounds, each beautifully and considerately played, and a nice line in Trans-European humour which even the predominantly German audience laughed at occasionally.

Of course the new DX7s sound good. But if you can play each of their sounds as sympathetically as Dave Bristow can, yet still appear human and approachable at the same time, you're more than halfway to convincing people there is no alternative. Which, given the activities on other stands, there now plainly is.

There are the Roland D50 and Korg DS8, for example, both of which were being more than adequately showcased by American demonstrators who had clearly benefitted from an extra fortnight with their machines since NAMM. And although neither machine is in direct competition with the new-generation DX (the D50 sounds too warm, the DS8 too pure), it's clear that keyboard players will have the luxury of a wide choice of polyphonic synthesisers in the £1000-2000 bracket over the next couple of years - which will certainly make a change from the last couple.

For many, that choice widened further after a visit to a stand occupied by a company called Keytek, who were demonstrating a new synthesiser based on a(nother) new principle of sound synthesis. Keytek turns out to be the new brand-name of the Italian SIEL company, and the new principle of synthesis turns out to be called CTS, for Cross Table Sampling.

What CTS allows is the sampling of an acoustic timbre at various significant points in time, the conversion of these samples into digital wavetables, and the synthetic interpolation of the parts of the waveform that lie between the wavetables.

Like, for example, Roland's Structured/Adaptive Synthesis. CTS' main advantage is that it allows realistic samples of acoustic instruments to be stored electronically without using up too much memory. And in the case of the CTS2000 polyphonic synthesiser, that means over 300 basic wavetables onboard, all of them combinable to form sounds.

The sounds themselves are simply magnificent, even before they are routed through an extensive analogue filtering, enveloping (six-stage) and modulation section, controllable - as are all the CTS2000's parameters - via six assignable control sliders for swift and easy editing. The 2000 is multitimbral (Keytek call it "polytimbric"), and has a five-octave keyboard that can be split five ways with dynamic assignment of voices.

Keytek were also showing the CTS400, a scaled-down, preset version of the 2000; and the CTS5000, a digital piano with a 76-note keyboard (16 different velocity scales), eight preset sounds, and eight user memories for storing variations in the onboard seven-band graphic EQ, for example.

The Italians didn't have a UK distributor at the time this report went to press, but I for one hope it won't be long before we see these keyboards arriving on our shores. They sound warm, vibrant, clear and refreshing, and compared with some new sound-creation systems, CTS looks to be an absolute doddle to program. Just choose a handful of wavetables, link them together, stick it all through an analogue synth section, and away you go...

More complex - though undeniably more sophisticated - are the real-time additive synthesis possibilities soon to be made reality by the Kawai K5 polyphonic synth. This was again shown in prototype form at Frankfurt, as was its modular counterpart, the K5m, and Kawai's new down-market drum machine, the R50. It's sobering to reflect that only 12 months ago, real-time additive synthesis was something that could only be achieved using a Mac-based software package, or using vast amounts of incredibly expensive hardware. The K5 and K5m should bring it into the hands of keyboardists and programmers with relatively small amounts of money to hand - probably the same £1000-2000 being demanded by the rest of Japan's new wave of synthesisers.

THAT THERE IS a new wave of synthesisers simply cannot be denied. Suddenly, it's as if the clock has been put back three or four years, and instead of talking about sampling rates, looping, bit resolution and the rest, researchers are now going back to adding, subtracting, filtering, interpolating, and generally doing all the things keyboard players and programmers were doing (or at least were expecting to do) back in say, 1983.

All of which leaves Casio somewhat in the cold with their FZ1 sampling keyboard. Not that they really need keeping warm, since beaming representatives confirmed that the machine really is a true 16-bit sampler, that really would be in production within a matter of weeks, and that it really would retail for (wait for it) under £1600.

There were two FZ1s at Frankfurt, kept safely under lock and key in Casio's main demo room until the company's musicians crashed ineptly through a couple of songs, during which we were treated to a mushy, buzzy piano sample and not a lot else.

In fact, the demo guys did a far better job of showing off Casio's domestically-oriented instruments, such as the neat DP1 drum pads and the extraordinary SS1 sound sticks (just hit any surface, or no surface at all) that can be used to trigger PCM drum sounds from within some of the company's home keyboards.

Yet still the FZ1 shone through, its huge LCD allowing waveforms to be viewed and edited onboard without recourse to a computer screen or RGB monitor for visual reference points; its eight audio outputs pointing to a rosy future ahead in studio environments; and its 116.5-secs of sampling time (with RAM board add-on and at 9kHz sample rate) looking capable of playing havoc with the odd hip-hop remix or five. Wonder what they'll think of next...

Casio also put on a splendid show - as they always do - at their annual Frankfurt gala dinner, to which anybody who turns up is instantly admitted, and treated to the most extravagant buffet meal it has ever been this writer's pleasure to tuck into. The punishment for eating this meal (aside from a stomach-ache or, in Simon Trask's case, headache, ear-ache, foot-ache, and much more) was being forced to sit in front of a slide show chronicling Isao Tomita's summer concert in downtown New York In it, the great man surrounded himself with the latest in synthesis and sampling technology (courtesy of Casio), suspended himself in a giant pyramid that hung in the sky underneath a helicopter, and proceeded to inflict the most tedious and uninspired reworkings of items from the 'Hooked on Classics' catalogue upon an unsuspecting New York public. Just think. All that incredible expense and sophistication, and all we get is 'The Planets', feebly programmed with dull synth sounds, performed with about as much feeling as an ice-skater in moon boots, and then shown all over the world to vast groups of people who would much rather just get on with the business of stuffing their faces. FOR NEXT YEAR, there are plans to bring Tomita's show to London. If he comes, I shall be in Frankfurt, listening to a Steiner, a Bristow, a Persing or a Bruford, and hearing what new applications of modern technology can really sound like.

Either that, or I shall be at the top of the Messe's new showpiece, Europe's tallest skyscraper, which will stand at the front of the showground, towering over the rest of Frankfurt in a pyramid of post-modern steel and glass. It'll be a fitting symbol for what is, as I've said, the slickest, the most comfortable, and the most modern music show of them all - even if Tomita ends up playing from the top of it.