Last month we rushed you a sneak preview of Alesis' newest product: the Midifex. Now we've had enough time to explore the unit in the detail it deserves and look at some of its possible applications.

There may be a few of you out there who missed last months' thrilling instalment, so I'll recap briefly. The Midifex is constructionally similar to the Midiverb (Alesis' 63-preset reverb unit) and offers 63 preset delay and reverb effects which are selected from the front panel using Up/Down keys, or via MIDI patch change information on any one of 16 MIDI channels. Usually, the display on the front panel reads the number of the preset selected, but when the MIDI channel button is depressed, it shows the MIDI channel number on which the Midifex is currently set to receive (also changed by using the Up/Down keys). Like the Midiverb, the Midifex uses 12-bit quantisation and background noise is not high enough to prove obtrusive provided the input is driven hard enough. Input metering consists of just two LEDs so care is needed with the incoming signal. Bandwidth is limited to 10kHz (like the Midiverb), but this doesn't seem to cause any problems with the type of effects being generated.

The inputs and outputs are both stereo and use phono connectors. There's no input level control, but the system accepts a nominal -10dB input. Furthermore, the mix of direct and processed sound may be set by the balance pot on the rear panel. A Defeat button mutes the processed sound but the same effect may be achieved by selecting a MIDI patch number above 63.

Conducted Tour

All the presets are described on the top panel with varying amounts of accuracy, and the 63 settings are divided into three blocks of 21. Numbers 1 to 21 are simply called 'Echo' and contain varying degrees of filtering, length and ambience. Actually, these are all delay effects without regeneration; there's no feedback to create decaying echoes, but some of them are more complex than might be guessed at first sight. Filtering is easy to understand, you have hi-pass, lopass, band-pass or no filtering at all. In other words you can get a sound with reduced bass, reduced treble, emphasised middle or a natural sound. Delay too is fairly self-explanatory, the maximum delay being about half a second, but what of ambience?

Well, this is where the fun starts because what at first appears to be a basic delay isn't so simple. The first preset is an 'Ambi' setting. Extra processing has given the delayed sound a sense of depth rather than just making it a blind copy of the input. On vocals this lends more warmth to the signal than would a simple delay, and it's also a useful treatment for instruments.

"...it has no direct competition and as such is one of the few machines currently available to offer something unique..."

Next we have a delay described as 'Thick' which turns out to be particularly interesting. Again the repeat is not a single straight copy of the input but sounds like a burst of closely spaced reflections, rather like a gated reverb, and this lends a 'bowing' effect to the echo. An obvious application of this would be on synthesised strings, but it also good for voices and electric guitar as well as other synth patches. Because the tightly spaced reflections tend to disturb the rigidly coherent phase relationships that predominate simple synthesised sounds, the outcome is a more natural character to the sound.

Another variation is 'Wide'. This appears to be a double delay with the two delays very closely spaced, but on opposite sides of the stereo field. As its name implies, this gives the effect of a single delay or echo but with an enhanced sense of width. Any sound that requires an echo treatment and that needs to be given a stereo identity would benefit from this setting.

All the Echo settings consist of combinations of these three enhancement treatments with different delay times and different filtering. If a repeating echo is required, you can use a spare pair of mixer channels as effects returns and add a little effect send there. Care is needed here though, as it's all too easy to overdo it and the whole shooting match will just feed back.

Tap on the Head

The block of presets labelled 22-42 kicks off with 15 multi-tapped delays offering 2 and 3-tapped treatments. This function repeats the original sound two or three times, rather like a tape loop echo machine with several playback heads. However, once again all is not as straightforward as it might seem; there are various panning tricks thrown in and the enhancements and filter settings used in row one (presets 1-21) make another appearance. What this all adds up to is a variety of textural effects with a dramatic sense of stereo spread. Suitable candidates for treatment here are electric guitar, piano, synth and possibly vocals. The Short and Extra Short presets are especially useful to create an ADT (artificial double tracking) effect on vocals. Drums, however, tend to sound too messy when processed this way unless you are after a specific effect.

The rest of column two is taken up with regenerative delay effects: ones that contain some feedback, giving a repeating, decaying echo effect. Again filtering is employed and three of the presets use the ambience treatment used in some of the previous programs to create the illusion of depth and width. These settings could be usefully employed in any situation where you might want a conventional repeat echo. The user would then select the one that had the best filtering and ambience for each application. For example, a vocal track might benefit from the low-pass filtered version with ambience. This would give a warmer sound than could be obtained using a conventional DDL.

"... this machine gives the budget user and the inexperienced enthusiast alike access to complex production effects that would otherwise need a lot of expensive outboard gear and expertise to emulate."

Slap

The third column (presets 43-63) starts out with a refreshingly uncomplicated set of four slapback effects which, on the face of it, appear to be single, full bandwidth delays with varying spacings. These are all short delay treatments and so would be ideal for beefing up handclaps or snare drums and for giving vocals a hard ADT sound. Following on from here we have a series of reverb and spacial enhancement programs.

Gated reverb puts in an appearance as does reverse reverb, in addition to medium warm and long reverbs with high-pass filtering. These are very similar to their Midiverb counterparts and though very good, hold little mystery to anyone who has already heard a good digital reverb so I'll move on.

More unusual is the preset called Medium 'Bloom' which has a long build up to the reverb, rather like the reverse setting, and then a gentle decay like a conventional reverb. This one sounds great on vocals or wind instrument sounds and is bound to be very popular.

We also have a reverb program with built-in pan which adds a bit of movement to a static sound. Also featured is 'Reverse Regen' which is like a conventional reverse reverb setting except it repeats until it gradually dies away. You could only previously do this with a reverse reverb patch plugged through a separate digital delay. Again it's rather an ethereal treatment but it's sure to find no shortage of uses. Following the reverb programs are three special multi-tap programs which combine elements from the multi-tap presets with reverb. The most involved of these is Multi-tapped Reverse Pan which, as its name implies, consists of several taps spread across the stereo field accompanied by that characteristic reverse reverb effect. This gives a wonderful, moving texture with just a hint of the uncanny and is a great aid to making a simple sound source sound far more complex; a cheap synth can sound like a sampler and a cheap sampler like a PPG.

Finally, the unit features six spacial enhancement processes: two called 'Thickener' and four called 'Stereogen'. These add ambience and colouration to any sound source and generate an impression of stereo spread without adding any perceptible delay, particularly effective on electric guitar and plucked synth sounds. Because they serve to colour the sound, they can be used to disguise well-worn preset synth or drum machine sounds as well as to widen less common sounds from acoustic or electronic instruments. These could also form the basis of some interesting treatments for backing vocals.

"...it's nice to be confronted with a piece of gear that gives you the chance to be individual."

Conclusions

This is not an easy device to evaluate because it has no direct competition and as such is one of the few machines currently available to offer something unique; there are treatments in the Midifex that no other single processor can achieve, regardless of cost. The hapless reviewer needs also to experiment in order to find which treatments are most appropriate to which type of input material. To simply skim through the presets with a drum machine or electric guitar, might well result in half the presets being categorised as unsuitable. But if you were to checkout every preset with an electric piano, you might hate those that would interest the drum machine programmer and take a real shine to the ones he couldn't use. The bottom line, though, is that this machine gives the budget user and the inexperienced enthusiast alike access to complex production effects that would otherwise need a lot of expensive outboard gear and expertise to emulate. The effects produced sound completely different depending on what you feed through them so there's less chance of cliches arising. When so many artists nowadays seem to use the same effects, the same samples, the same DX7 presets and the same backbeat in their music, it's nice to be confronted with a piece of gear that gives you the chance to be individual.

The Midifex costs £395 including VAT.

Further details can be obtained from: Sound Technology, (Contact Details).