WE SAY

I always seem to be reading about touring rock stars who drag their home recording studios from hotel to hotel. I have enough trouble locating my toothbrush in the jar let alone wiring up a 16 track at 2 a.m. Well, you now have no excuse not to write an album's worth after every gig. The MT-32 synth module is small enough to fit into your sponge bag, and with any old MIDI keyboard and a decent sequencer will effectively give you eight tracks of synthesiser, drums and reverb.

Having impatiently torn open the box on the tube on the way home from the shop, what you will have, apart from some curious passengers, is a small black box with ten buttons and a control knob. Six of the buttons select the 'parts', ie the eight different tracks plus the rhythm track, and the others select the 'timbres', ie the sound each part plays, as well as a few other functions like volume, tuning, reverb mode and so on. Operation is incredibly easy as changing MIDI channel on your keyboard (or sequencer) will automatically select the relevant part.

The MT-32 amazingly allows you up to 32 note polyphony, although this does depend on the number of 'partials' (or oscillators) used to make up each preset sound. For instance, a simple sound like 'Elec Bass 2' needs only one whereas 'Soundtrack' — a rich complex sound — uses four. So divide 32, the number of partials used and you have your maximum number of notes. If you run out there's an overflow mode which siphons the excess information through MIDI out which you can then route to your other module (if you're a two-module family).

The sounds themselves are very similar to the D-50 with the same excellent bass, brass, mallet, breathy and pad sounds (try saying that after a keg of saki). The strings seem a little weaker and the electric piano is still naff, but you can't complain at the enormous range. Even less when you realise that you also have a comprehensive set of 30 drum sounds including a full set of latin percussion, all of which are velocity sensitive and sound brilliant.

Again, similarly to the D-50, we're given digital reverb, which is great for adding liveliness to your hotel efforts, but does add a fair amount of noise, especially on the longer settings, and also suffers greatly from being only applicable to everything or nothing unless you're able to communicate with the MT-32 via system exclusive. For those of you I've immediately lost, this is the section of a MIDI message unique to each manufacturer, and holds the key to getting the most out of the MT-32 as you are then able to edit almost every aspect of the sound, store 64 more of your own, and change a whole load more patch functions.

DECISION

Once again Roland have knocked the competition for six with a product that sounds good, is good value, and extremely easy to use. In an ideal world I would have liked more selective reverb control from the front panel and maybe a headphone socket, but for the price... (reviewer exits muttering mustn't grumble/where's my chequebook etc).

ROLAND MT32 SYNTH MODULE £450

Roland UK, (Contact Details).