Another Alesis bombshell product was unveiled at the June NAMM show in Chicago. Paul White was present to bring you this first ever preview. Next month we will be doing an in-depth review on the Midifex and looking at some of its possible applications.

The Midifex is packaged in the same style as the Midiverb and I believe that much of the internal hardware is common to both units. The specifications in terms of noise and bandwidth are similar and the 12-bit Midifex offers a wide selection of delay, reverb and spacial enhancement effects with a bandwidth of 10kHz. Like its companion, it comes with 63 on-board, preset effects which can be called up via MIDI on any one of 16 channels or selected from the front panel buttons. The stereo-in/stereo-out format is maintained and the dry/effect mix control is located on the rear panel. Furthermore, a rack mounting adaptor will soon be available at minimal cost, capable of holding two units in 1U of rack space.

Effects

The unit excels in that it provides the kind of delay effects that could not normally be created without the use of at least two pieces of outboard gear. Moreover, several of the effects are unique to the Midifex.

There are 21 echo presets ranging from long to extra short and these incorporate equalisation of the effected sound so that the delayed sound may be subjected to hi-pass, low-pass or band-pass filtering. Also present are nine 2-tap delays and six 3-tap delays which offer an impressive stereo spread with a choice of equalisation.

To complete the delay section there are six delays with regeneration and five Slap programs which are useful ADT type treatments.

The last set of programs are to my mind the most fascinating; they contain normal, gated and reverse reverb treatments similar to those found in the Midiverb but there are also a few really unusual effects which give multiple reverse envelope reverb bursts with various panning tricks thrown in. One spectacular reverb treatment is called Bloom and features a long attack with a smooth, natural decay. This works well on most types of material and can sound either dramatic or subtle depending how and on what it is used.

Finally there's a set of stereo enhancement programs which really work well on virtually any type of input material. Mono inputs take on a new depth and stereo inputs become even wider. These treatments are very powerful and you really have to hear them to appreciate their usefulness. Electric guitar, voice or piano perform particularly well in conjunction with these programs and the fact that the user has a choice of six allows you to pick the best one for any given application.

There are no chorus, flanger or vibrato effects in this unit. It appears that the hardware is unable to support them, but then many users will already have the capability to produce effects such as these.

Summary

This preview is of necessity brief as the Midifex was in our grasp for only half an hour. Therefore it would be less than honest to try to present an in-depth review at this stage. However, by next month we will have had a unit long enough to fully evaluate its potential and we'll tell you not only how well it works but make some suggestions as to specific uses for the various settings.

On the face of it, the Midifex seems destined to become another big seller as it offers a good selection of well thought out and impressive sounding production tricks in full stereo simply at the touch of a button. Not only do you avoid having to make use of a lot of your outboard gear, you also save a lot of time in patching and setting up parameters. Even the inexperienced engineer can get first rate results simply by choosing the effect that sounds right to him in a given situation without having to worry about how to create it. I'm impressed!

The Midifex costs £395 including VAT.

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