Another 'portastudio' is offered up for examination, and this time it's from Vesta Fire in the shape of their MR-1.

It's a notably large and heavy item, measuring 19"x8"x8" (it's rack-mountable) which is largely due to the fact that it has six mixer inputs as opposed to the normal four.

It also has comprehensive channel/track routing (any channels to any tracks), a compressor/limiter built in to the first four channels, big, clear, illuminated VU meters, insert points on all six channels and dbx noise reduction that works unusually well to produce low noise with very little nasty pumping effects. The bad news is that it doesn't have any equalisation (no tone controls) or auxiliary sends (echo sends etc). At nearly £700 these are rather serious omissions.

The lack of sends simply can't be made up for at all, and if you were to buy half a dozen equaliser modules to strap into the mixer channels (Vesta Fire do a matched set, but they work out at an awesome £89 per channel, plus power supply) it starts to get truly expensive.

The MR-1 is not a bad machine; it does what it does well and is exceptionally simple and straightforward to use. The problem is that it doesn't do enough for the average home recording musician to warrant the price. The way the compressor has been set up (very slow release time) makes it a bit tricky to use, and with budget drum machines, mikes and synths, it's important to have a bit of tone control to salvage something musical; and if you have but one reverb unit, you'll want to be able to use it with more than one channel/instrument at a time — with the MR-1 that's practically impossible. It may work well for audio/visual applications — slide shows and the like — but for building up demos in your bedroom there are better options on the market already.

VESTA FIRE MR1 portastudio: £698