THE BIG QUESTION facing us tonight — is MIDI getting beyond a joke? On the panel, John Selwyn Gummer, the chairman of the Conservative Party; a small piece of blue putty; and a Yamaha D1500 MIDI Digital Delay.

Perhaps fine details of musical technology will never get to be the lead feature on Newsnight, but it's important to us, innit? Spending this sort of money on gimmickry is definitely not on, and there's an obvious incentive on the part of manufacturers, to introduce the latest technology (MIDI being the prime example) for commercial purposes, whether it's musically justified or not.

It's heartening to be able to report that in the case of Yamaha's latest professional effects unit, the introduction of MIDI and other digital stuff represents good value for money. And on top of that, the D1500 is really good fun, a quality which seems to have been forgotten in the horrors of the recent recession in the music industry.

The front panel layout of the D1500 is nothing unusual, except perhaps in its sparseness. It has just two dials, a large LED display, a bank of setting buttons and an input level meter.

Nothing fancy, and a little cryptic at first, but there's an excellent eight-page handbook which explains all the mysteries of the D1500 in around 20 minutes of not-too-intense-concentration; no aching brain cells here. Not even the fine details are obscure, a fact which is commendable in such a versatile unit, and everything, including the MIDI functions, is easily re-programmed.

Hit any of the selector buttons on the right of the panel and the LED display changes from Program Number to a level for the particular parameter you've selected. The choices are Delay Time (0 to 1024mS); Low Pass Filter setting (2.5, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 20kHz); Level (number of repeats from 0, one repeat, to 99); Invert (On or Off); LFO Rate (0.1-15Hz, with a flashing LED to display speed); LFO Wave (Sine or Square); LFO depth (0-99); and Mix (between dry and echo at the rear Panel Mix Out socket).

These parameters combine to give all sorts of delay options; the unit has 16 memories, of which six are filled with examples programmed at the factory. These have whacky names such as "Twinkle Star" and "Solo Lead", but this doesn't stop them being useful. There's a very rich, slow flange, a church-like long echo, a smooth repeat, an impressive ADT and much more. Of course, it's easy to make up your own effects, select the memory you want to place them in and press Store to memorise them.

The D1500's main eccentricities lie in a couple of economy measures on the LED display. These mean that the 16 memories are numbered 0, 1, 2... 9, A, b, C, d, E, F rather than 1-16, and that the invert facility is indicated by -- or -II- rather than by simply On and Off. Still, no major hassle man — something you could learn to live with.

In addition to the major parameter controls there are two MIDI controls; one sets the channel the D1500 receives MIDI information on (which would have to be Channel 1 in the case of an unmodified DX7) and the other allows you to assign any one of the 16 memories to each incoming MIDI patch number. In other words, if you select your screaming lead line Patch Number 25 on the DX7, you can program the D1500 to call up a good ADT patch — say memory 4 — to match it. Similarly you could have a churchy delay to match an organ sound, and there's no reason why you couldn't use a particular delay effect on several of your synth patches. There's even a pass setting for sounds which don't require any delay.

The MIDI memory select system works efficiently, although, of course, it's possible to step through the memories without using a MIDI input (one music magazine which will remain nameless seemed to miss this point). It's a little slower to use incrementor controls when changing memories or parameters than it would be to use conventional controls; still, that's the price you pay (and the money you save) through dabbling with digital technology.

In terms of connections, the D1500 is fully professional, with rear panel MIDI, modulation, hold, bypass, jack in/out and XLR in/out sockets. There's also a balanced stereo Mix Out jack, a selector for -20dB or +4dB input and a voltage selector for 120V or 240V. Although the unit doesn't offer stereo facilities in itself, there are examples of possible stereo setups with the R1000 Reverb in the handbook.

Testing out the D1500 with a DX7 probably showed it at its impressive best, but any MIDI keyboard would benefit from use of the programmable MIDI function. Just think of it — having sacked your drummer in favour of a digital drum machine, you can now sack your sound engineer as well, since all the delay effects and dry/echo levels can be called up by the keyboard player for each part of a song. The D1500 offers as many delay effects as you'd ever need, including a Hold function (which unfortunately can't be triggered externally for synchronised sampling effects). The frequency response is quoted as 18kHz, which sounds reasonable — there's not the slightest hint of dullness about the delayed sound, unless of course you choose to smooth it out with the low pass filter, and there's no hint of distortion even on the DX7's most demanding high-pitched metallic sounds.

The D1500 is rapidly going to become a studio standard, and may well get heavy stage use too. To coin a phrase, perhaps the MIDI delay is here to stay.

YAMAHA D1500 MIDI sync delay: £612

CONTACT: Yamaha, (Contact Details)