Another chance to do some crystal gazing at product development in the music/recording/visual fields.

Keyboard programmer Paul Wiffen moves on to the process of manipulating the sample in this series designed to help make the best use of your sampling machine.

Where do you go to learn more about the subjects covered in this magazine? The answer is the Gateway School of Recording & Music Technology. Ralph Denyer investigates.

From the creators of the first digital drum machine comes the world's most powerful MIDI controller - the new Linn Sequencer. Mark Jenkins believes it could well cause a lot of us to re-think the way we record.

Part 2 sees Roland's SBX-80 Sync Box and SRV-2000 Reverb jump into action as Paul Gilby explains the practicalities of creative mixing with MIDI controlled effects.

Flying in the face of fashion, Oberheim's new Matrix-6 polysynth utilises traditional analogue voicing and offers some of the most powerful and versatile sounds around. Keyboards man Paul Wiffen checks out its pedigree.

Vesta Kozo's latest offering is a MIDI to CV conversion box, the MDI-1, primarily designed to allow control of that company's rack-mount sampler from a MIDI keyboard, though its usefulness doesn't have to end there - as Ian Gilby discovered.

Continuing the tradition that began with their 144 Portastudio, Tascam have created a combined package of mixer and 8-track recorder - the 388 Studio 8 - whose compact dimensions belie its true versatility. Dave Lockwood assesses its performance.

As well as writing, singing and playing on his new single 'When A Heart Beats', Nik Kershaw also took the credit for its production. In an interview with Nick Webb he displays a rarely seen side of his character and discusses his knowledge of recording studio technology and approach to songwriting.

Who says you can't use those hi-fi DIN cables to connect all your MIDI gear together? This month, Jay Chapman takes a logical look at the hardware side of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

Whilst the race is on to MIDIfy every effect under the sun, Korg suddenly leap ahead of the rest with their DVP-1. Ian Gilby delivers an exclusive preview of this unique rack-mounting device that combines a vocoder, harmoniser and pitch transposer with MIDI control.

If you can't quite afford a lot of today's equipment but long to use it, you could always hire it. Here we present a rundown of the many UK hire companies and look at what's involved.

Synthesist Ian Boddy casts an eager eye over Yamaha's low-cost DX21 polysynth and discovers some little publicised aspects of its performance...

Widen your horizons by entering our competition to win the new XT:c stereo digital reverb from Alesis.

The addition of a MIDI module allows this software package for the Commodore computer to control external synthesizers amongst other things. Ian Waugh reports.

Producer/composer Robin Lumley continues this series designed to take the mystery out of writing and recording music for film and television.

The revolutionary Video 8 format has resulted in a new generation of domestic video recorders that offer high quality pictures and up to 6 tracks and 18 hours of stereo digital sound. Francis Rumsey explains how.

Paul Gilby outlines JVC's AV Graphic Synthesizer which has some rather novel ways of representing music in a visual sense.

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