A chance to check out some of the forthcoming new products that might tempt you to dig deeper into your pockets later this year.

David Mellor looks at Roland's flagship rackmount sampler, the S550, and its newly launched escort vessel, the S330. Are they squaring up to fire a broadside at the enemy's sampling fleet? Find out inside.

Do you live in peace with your cassette recorder? Or is your life full of mangled tape misery and longings for lost high frequencies? Confirmed reel-to-reelie David Mellor explains the problems that bedevil the cassette format, and offers some advice to make the medium work for you rather than against you.

Yamaha have bowed to pressure and released an easier to programme DX with an abundance of features. Tony Wride gets to grips with Yamaha’s first ever multitimbral synth with a keyboard!

Here it is - the professional version MT32 complete with separate voice outputs, built-in reverb and hardly any noise. Martin Russ looks at Roland’s new studio-oriented rackmount LA synthesizer.

Rudi Cazeaux explores the nature of sound and presents some basic guidelines for synthesizing the various standard groups of acoustic instruments.

Practical hints and tips for the modern recording musician. Martin Russ shares some of his hi-tech pearls of wisdom.

If you thought eight tracks on standard cassette was an impossibility, think again. David Mellor assesses the world's first 8-track cassette recorder. Will it do to 8-track tape machines what the portastudio did to 4-tracks? Read on and find out...

More and more synth owners are turning to computer based voice editing software to take the drudgery out of programming their own sounds. We asked Matthew Newman of the Ensoniq Users Club to compare three ESQ/SQ80 editors from Soundbits, Dr T and Steinberg.

The second of an ‘experimental’ column devoted entirely to Steinberg software. Written and compiled exclusively for SOS by Steinberg's experts, it contains hot news of current and forthcoming software revisions plus ‘in-house’ tips and tricks on its use. Read on and respond!

Kawai's latest 16-voice multitimbral keyboard is packed with features and aimed fairly and squarely at D50/ESQ territory. Its PCM sampled waveforms include drums and percussion, a host of standard and exotic instruments, as well as the best of the additive synth waveforms gleaned from the K5. It also has one ace up its sleeve - its price. Ian Gilby tells it like it is.

After calling it a day with seventies’ supergroup The Band, and an interim period spent scoring soundtracks for Martin Scorsese films, guitarist Robbie Robertson has teamed up with Daniel Lanois, Peter Gabriel and U2 to create an impeccable first solo outing. Mark Prendergast lends the album an appreciative ear.

Part 2 of our new series for FM synth owners, in which Martin Russ attempts to give away the secrets of FM programming!

Lurking inside this angular-looking monster is a versatile computer system that will turn what is ostensibly an electronic drum kit (albeit a state-of-the-art 16-bit sampling one) into a formidable MIDI workstation. Ed Jones test drives Simmons' powerful, new SDX system.

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