Even when setting up a modest recording facility with today's low-cost — but high-quality — multitrack equipment, a prospective studio owner can quickly run out of money. Obviously the majority of the budget will be devoted to soundproofing and sorting out the acoustics of the room/hall/garage in which you intend to do the recording, and buying the really essential hardware — a mixing console and a multitrack tape machine.

With so many possible permutations from which to choose — should you buy this desk for use with that multitrack; four or eight (or more) tracks; ½in or 1in format; how many microphones and stands; Dolby or dbx noise reduction (or none); new or secondhand? — it's not surprising that the subject of ancillary gear is sometimes overlooked. Selecting and budgeting for the major items of equipment often takes up so much of your attention that it's all too easy to forget or put off buying until later the other, fairly essential bits and pieces; for example, reverb and echo units, extra equalisation, headphone amplifiers and similar useful add-ons.

The Problem

Before long you realise that the combination of carefully-designed (ie fairly dead) acoustics and close-miking technique can leave vocals and certain instruments sounding rather dry and flat. Which is where a reverb or echo unit is so handy for livening up a track by adding some artificial ambience to give it more depth and warmth.

Or you may find that the electric piano track, for example, picked up some low-level 100 Hz mains hum from an earth loop during the recording stage (you should have noticed it at the time, but then nobody's perfect); or the lead singer has rather a thin-sounding voice and your desk doesn't have quite the right EQ frequency setting to give it just that right amount of 'bite'; or the bass drum sounds a shade flat because the microphone wasn't positioned correctly during the recording; or the lead guitar track wants more presence at 4 kHz but, once again, the EQ on your desk won't oblige. All these problems can be sorted out with a parametric equaliser, which allows just the right amount of boost (or cut) to be applied at just the right frequency.

Again, maybe the drum sound — bass and drum and floor toms, in particular — is pretty dull and lifeless (and it's not just a matter of mic placement, although this can be an important factor); or the female vocal track sounds rather flat and uninteresting, because the wide dynamic range of her voice meant that you had to keep the level down during recording to prevent the occasional high-frequency peaks overloading the tape and causing distortion. What you really need is a compressor to reduce the dynamic range of the drums or vocal track (or bass, lead guitar or piano, for that matter) to give it more 'punch'. A compressor also allows you to record at slightly higher levels on to tape without risking distortion, since troublesome peaks will be more controlled. (This can be an added bonus if you are running without noise reduction, when the extra few dBs of level on tape help to maintain a decent signal-to-noise ratio.)

And what about the foldback system to the studio? You suddenly discover that you need to derive several high-level feeds for the foldback cans, but that the desk only has one low-level/high-impedance output. For such situations — plus matching a lower Teac or Otari high-impedance operating level of -10 dBV to consoles and other ancillary gear set up for the more 'conventional' zero or +4 dBV levels (possibly low-impedance as well) — a few line and buffer amplifiers can be ever so useful.

But, having spent most of the budget on the essentials for your studio (a wise prospective owner should always keep a little spare cash in reserve for unseen eventualities) where can you obtain such pretty essential sound processors at a reasonable price? It's all very well for the larger and established studios to flash out the hundreds (and, in some cases, thousands) of pounds/dollars on state-of-the-art hardware; what about the lower end of the market? Even buying second-hand it can be pretty difficult to find, for example, a reverb unit or compressor for less than a couple of hundred notes. Which is simply too much for a budget-orientated studio, or one that is just getting off the ground and cannot warrant that sort of expenditure for a while.

The Solution

So what's to be done? It appears to me that studios in such a position have two choices: either forget about such gear until they have earned enough money to afford what they need; or find out more about the Accessit range of budget-priced sound processors and accessories. Manufactured by Bandive Limited (better known perhaps as that friendly bunch of people associated with Turnkey, the equipment supply and installation company) each of the Accessit units cost less than £30 — I kid you not — putting them well within reach of all but the most poverty-stricken small studio.

Currently the Accessit range comprises a reverb unit, parametric equaliser, compressor and four-way isolation/booster amplifier. Bandive also has plans, I'm reliably informed, to introduce many more low-priced goodies in the near future, including a microphone pre-amp, compander noise-reduction system, analogue delay line, compressor/expander with variable slope, phaser/flanger and an 'Aphex-type' unit for 'enhancing' the stereo spread and impact of a mix. An enterprising company if ever I saw one.

To find out for myself how each unit performed, and give you some idea of what you get for £30, I scrounged a set of the four presently-available units, plus a supply unit from Turnkey. At this point I'll save you scanning on to the summary to discover what conclusions I reached by saying that they are exceedingly good value for money and that, apart from a few reservations about the reverb unit, the Accessit range gets a definite thumbs up for ingenuity and usefulness. What more can I say?

Setting the scene

I'll describe each Accessit unit in detail after a few words about the power supply requirements, and how the units interface with your desk/tape machine etc. To keep the size of each Accessit processor down to a manageable size — and also to save money — Bandive have decided to power them from an external 24V DC supply. That way valuable space is saved by doing away with the need for mains transformer, rectifier and smoothing capacitors in each box. Instead, you either need to build your own regulated DC power supply unit or, just as cheaply, buy one that matches the rest of the Accessit range.

The purpose-built Accessit power supply unit is capable of powering several processors, provided the total current consumption does not exceed 200mA. Since the average power consumption of each Accessit unit is around 50mA, only four 5-pin DIN connectors are provided on the rear of the PSU for connection to that number of processors. Bandive decided to adopt possibly unconventional DIN sockets for two reasons. Firstly, they are cheap and easy to use; and secondly, because subsequent units in the Accessit range may be capable of voltage control, the extra pins will be available for such purposes.

Each unit, including the power supply, is contained within a similar beautifully-designed ABS plastic case, which measures only 5¼ x 1¾ x 6½ in deep. Units can be mounted and used individually, stacked one upon the other or, ingeniously, mounted three abreast in a standard 19in rack width. To pare costs down to the minimum, ¼in jack sockets, rather than phono or XLR connectors, are used for all input and outputs. All the devices have high-impedance inputs capable of working with most console and tape machine outputs, and their low-impedance output will interface comfortably with loads down to 600ohm.

Reverb Unit

Like other Accessit processors, the reverb unit has four control knobs on the front and three connectors on the rear for input, 24 V power supply and output; couldn't be simpler. The four knobs are labelled 'echo send', which controls the input level to the pair of reverb springs mounted within; 'equalisation', which adds a bass or treble boost to the input to the spring for special effects; a 'mix' control that blends between the direct (input) signal and the output from the spring; and finally 'output' which adjusts, not surprisingly, the level appearing at the output jack.

By using various amounts of bass or treble boost, different types of 'rooms' (or reverb patterns) can be synthesised, ranging from one containing a lot of absorbent material (an auditorium with well-padded walls, for example) in which the bass frequencies are more prominent, to very 'bright' or unabsorbent environments where the high-frequencies contribute more to the reverberation effect.

All controls are fairly self-explanatory. An 'echo send' signal from your desk is adjusted in level to suit the sensitivity of the spring unit and equalised as required. The output from the springs is then mixed with the direct signal and returned to the desk via the echo return inputs. I found it easier, however, to leave the 'mix' control set all the way over to the 'echo' position and mix 'direct' and reverb signals by means of the echo return controls on the Teac Model 5 mixer I was using. Nevertheless, with a simpler mixer — in particular, one without an echo send and return — it may be necessary to send the output from a track straight to the reverb unit and then return the combined signal to an input channel.

Subjectively, the unit has a rather pronounced 'twang' working with high and mid-frequency sounds, such as female vocals and cymbals, although this effect is less noticeable with low-mid and bass sounds. Like most spring reverb units, it is also rather intolerant of being overdriven, which means you need to set up input levels fairly accurately to prevent nasty 'jangles' as the spring decides it can't cope with a loud transient.

All in all then, the Accessit spring reverb would probably be acceptable on demo or home-recording sessions or ones where exacting quality wasn't too important. For those who require something in a substantially higher league altogether, I would suggest they check out Bandive's stereo reverb unit, known modestly as The Great British Spring. At only £159, this device is very much more in keeping with more 'serious' track-laying. Briefly it uses six springs arranged in a very realistic stereo configuration. The resultant output is much more mellow than the Accessit unit (not surprising considering the very great difference in price) and gives an exceedingly realistic and defined reverb sound, with much less jangle. Furthermore, it is more tolerant of being overdriven on the occasional transient peaks.

Parametric equaliser

With all the controls in the flat position — that is, no boost or cut — the parametric equaliser has an overall gain of unity. In other words, it can be inserted, for example, between the break points of a mixer's input channel without upsetting levels in any way. Although the unit's optimum operating level is quoted as 0 dBV, I found it worked just as well at the -10 dBV level at which Teac operate the send/receive jacks on the Model 5 mixer.

The four front-panel knobs are arranged in two pairs which allow up to 12 dB of cut and boost to be selected at low and high-frequency setting. The centre frequency of the low-frequency half can be set between 50 Hz and 300 Hz, while the high-frequency half is similarly adjustable between 3 kHz and 14 kHz. The shape of the filter network, or the tightness of the peak at the chosen centre frequency, is precisely defined. In this way boost or cut occurs at just the set frequency, and doesn't affect to any large degree those either side.

Apart from adding presence to a vocal track by boosting frequencies at about 3 to 4 kHz (depending on the sort of voice), enhancing an instrumental track for effect (adding a 3 kHz boost for guitar, for example, or 8 kHz for cymbals), or eliminating unwanted mains hum if it should appear, a parametric can also be used to produce a pretty realistic phasing/wah-wah effect. This is achieved by rapidly sweeping the high-frequency range with maximum cut or boost, and is particularly effective on drums or cymbal tracks that contain a lot of mid and upper-frequencies.

Compressor

The Accessit compressor will accept a wide range of input levels, ranging from about -40 dBV to 0 dBV, allowing it to interface with almost any channel break jacks or mixer group outputs. The four front-panel knobs adjust the input level (used in conjunction with a red light-emitting diode which indicates that gain reduction has occurred and the compressor is starting to do its stuff); attack time between 0.5 and 5 milliseconds; release time between 100 milliseconds to two seconds; and output level. A compression ratio of approximately 6:1 is featured, which means that a 30 dB change in input level results in only 5 dB of change in output. Thus vocal and drum tracks, in particular, can be given more punch and presence, and recording levels set at higher level without risking overload.

I found the unit simplicity itself to set up and operate, and experimented with a variety of attack and release times to suit the material being treated. Bass guitar and bass drum sounded best with a fast release and a medium to slow attack time. These conditions were also suitable for vocals and piano, although I found that with vocals it helped to add a little mid-frequency presence after compression to improve the clarity. Obviously, as with all compressors, you have to be particularly careful with instruments being recorded in a noisy environment, or when compressing off tape. Changes in gain as the compressor reduces the dynamic range can become very noticeable when the background noise and tape hiss go up and down in sympathy with the main signal. It's much better to ensure that the recording is made in quieter surroundings and that you compress the signal before committing it to tape. Of course this pumping effect can be held down to a certain extent by selecting a long release time, but it can still be annoying; better to get it right during the recording stage.

Isolation/Booster Amplifier

This unit features no front-panel control knobs at all, the space being taken up instead with output sockets. Four channels of amplification are provided with high-impedance inputs, and outputs suitable for interfacing with low-impedance loads down to 600 ohm. In addition, all outputs can be electronically balanced by throwing a single switch. Each channel can be set up individually to give either zero or +10 dB gain by adjusting four slide switches mounted inside the box. Output jack sockets are of the ring/tip/sleeve variety (to allow for balanced operation between ring and tip), and the inputs unbalanced.

I managed to find many, many uses for the amplifier, and would hazard to suggest that there isn't another device like it on the market. It proved particularly useful in interfacing the outputs on my Model 5 mixer with a special effects unit I am currently looking at for a forthcoming issue of SI. Like most 'professional' pieces of gear, this unit had balanced input XLR connectors, so I used the isolation amplifier to balance the (unbalanced) Teac echo send output. The special effects unit also likes to see a healthy input level of around zero dB, so I flipped the gain switch to +10 dB to bring up the Teac echo send to a more reasonable level.

The low-impedance/balanced output configuration is also useful if you have long cable runs to contend with — from your console, for example, to a foldback output right at the other end of your studio — since pretty severe loss of high frequencies can result if high-impedance outputs are connected to very long cable runs. Also certain, usually American, tape machines come complete with balanced 600 ohm input transformers and need to be driven by loads of a suitable low-impedance.

On the subject of foldback systems, the Accessit unit proved useful for driving 600 ohm headphones (plus, up to certain levels at least, 8 ohm cans). What's more, the input jacks sockets are linked so that if only a single jack is inserted into input one, the same signal will appear on the inputs of channels two, three and four as well. Inserting a second jack into input two breaks the connection between one and two, but still retains the parallel link between channels two, three and four. In this way a one-in/four-out or one-in/one-out plus one-in/three-out distribution amplifier system can be established, with the individual gain of each channel being adjustable. One possible configuration would be for two separate, double-output foldback systems to be routed through the same box, the inputs being connected to channels one and three. Similarly, four devices, including tape machines, monitor amplifiers etc, can safely be connected to the single output from a mixer, and even mixed in their level requirement (zero or -10 dBV) should the need arise.

Finally, some desks do not have frontpanel adjustment of line-level input to each channel, which means the output from a Teac or Otari multitrack or reduction machine needs to be be boosted to around 0 dB to match the input requirement of such equipment. Another useful application for the Accessit booster amplifier.

In a nutshell

The Accessit range of sound processors and accessories represents an exceedingly useful addition to the budget end of the ancillary equipment market. Each one of the four units presently available fulfils a very useful function, and I look forward to the rest of the range becoming available in the near future.

Prices and Availability

The reverb unit costs £27, the parametric equaliser and compressor £26, the booster/isolation amplifier £25 and the power supply unit £23 (all prices attract 8% VAT). They are currently being stocked by REW Professional Audio in London's Charing Cross Road (Contact Details) and Turnkey (call Andrew Stirling on (Contact Details)). Both outlets are also offering Accessit units on a 30-day approval period, and even have a five-for-four introductory offer — buy all four presently-available units and get a power supply thrown in free of charge.

If you want any further information, Bandive Limited can be reached at (Contact Details). As yet the company has no distributor for the US.

Mel Lambert is still amazed that every time he pushes up the faders music comes out of the speakers.