Having recovered from the Frankfurt music show, it's time once again to set pen to paper in preparation for the April issue.

This is the twelfth issue of H&SR to be published since I became editor and the year has literally flown by. Looking back it's surprising just how many significant improvements there have been in recording equipment and also how many products have actually fallen in price.

Twelve months ago an affordable digital reverb meant the Yamaha R1000 with the newly introduced REV7 being still too expensive for many non-professional users. In contrast, the present day Alesis Midiverb offers a wealth of sophisticated features and costs less than any other digital reverb yet produced, giving the enthusiast a real chance to progress without overstretching his or her budget.

Down in price too are cassette based multitrackers with more and more firms joining the race for market supremacy and MIDI is beginning to make its mark in recording as well as electronic music circles. SMPTE too is set to become a significant part of the budget recording scene and will further close the gap between professional and semi-professional recording methods.

With an increasing number of record companies insisting on seeing videos of prospective bands, it's only a matter of time before smaller studios start to bring in their own video facilities and the new low budget 8mm format pioneered by Sony offers healthy encouragement to anyone wishing to branch out into this fascinating area. With technology moving on at such a pace, who knows what the next year will bring... it's up to you to get out there and use it.