Multitrack needn't be a complicated thing. A Fostex X15, ten quid's worth of second-hand microphone and the world is your Air London for less than the cost of a 1974 Cortina with new seat covers, a pancake air filter and a spare STP sticker: £300 to you, no offers.

With a little ingenuity on your side, it should be possible to cobble together some okay productions with these basic tools, but it has to be accepted that there will come a time when just 'okay' ceases to satisfy. At this point you will possibly find yourself turning to technology for assistance, and once you start needing new boxes, it's dashed hard to put a stop to it. The problem is it's all so terribly expensive. The Tanrack has been created specifically for the home recording market and undoubtedly offers an unusually inexpensive way of amassing a range of basic processors.

This is a modular rack system, along the lines of Scamp and Rebis, centred around a 4U (7" high), 19" rack mounting sub rack which can house up to eleven plug-in modules plus a DC power supply that looks like a twelfth module. Each module position is marked by a plastic guide track into which you slide the PCS of a module. On the rear edge of the board is a 10-way female connector which is pushed home to mate with the pins of its corresponding male half on the rear of the rack; it sounds more fun than it is. The units are available in either kit or ready built form and the table shows the so far available modules.

The rear panel of the rack is actually a large PCB which just about qualifies, by virtue of the fact that everything plugs into it, as a 'mother board'. Along the bottom of it run the ten bus tracks (isolated strips of conducting metal that simply act like wires) that join the eleven module connectors plus the power supply. Holes are punched in the board for the jack sockets mounted on each of the modules to protrude, thus forming a simple patchbay. This can be used directly if you intend to have the sub rack free-standing, but if you're going to bolt it into a larger rack system, access to the rear panel will be cut off and so you'll need to bring them out to another patchbay. Alternatively, the Input Module provides front panel access with extra control and LED metering.

Are You Technical Enough?

The design of the kits makes certain assumptions regarding your attunement to things technical. The PCB's (printed circuit boards — Ah! You see, you should have known that) supplied with the kits will be well etched out with the shapes of the components, although the ready-made sample I had was plain and markingless. However, assuming that the graphics will be in place, it should for the most part be more or less like painting by numbers and so you shouldn't have any problems. One thing you will need to know is how to read resistor colour codes, but even that can be easily gleaned from any electronics text book. Apart from that, the only skill you'll need in any quantity is soldering, and if you've never actually tried that before, you would probably be better off avoiding the inevitable angst and paying the extra, which in some cases is actually less than a tenner. If you decide that this is the time to learn, be sure to try and get hold of a good quality soldering iron, preferably a temperature controlled one. Working with one of those standard £10 jobs from the local hardware shop is like working with a heated chair leg and will soon see the PCB's conductive track floating abroad from its intended anchorage: grief isn't in it. As far as the cosmetics of the system go it has to be a matter of taste; and there can be no absolutes; and it's not for me to force my opinions... but brown and black with big orange knobs? Ah well, who am I to judge? And the quality of the finish is actually quite high.

Multi-Delay and Modulation Oscillator

Low cost analogue delays are renowned for taking perfectly good signals, chewing them up and spitting them out in a noisy, muffled form of little use to anyone. For effects using short delays, however, a well designed high quality analogue device will often do better than its digital alternative. With one input and two outputs the Multi-Delay is capable of stereo effects from a mono source and will turn in a 12kHz response for a delay of up to 44ms; longer than that and things get rapidly, and very audibly, worse until you get something like 3kHz at 180ms. In practice 44ms is enough for a huge range of effects such as phasing/flanging, ADT, pseudo stereo, and chorus for the likes of which this unit is very good. The unit is claimed to achieve realistic reverb, but certainly doesn't, and definitely won't replace even a moderate spring device. The noise figure is very reasonable and is helped by an automatic limiter which applies considerable compression, though only to the effect signal, leaving the direct free of the usual side effects. There are six fixed taps in all, distributed three per side about the two outputs, and this makes most of the effects generally richer and more convincing.

The Modulation Oscillator produces a variable frequency waveform with a continuously variable shape at two independently adjustable outputs. This device is very necessary if you are to get the most of the Multi-Delay, although whilst it is designed with this in mind, it can also be used to modulate other voltage controlled devices. 'Key Depth' allows the depth of the effect to be controlled by the level of the input signal, and throwing the 'Key Trigger' switch will cause the oscillator to commence a new cycle each time a signal is newly present at the input. Both very useful facilities to have. This is a very wide ranging, high quality unit for the price.

The Parametric Equaliser

A very straightforward single channel parametric offering a bypass switch and control over input level, centre frequency, bandwidth (0.1 to 3 octaves), and gain, operating from 35Hz to 1.2kHz and then 350Hz to 12kHz with the help of a x10 switch. It works well, and once again, at the price it's hard to fault it.

The Pro Gate and Dynamic Noise Filter 2

The stereo Pro Gate was not primarily designed for unobtrusively decreasing the effect of background noise, which is just as well because, being as it is without an 'amount of gain reduction' control, it isn't all that well equipped for all the other 'effects' applications that a gate has such as the almost unmentionably popular gated reverb and the various forms of keying, like white noise onto snare drums, and strings onto vocals etc. Its fastest attack time of 200 microseconds could be a little faster, but on the other hand I know of no other unit at this price that offers this level of performance with threshold, attack, hold and release controls plus a key input.

The stereo Dynamic Noise Filter, on the other hand, works miracles with a noisy track. It is basically a self-adjusting low pass filter whose cut-off frequency changes according to the high frequency content of the programme at its input. It is a stereo device and is best used at the final mixdown stage just before the mastering machine. This is hardly a new idea, but at the price it's quite excellent. Every budget home set-up should have one.

Compressor Limiter

A very flexible stereo compressor/limiter with full control over ratio, attack and release plus a key input to allow use as either a 'ducker' for voice overs or, in combination with an equaliser, a de-esser. As with the gate my only comment is that the attack time could be a little faster and also that I wouId much prefer to see a series of LEDs to show gain reduction as opposed to a single multi-coloured LED. Relatively small criticism, though, and for the price possibly rather churlish. It works well.

Psychoacoustic Enhancer

I've never been a great believer in this type of effect which claims to add that something extra through the generation of extra high harmonics. This version gives me no fresh hope, although of its kind it works tolerably well, though lacking the smoothness of the really expensive pro models. The only thing to do is take a listen for yourself.

Conclusion

If you don't mind the colour scheme, and even if you do, the Tanrack offers very good value for the home recordist, in kit form or ready-built, and don't forget that many of these units are stereo as standard whereas the competition will often only offer a single channel. It has been optimised for a line level of -10dB but will also work with 0dB and the output of an electric guitar, and thus is very flexible. Now if they'd just shown a little taste — red and yellow paisley, for instance...

TANRACK MODULAR EFFECTS RACK - RRP: SEE REVIEW