Scandal, gossip, libelous rumours! You'll find none of these in edits, just the low-down on what's really happening in the hi-tech music industry.

This month's overview of all the new products worth adding to your Christmas list!

Audio Architecture's Function Junction range of MIDI patchbays offers up to 16 x 64 MIDI routing with MIDI merging, sophisticated MIDI processing and mother keyboard emulation. Kendall Wrightson investigates.

Part 6: Sixty something. Dave reflects on originality and where to find it.

Akai's S1000 is without doubt the industry standard professional sampler, so why try and improve on the best? Paul Wiffen finds that SMPTE cue listing, AES/EBU real-time output, and built-in effects are a good start (with hard disk recording to follow).

Upgrading your equipment doesn't always mean selling the old stuff and replacing it entirely: new facilities and features may be only a chip away. Tony Hastings looks at updated versions of two Alesis units.

Is it really possible to get more music out of a program than you put in? David Hughes looks at software that takes auto-accompaniment and makes it work for the musician.

Martin Russ looks at how you can make the most of your computer power, through a range of software and hardware.

You just can't argue with a drum machine offering 233 16-bit sounds, two stereo outputs, 16-voice polyphony and a mammoth memory all for £299 — unless perhaps you're a busker, as Kendall Wrightson discovers.

Anyone can dream about the studio of the future, but it takes a unique talent to build it in the present. Wally Badarou's personal studio defies conventional ideas of studio design, substituting voice-controlled DMP11s for a large console, and putting the musician first. Paul Tingen listens in.

Steinberg's flagship sequencer, Cubase, has seen two major revisions since we first reviewed it. David Hughes looks at what's new.

Part 13: Location recording. David Mellor bundles his recording gear into the boot of a car and drives off into the unknown.

Six digital effects at once from a Walkman-sized box? Ian Gilby gets turned on by technological progress.

Part 5. The adventure continues - the master of MIDI manipulations, Martin Russ, does the time warp!

More hints and tips from the world of music software.

Do manufacturers and distributors care too much about the appearance of products and not enough about performance? Paul Wiffen offers an insider view.