XRD 680S & HISYS 2XT

A preview of some of the goodies soon to be hitting our shops.

20 guitar combos of 100 Watts get a good going over by five fine guitar players: in this first part Acoustic to Lab receive the ole SI ear ole test.

Mike Craig avoids egg-box cliches and tells you how to do it properly.

Already renowned for producing high-quality budget equipment, Alesis have introduced a new 16-channel mixer. Ian Waugh discovers Monolithic Circuit Technology is behind the 1622's amazing performance.

Wee chap and guitarist-person Charlie Burchill lifts the kilt of his guitar, amp and effects set up.

FX tutorial

More top effects tips from Mr D

Absolute Beginners

Neville and Val Pearson pass on their experience in equipping a home studio. Following their advice could save you from making more than one costly mistake.

You may be a whizz with the little black boxes, but how are you at recording real sounds and real performances? Wilf Smarties serves up a selection of tasty studio tricks.

The cassette 4-track is still the focal point of the home studio, and Marantz have produced a serious challenger to the familiar Portastudio. How does it measure up? How will musicians’ take to it? How does Nicholas Rowland do it?

Martyn Ware has been spending a lot of time producing other people's projects since Heaven 17 faded away, but now a second BEF album is in progress. Interview by Paul Ireson.

Sound Designer Software

The Emulator II finds a new friend in the Apple Macintosh, courtesy of a little American ingenuity. Together, the two make sweet sound-editing music, as Paul Wiffen reports.

A rundown of the new products shown at the recent Frankfurt Music Fair.

Mixer Remote Control

In response to suggestions from engineers Yamaha have developed the RTC1, which provides remote control of up to four DMP7, DMP7D and/or DMP11 digital mixers. Terry Holton tries one out.

Abolish sibilance with this well designed, cost-effective addition to the Tanrak.

Martin Russ breaks off from his 20th century studies way in the future to report on some alternative goings-on which may soon materialise in the form of a new generation of powerful sampling synthesizers.

MIDI is regularly used to perform tasks as varied as switching notes on and off, storing patch libraries and controlling mixes, but can it control sound itself? Vic Lennard looks at the uses of MIDI noise gates.

Advanced Music Synthesis

Alan Davies discusses electronic speech production and its applications.

Mike Collins reports on what's new for Macintosh owners at the recent Mac World show in the States

Wilf Smarties gives a new batch of CDs a spin.

No hype, no waffle - just tomorrow's products today

Your guide to tomorrow’s new toys

MIDI Patchbay

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.