Phil and Paul Hartnoll are Orbital, and their pioneering brand of user-friendly electronic dance music is a lot more fluid than the traffic on the motorway that prompted the name. So Phil Ward avoids the M25 and heads straight for the heart of the P&P music factory

Eight-track cassette recorder

When the first Portastudio was launched, it caused a revolution in the recording industry - now you can put eight tracks on the same tape. Vic Lennard punches in.

Korg Wavestation A/D

Korg add new samples, a vocoder and a pair of audio inputs to their highly acclaimed Advanced Vector synthesizer, and put the result in a rack. Kendall Wrightson says the Wavestation A/D is a TV/film composer's dream machine.

Roland U20 Keyboard

Is the U20 just a revamped U110 with a keyboard or does it have what it takes to de-throne the Korg M1? Paul Ireson finds out.

Annabel Scott talks to one of the synth world's younger composers about a new album of raunchier, dynamic music, the result of his first sessions in Jive Electro's equipment-laden studio, Battery.

In engineering and production - as in musicianship - flexibility and adaptability are precious qualities. Martin Rex has covered artists as varied as Neneh Cherry, Fela Kuti and Michael Nyman - Ollie Crooke listens.

Roland JV1080

High polyphony synth module

Lexicon Reflex

MIDI controllable reverb

The CLARION Home Studio — Best yet cassette?

Which Gear is Right for You?

Pyramid

Pyramid 8-track studio

Todd AO Studios

Simon Braund visits New York's busiest movie post-production facility

Dom Foulsham continues our series on the digital ins and outs of sampling, and talks to some arch sampling professionals about the tricks of their trade. Discover how to get a convincing crash cymbal; how to break the rules creatively and stay legal; and 20 things to do with a redundant manual. Read it and weep, Jive Bunny

Clarke, Radcliffe & Marlow

There's a lot more to the humble digital delay than meets the eye. Paul White investigates.

Effects

Part 14: Effects, in the latest installment of his studio cookbook. David Mellor looks at ways to-make your recordings more tasty.

From the profound to the downright silly, we wind up a year's chit-chat

Hendrix rises again - thanks to two musicians, a helpful bureaucrat, and a rack-full of Akais

Bryan Ferry

You know all those classic sixties and seventies songs you keep hearing on TV ads these days? Well, almost every one you hear is not in fact the original recording but a completely new version. To give you an idea of how such reconstructions are produced, Nigel Beaham-Powell of Streets Ahead Music Productions recounts how he went about reproducing a Bryan Ferry track.

24-Channel Multitrack Mixer

Fostex's new 24-channel 12-group 2412 mixer packs big console features into a compact frame. Dave Lockwood tries it on for size.

The second of our series that takes a behind the scenes look at companies and design personnel involved in recording and hi-tech products. This month Paul Gilby talks to Scott Berdell of dbx.

The Mix's terrestrial bulletin board

Intelligent Pitch Shifter

Most pitch shifters wouldn't know their A minor from their E major, but DigiTech's IPS33 knows a thing or two about playing in key. Simon Trask finds himself in harmony with the Intelligent Pitch Shifter.