SOUND ON SOUND
M-Audio have applied the same economies of scale to this digital piano that they have to their controller keyboards, with the result that the Prokeys 88 retails for well under £500, with the cut-down Prokeys 88SX costing far less.
The Radias is described by Korg as a synth and vocoder, but that's somewhat modest — it manages to cram analogue modelling, S&S, FM and formant synthesis into its stylish frame, plus a host of sound-shaping and triggering facilities. Plus that vocoder...
Melodyne has always worked miracles with the pitch and timing of monophonic audio, but Celemony's new version 3 turns its attention to full polyphonic mixes.
Do you like AAS's Tassman but are a bit baffled when it comes to programming? Check out some of Harm Visser's ready-made instruments...
The former Wave Mechanics team set out to create the ultimate classic echo unit emulator, and ended up with a plug-in that does much more.
These active monitors can automatically EQ their frequency response to compensate for your room acoustics. But how effective is this technology in practice?
• Ehrlund Acoustic Pickup • Compensating for Volume Control treble loss • Radial Engineering Plexitube, Hartke AC75/AC150, TC Electronic G Sharp, Zoom G7.1ut/G9.2tt
Add high-capacity Compact Flash storage and USB transfer to a real-time looper's facilities and you've got a host of new potential applications. What could the Jam Man do for you?
Eight channels of clean and transparent preamplification, complete with input impedance switching and flexible digital output options.
Combining pitch-correction, multi-part harmony generation, the ability to change vocal character, and multi-effects processing, TC-Helicon's Voice Pro is a complete vocal production suite inside a single box. But does it sound any good?
Big Fish Audio First Call Horns • Best Service Galaxy Steinway 5.1• Big Fish Audio London Solo Strings • Tascam Larry Seyer Acoustic Drums
Like the idea of having all your hardware synth sounds in a software sampler, but can't be bothered to do the necessary programming? Fear not, Sample Robot will do it for you...
Miroslav Vitous's orchestral library was the first of its kind, and more than 10 years after its launch, has been reinvented as a self-contained virtual instrument. Is the original still the best?
The new Microtrack packs a high-quality 24-bit/96kHz two-track recorder, complete with USB connectivity, into a box not much larger than a mobile phone. Is it the ideal field recorder? We check it out...
This premium German-made PA aims to offer a genuine hi-fi approach to live sound reproduction. But is it worth the investment?
The Evolver began as a mono desktop unit, then became polyphonic, and now there's a polyphonic keyboard version. It's almost as if Dave Smith's latest synth is steadily evolving back into his earlier Prophet 5... We check it out.
Amplifying an acoustic bass on stage is far from straightforward — indeed, the difficulties involved have been known to make players swap to an electric. Could this AMT mic/preamp system be what upright bassists have been waiting for?
It's not difficult to find a cheap wireless mic system these days, but not all have a prestigious name tag — unlike this Sennheiser true-diversity setup, their most cost-effective to date.
Free-standing studio racks are very useful and can hold a lot of heavy equipment, but sometimes it can be advantageous to...