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We check out two more useful plug-ins, one for Powercore and one for PC VST/Direct X.

Two and a half years after the launch of Yamaha's impressive Motif workstation synth, the range has been further enhanced and upgraded. How much better can it get? We find out...

Auditioned this month: Xtreme House **** • World Winds **** • Scott Rockenfield Queensryche Drums ****

Few products have been hyped as much as Apple's new G5 range of 64-bit personal computers — but how good are they for making and recording music in the real world? We test the 2GHz Dual Processor model...

These two affordable problem-solvers facilitate digital interfacing and mixing in the home/project studio.

This affordable mini-mixer from Mackie brings their Tapco brand bang up to date.

The success story that is the Reason software studio continues to unfold with the release of v2.5, which adds a slew of sophisticated effects and processing devices — all free to registered users.

Looking for rockin' drum kits, classic synths and world instruments? We sample the delights of four more library CDs.

M-Audio's desktop active monitors offer magnetic shielding and a smooth mid-range sound.

An extremely cost-effective set of seven dedicated drum microphones.

Novation's V-Station plug-in provided a software version of their hardware K-Station — now there's a software version of their mid-'90s hardware monophonic analogue bass synths, the BassStation and BassStation Rack...

This cost-effective four-channel microphone preamp with flexible powering options is well-suited to location recording.

Convolving reverbs are coming down in price as more manufacturers make their own. We check out Emagic's new plug-in, which is one of the more affordable ones around, but still allows you to create your own reverbs from favourite spaces.

In a market populated by 16-track and 24-track machines, Korg up the ante once again with the first project-studio multitracker to offer 32-track playback.

Building on the success of previous mixer and control surface designs, Mackie's affordable Mackie Control promises the best of the soft- and hardware worlds — but will it make you hang up your mouse?

Yamaha have taken a weighted keyboard from their latest digital pianos, added high-quality piano samples and Motif sounds, and thrown in a playback sequencer and arpeggiator, and master-keyboard facilities. Left to simmer, the S90 is the result...

Edirol's all-in-one UR80 combines USB audio and MIDI interfaces with a fader-based control surface.

There's already a decent range of products providing digital emulations of vintage guitar amps, but iZotope's Direct X plug-in goes a lot further, offering no fewer than seven processing modules, and is intended to model every kind of distortion you'll ever need.

This preamp gives you vintage Decca design at a surprisingly low cost.

This modelling preamp achieves a variety of realistic amp tones by combining DSP processing with real analogue gain stages.