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Paul White follows up a few leads and discovers they all end at the patchbay.

No matter how thick and heavy the walls of a studio, it will still leak sound if the doors and windows are not up to scratch. Paul White explains how you can uprate them without breaking the bank.

The debate's been going on for as long as drum machines have been around: can they really sound human? Nicholas Rowland takes jazz drumming as his test case and tries to find out.

Delay, originally called echo, is one of the oldest artificial effects, yet it can still be one of the most impressive — if used with care. Paul White explains the potential problems and how to avoid them.

An Atari ST with 16MB of RAM? It's now possible, as Derek Johnson reports.

Waking up the neighbours with the latest turbo folk masterpiece is a major concern for many project studio owners. Paul White explains that monitoring with headphones and moving house are not the only solutions...

Just when most of us have finally optimised Windows 95 for hard disk recording, Microsoft release the Beta version of Windows 98. Martin Walker sticks his head in the sand.

This month, Martin Russ turns traitor and investigates an alternative to the MacOS.

The ball of S&S synthesis had been thrown, and most of the big names in synthesis caught it and ran with it, scoring some notable goals in the process. Paul Wiffen continues his chronicle of modern synthesis with a look at the state of play from the late '80s to the present day.

This month, some of the people who actually get their hands dirty with arranging — often for the household names in popular music — pass on their thoughts, hints and tips.

The spread of the ADAT 8-channel optical digital interface to studio equipment of all kinds has raised the prospect of a revolution in multitrack digital recording. Self-confessed digital evangelist (amd Korg UK product specialist) Paul Wiffen explains how the optical digital interface and several fibreglass cables made keyboard session player Wix Wickens' life easier at last year's prestigious Songs and Visions concert at Wembley.

If you're after a great rhythm section, these days it's very easy to whip up a great groove from a MIDI file disk. But an inside knowledge of how and why drum patterns work can help make you a better musician and get your rhythm section really working.

Homebrew software comes to the fore this month, as a Manchester studio decide to make the most of their vintage Atari — by producing their own programs. Derek Johnson gives them a big hand...

Martin Russ indulges in some post-Expo analysis after a visit to the Apple event of the year, and takes a look at a new Mac-compatible operating system, BeOS.

Have you ever been faced with recreating a mix that you haven't worked on for weeks? Martin Walker explains how he manages to do just that, without the benefit of expensive automated mixers or a tape-op with a notebook!

Many of us can now afford the once-unthinkable luxury of making our own CDs, for one-off music demos, mass CD duplication or general data storage. But a few of us know the full story behind the numerous 'Book' standards governing the kind of data that can be stored on a CD. Mike Collins colours by numbers...

Chorus, phasing and flanging are very common processes, but they don't always achieve the effect you hoped for. Paul White offers a few tips.

Paul White finds a few ways around the restricted breath-control facilities of the Yamaha VL70m.

A job helping to provide the sounds and recording the music for an animated Christmas special has SOS contributor Paul Ward hastily upgrading his studio and exploring the deepest recesses of his synth collection, in search of sleigh bells and singing reindeer patches...

Last time, Benedict Grant explained how to properly mike an acoustic drum kit. In this concluding part of our short series, he turns his attention to committing kit sounds to multitrack.