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Mixing the hands-on feel of old-school multitracking with the versatility of software.

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• Review

The V-Studio series from Cakewalk/Roland has thus far aimed to provide a complete production environment, but the new VS-20 has a far simpler remit: it's for guitarists who want to get into software recording but crave the simplicity of yesteryear's standalone hardware recorders.

The package consists of the VS-20 hardware and PC-only Guitar Tracks 4 software, and it's billed as being 'netbook ready', hence we used a Samsung NC10 netbook for this review.

At 30cm wide, the VS-20 hardware is about 5cm wider than your average netbook. It feels good if not exactly rugged, but it'll surely last if you're sensible with it. The I/O ports are on the left and right sides, to facilitate plonking the device right in front of your laptop.

"The built-in mics are perfect for capturing fleeting ideas."

On the left, you've got a USB port; stereo out on RCA jacks; and 1/4" jacks for dual footswitch, expression pedal (for wah/volume) and headphones. On the other side, you'll find a high-impedance 1/4" input for guitar/bass; stereo line in on 1/4" jacks; and an XLR mic input with phantom power. It's got a pair of built-in stereo mics, too.

Guitar Tracks lets you record up to 32 tracks of audio and has two main screens. The Track view is your typical DAW arranger, with features like snap to grid, clip fades, track freeze, etc.

Console yourself

The other screen, Console view, corresponds to the VS-20's controls. The channel levels can be controlled with the VS-20's faders, using the 'track group' buttons to access them in banks of eight. Tracks can be armed via the Track Select buttons, and there's a transport strip too.

You can record volume automation using the VS-20's faders (and manually draw in curves for other parameters, including those of plug-ins). The input panel lets you select from line, guitar/bass, mic input and the built-in mic.

The input is stereo-only, so you can't record from all inputs at once. Recording levels are set with the Peak Sens. knob, which has an overload LED. Levels for MIDI backing, DAW output, direct monitoring (with COSM effects) and output level can also be set.

The MIDI backing has its own track - you can't edit note data at all, but you can disable channels, eg, to isolate the drums. Speaking of backing tracks, there's about 1GB of included sound content, in various tempos and genres. You get band (full mix) and drum audio loops, and 400MB of full-length songs.

It's a real mixed bag, and the songs are of no real use - many are just embarrassing. Guitar Tracks will timestretch audio to fit your song, but it's prone to buzzing/flamming artifacts. The MIDI loops are more useful, but you only get ten.

Guitar Tracks' mixer is simple. Each track has level, panning, solo/mute, high/low shelving EQ, insert effects, and sends for the Reverb and Echo modules. Of these last two, you can choose from about 15 presets each - there are no tweakable parameters, but the delays do sync to the beat.

On the master output, you have high/low shelving EQ and a limiter, but no inserts. Bizarrely, the TTS-1 virtual instrument that produces the MIDI sounds does not go through the mixer, so you can't apply, say, EQ to MIDI backings - it doesn't even go through the master EQ/limiter. You can set the TTS-1 as an audio track source, to come through the mixer, but then you can't use the MIDI Backing level knob.

Of the supplied effects, you get the good-old Sonitus:fx Equalizer, AliasFactor bitcrusher, Classic Phaser, Compressor/Gate, HF Exciter, Modfilter, Multivoice Chorus/Flanger, Para-Q, Studioverb2 and Tempo Delay. It's a solid selection, and VST plug-ins are supported, too.