SETTING UP A home recording system can be an expensive business; the cost of all those synthesisers, drum machines and mixers soon mounts up. Fortunately, there's an inexpensive alternative, in the form of do-everything multi-timbral synth modules such as the Roland MT32. Now Casio, for some years the dominant company in the domestic keyboard market, has broken into the field with the CSM-1.

Oddly enough, despite the success of Casio's CZ synths such as the 101 and 230S, the CSM-1 is based on the Tonebank domestic keyboards; it's basically a keyboardless CT-660, and uses the same style of PCM-sampled preset sounds.

Another oddity is that despite being a "rackmount" unit, the CSM-1 won't actually fit into a standard rack; it's about 12" wide and 2" high, and is designed as a standalone unit. This is emphasised by the fact that on the top of the case is printed a list of all the preset sounds and effects, along with their MIDI note values.

Hooking up the CSM-1 is simplicity itself; it has an external 9V power supply which plugs into the back, next to the MIDI IN, OUT and THRU sockets. Here you'll also find a tuning knob.

The front layout is equally clear; on/off slider, volume sliders for the four output channels, and clusters of buttons to select the preset sounds and drum patterns.

The CSM-1 is a very flexible unit, so let's look at a few of the ways in which you can use it. For a start, controlled by a MIDI master keyboard, it could be a simple single-sound instrument. The 29 eight-note polyphonic preset sounds vary from the excellent to the disappointing. The piano, for instance, is OK(ish) despite having a rather unconvincing decay, and there are nice electric and honky-tonk pianos as well. Some of the synth sounds are good, others rather nasal; Marimba is good and sharp, Chorus (voices) suitably atmospheric and the two basses (Upright and Slap) very usable. Each sound has a built-in effect such as delayed vibrato, which is useful because the CSM-1 doesn't respond to MIDI modulation, velocity or other controllers (though it does respond to sustain and patch change).

But the CSM-1 isn't just for instrumental sounds; the presets SE1 and SE2 give you two full banks of special effects, spread across the keyboard. These are a weird selection of synthesised cars, galloping horses, running water, applause, gunshots, laser zaps, robot voices and dozens of others. You might find them suitable for your next scratcing composition - or there again, you might not!

More useful are the drum sounds found in the Percussion preset. Like Roland's MT32 and D110, the CSM-1 can be used as a "percussion expander", offering a huge selection of sampled drum sounds including kicks, snares, gated snares, hi-hats, cymbals, Latin percussion, wood blocks, hand drums and syndrums. There are 49 sounds overall, most of which are also used by the Drum Machine section.

The CSM-1's built-in drum machine has 20 preset rhythms which are selected from another keypad to the right of the tone selectors. Most are very convincing and realistically programmed. Some, like Rock, Disco and Pops, are suitable for straightforward rock music, while the more "home organ" ones such as Tango and Beguine might be useful for Latin-style Hip-Hop. Apart from the pattern select keys, the drum machine has start/stop, intro, fill-in and ending controls. The tempo is controlled by a pair of up/down buttons, or from an external MIDI clock provided by a sequencer, drum machine or arpeggiator.

But the CSM-1 really comes into its own in multi-timbral mode, where it can be used with a MIDI sequencer to provide a complete backing section. There are four output channels available, each with its own level slider on the front panel. The channels are pre-panned in pairs to the left and right output sockets on the back. Rhythms are always assigned to channel 4.

Assigning other voices to channels is easy; just press the required channel key and a voice preset. MIDI channels are fixed on the appropriate channel number (1 to 4). In multi-timbral mode, each channel is four-voice polyphonic.

An excellent funky demo routine shows just what the CSM-1 can do under sequencer control; it makes you wonder, in fact, why Casio didn't design a module with a built-in sequencer (and digital effects unit), as Yamaha have done with the TQ5 multi-timbral FM module. The answer, inevitably, is cost. The CSM-1 is aimed at musicians who want a whole fistful of sounds packed into the cheapest available box, and in that regard the CSM-1 delivers the goods admirably.

CASIO CSM-1 TONE BANK MODULE: £200 INC VAT.

INFO: CASIO, (Contact Details).