Product Reviews

If you want to make truly professional-sounding music from scratch, you'll need a whole lot of kit. You'll need a decent sound card, perhaps a MIDI keyboard -and if you want to use live instruments and good quality microphones, you'll need suitable inputs to plug them into.

Don't worry: the brains at M-Audio have just what you're looking for. The M-Audio Ozone may look like a cute little two-octave MIDI keyboard, but it has one essential difference: a built-in sound card!

Getting the Ozone working is a cinch. Install the drivers from the supplied CD, plug the mains adapter into the wall and insert the silvery cable into one of your USB ports. Simple.

A swift peek at the back of the M-Audio is sure to put a smile on any musician's face. You'll find a headphone socket with an easily accessible volume knob, two stereo outputs for plugging into your hi-fi or mixer and two more inputs for plugging in synthesisers, electric guitars - pretty much anything, in fact.

But that's not all. High-quality microphones use a type of connector called XLR, and many also need a power supply. You usually find XLR

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inputs only in expensive music hardware, but the M-Audio provides an XLR input with the required 'phantom power'. Excellent stuff.

The keyboard is fully touch-sensitive and perfect for programming drum loops and basslines quickly and easily. As well as the standard pitch-bend and modulation wheels that you get on most MIDI keyboards, the Ozone has eight extra knobs. These can be assigned to tweak any aspect of MIDI sounds. They make applying audio effects such as reverbs and filters easier - and a hell of a lot more fun. A minor complaint would be that the keyboard is a little too small for complex ivory tinkling, but most people will find it perfectly adequate.

Sound quality is excellent, and the Ozone has ASIO support, which cuts down 'latency' - that is, the time delay between pressing a key and hearing the sound. M-Audio has even provided a couple of fairly basic VST software synthesisers, which can be used in any VST-compatible software. There are demos of other programs too, the highlight of which is Propellerhead's Reason Virtual Studio software. It's just a shame you can't save your efforts in the demo version of Reason!

For the less demanding user who just wants to mess about with music, budget programs such as Magix Music Maker or Acid Music 3 are probably a better bet. The Ozone isn't cheap, but it's a top-quality piece of kit that provides everything you need to start making professional music - bar talent, of course. As a bare minimum you'll have to budget about fifty quid more for a copy of a decent MIDI sequencer such as our Recommended Cubasis VST 4.0. But you can be sure that if you want to start using serious sequencers such as Cubase SX, the M-Audio will work a treat.