IT took a lot of frantic catching-up -- many a lonely night with frigid machines -- to get up to speed on current home home recording technology. But now that I've become more familiar with the workings of personal digital studios, and have developed an almost unnatural attraction for them, you'd have to resort to brutal force to get me off one of these babies.

The Korg D1600, which I had the good fortune to use (gratis, of course) for recording an entire album's worth of songs, made me realise that there's more to life than... well, worrying about getting a life.

And after spending a blissful month with Roland's fabulous 18-track table-top studio that offers mind-blowing 24-bit clarity, I can confidently declare that I've found the perfect cure for existential dread.

The VS-1824CD may not be as complete an all-in-one studio package as Roland's flagship, the surround mix-ready VS-2480. But it's still an amazing all-can-do studio-in-a-box packed with tools that can help home recordists of all levels produce commercial-quality CD-R recordings.

Ready to 'Rol-a-rock'

Basically an upgraded version of Roland's mid-level VS-1680, the VS-1824CD shares an almost identical exterior, though the former's stealthy look has been somewhat lightened with two shades of grey.

The VS-1824CD also goes one up on its older brother by incorporating many of the features found on the VS-2480, making it a machine that shoehorns top-end digital recording features into a midprice package.

First, there's the 24-bit recorder which is bumped up with two additional tracks over the VS01680. It can record up to eight tracks at a time and play back 18 (you can access up to 288 virtual tracks per song).

There's a choice of three sample rates -- 48kHz, 44.1kHz and 32.0 kHz -- though the current Red Book CD standard of 44.1kHz comes on as the default setting each time you work on a new song.

Just above the standard buttons for recorder operations on the left of the top panel is a large backlit LCD (the same as the one on the VS1880) that helpfully offers visual cues of various functions.

Scrolling through the editing parameters is a cinch, though having been spoilt by the D1600's terrific touchscreen, I found pushing two or three buttons simultaneously or in succession a bit effortful. But Roland have laid it all out so nicely that you don't need to go beyond two or three steps to perform an operation. Of course, the indispensable jog-dial is a big help.

The 28-channel automated mixer features 12 sets of faders and buttons (six mono, six stereo). Each channel offers independent EQ, effect inserts, virtual panning, phase invert, and an attenuator (to increase the volume of low-output sound sources).

There're eight inputs on the rear panel, including two with phantom power (for using condenser mics), and a 'Hi-Z' guitar input. The other I/O connections, including digital in/out, SCSI, footswitch, and headphones, are pretty much what you'd expect on a midrange multitrack workstation these days.

The two independent onboard 24-bit stereo effects processors offer tons of of high-quality presets - two stereo effects at a time -- ranging from various kinds of delay, reverb, chrous and flanging to Roland's proprietary COSM (Composite Object Sound Modeling) guitar amp and mic simulations. Up to 200 custom effects can be created and stored from the presets.

The editing tools are pretty extensive. Besides standard functions like Copy, Cut, Insert and Move, you can do time compression/expansion and clean up noisy tracks.

The Dynamic Automix, which allows you to do fully automated real-time mixing, is quite an impressive feature on a machine in this price range, though it'd be nice to have motorised faders as well. You also have the option of saving mixing scenes step by step or as snapshots.

The VS-1824CD's Mastering Room is another nifty feature that lets you bounce finished mixes to spare tracks and use the Mastering Tool Kit to burn to CD-R/RW. The mastering effects, including various types of multi-band processing, let you polish up stereo mixes.

The CD-R/RW drive also lets you import drum loops and other audio samples via a neat and fast CD Capture function. As for CD transfer mode, you can either choose Track-At-Once or Disc-At-Once.

The standard hard drive only has 10GB capacity, but you can back up song data onto CD-R/RW or to external storage units.

Supplied accessories include a demo song CD-ROM and a blank CD-R.

24 is better than 16

Anxious to find out what an 18-track song in 24-bit would sound like, I quickly fired up the VS-1824 -- the inevitable drive whine is thankfully not loud enough to be distracting -- and filled up the first 12 tracks without even bothering to look at the three manuals.

But figuring out how to engage the next six tracks -- there're only 12 faders -- forced a frantic dip into the user guide. Setting up the effects and EQ also required a bit of reading, though thankfully there were no tricky manoeuvres involved. And despite some awkward phrasing, the manual is quite clearly written.

However, panning turned out to be somewhat otherworldly because there're no physical pan controls -- only virtual ones.

Playing back the song, featuring doubled up lead and harmony vocals, the first word that came to mind to describe the 24-bit clarity was 'pristine'. The sound was open and detailed and didn't seem cluttered despite the density of the overdubbing. However, the vocals sounded a tad distorted although they were recorded at a reasonable non-clipping level.

After recording a few more tunes, including a nylon-string instrumental, I realised that the vocal and solo parts were being recorded at too high a level despite the indicators showing otherwise. So keep a close eye on the mixer levels, especially when using budget dynamic mics. You'd be wise to set the levels slightly below peak load or you might even want to use the attenuator to cut back the input volume.

Generally satisfied with the sound quality, I decided to load the demo song, a 16-track pop song called 'Seems So Right'. It's a sticky love ballad but it gives you a good idea of the pro-quality recording you can make with the VS-1824CD, provided you have a good engineer to help you sculpt the sound. You can also glean important pointers about ideal levels for recording various instruments and the kinds of effects to use from the three different versions of the song.

After laying down about five songs, most of which used at least a dozen tracks, I ran out of disk space. So if you're one of those unstoppable a-song-a-day tunesmiths, you should consider spending extra to increase the capacity of the internal hard drive to the maximum or getting a couple of external hard drives.

Setting up to bounce the tracks for stereo mixdown was a tedious operation that took a couple of trys to get right. The lack of independent faders for the last six tracks was a main part of the problem. But once I had it figured out, burning to CD-R was glitch-free.

Testing the results on my regular CD player, I was surprised at how "hot" the mixes were. The limiting effect I chose for mastering no doubt gave it a substantial volume boost, though the raw mixes were already pretty loud, thanks to the extended dynamic range.

Of course, if you want to get mixes as ridiculously hot as some of today's commercial releases (have you noticed how loud they sound even with the volume knob at 9 o' clock?), you'd have to go to a pro mastering studio.

But if you're basically going to use the VS-1824CD for demos, self-financed album releases, church recordings or multi-media audio projects, you'd be more than happy with its performance, general ease of operation and ergonomic design.

The path to digital multitrack nirvana can be long and frustrating -- depending on how techno-savvy you are, it can take anything from a couple of weeks to several months to tap into most of the VS-1824CD's functions -- so learn to play the game of patience, Grasshopper!

Trax to the max

The market is currently crowded with dozens of one-box digital recording wonders similar to the VS-1824CD. But there're several things that tip the balance in the VS-1824CD's favour in this price range.

The 24-bit resolution is a real plus, and the option to record at the higher 48kHz sample rate gives it an edge over machines that limit the bandwidth to 41kHz. Then there's the well-configured Mastering Room that provides pro-level effects for shaping the final dynamics of your recordings.

It'd be nice if there were independent faders for all the channels, and a more straightforward set-up for bouncing to stereo would be a big help. You could also argue that a 10GB hard drive is inadequate for an 18-tracker, especially when much of the competition is offering at least 20GB of storage space for machines with half as many tracks.

But taking the VS-1824CD's versatile features, great sound and excellent in-built effects into account, I won't hesitate to give it a strong recommendation. Whether you're a home recording enthusiast who just needs to have the latest toy, a media professional in search of a value-packed digital multitracker, or a working musician/DJ looking for a personal studio that will spur your creativity, the VS-1824CD should be at the top of your list of integrated digital audio workstations to audition.

PROS: Pristine wow-inducing 24-bit sonic clarity; excellent in-built effects; large multi-data LCD.

CONS: 10-gig disk drive can only hold about half a dozen 18-track songs; mixdown and CD burning a bit cumbersome; input preamps clip easily; no physical pan controls.