Alesis
kicks down some serious analog sound in the form of synths. Between the
well-respected Andromeda true analog synth and the ever-tweakable Ion, you will
not get bored quickly with one of these sitting around your studio.
The Unstoppable Ion
With the Alesis Ion, you get a super sweet, super intuitive, hi-resolution,
velocity-sensitive, 49-key analog-modeling synth with 4 parts multitimbral,
8-voice polyphony and 24-bit A/D and D/A converters. After getting an awesome
personal hands-on demo of the Ion at Summer NAMM from Craig Anderton, I was
inspired to test it out further.
When the Ion showed up, I broke it out of the box and — without ever once
touching the manual — found myself tweaking away for hours! This synth is so
intuitive that you can turn almost any knob on it and the viewing screen will
automatically switch in realtime to whatever item it is that you trying to
modify. That’s a nice change from many other of the other devices out there,
because you can tweak away without having to punch around different menus just to
get to the function you want.
You can alter wave shapes, sync, and FM synthesis, noise — pretty much
anything you want to tweak is easily tweakable. The Ion is a 2-in/4-out synth
with kickass DSP, pitch and mod wheels, 16 filter types, three oscillators, two LFOs, 3
ADSR envelopes and an arpeggiator which you can synch up to MIDI clock. You can
store your modified filters in memory (the Ion will save up to 512 presets) and
tap in your BPM on the tap tempo button.
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The Lovely Andromeda
The Andromeda is a 16-channel, 16-voice multitimbral true analog synth with lots
of knobs to play with. With two analog oscillators, two filters per voice, three
seven-stage, tri-level envelopes, and sine, square, triangle, up saw, and down saw
waveforms, this synth puts hours of tweaky fun at your fingertips. And the signal
path is controlled by a super high-speed microprocessor, so there’s no
waiting time.
You can also route outside audio through the filters in the Andromeda through its
external inputs. There are 72 knobs and 144 buttons accessible from the front
panel on this 61-key velocity and aftertouch-sensitive synth, and you can play
with additional features like portamento, legato, the arpeggiator, and an analog
sequencer that is equipped with MIDI sync, digital effects, and analog
distortion. You get 256 presets to start with, plus 128 user-defined settings,
and additional storage via the PCMCIA-format memory card slot.
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Mac Audiophiles
Read up on these Mac-using audioheads (featured
in the Interviews section) for insights on what they use and why.
Underworld
Chris Vrenna
Trent
Reznor
Liam
Lynch
Hans
Zimmer
Butch
Vig
Keith
Hillebrandt
Richard
Devine
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Alesis Ion - 49 Key, 8 Voice Analog modeling Synth
(click the image below to purchase)
 
Alesis ION 49-Key DSP
Analog-modeling Synth
Alesis Micron, 37 Key Analog modeling Synth
(click the image below to purchase)
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Andromeda Tweaker
Grammy-winning producer/composer/engineer and remixer Chris Vrenna
doesn’t use any software outside of ProTools for sound design. Mostly, he just
tweaks the sounds brought in from his favorite synths with ProTools.
“I have my
favorite outboard synths — the Nord 2, the original Virus and Andromeda A6, which
is just my new baby. God, that thing is good!” he exclaims. “It’s got 16-voice,
all real analog,” he says.
Get the full story here.
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Interviews
