[A6] Future of A6

[Jeff Laity]

On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 12:37 PM, Chad Gould wrote:

>
>> What is the likelihood of an OS update for the a6 which reconsiders 
>> the
>> needs of musicians and addresses many of the problems we've been
>> complaining about since the beta cycles?
>
> Alesis is now Numark. That should say what you want to know.

Since the biggest trade show of the year (NAMM) is in one week 
(1/16-19), you might want to hold off until then before making any 
assumptions about synth software updates. The lack of responses by 
Alesis engineers doesn't mean that they don't want to answer; they are 
probably too busy to read this list right now. If they are working on a 
big project, which they are (Ion), they won't have time for A6 updates 
until that ships. And NAMM is the perfect time for a product to ship. 
So I doubt there will be any A6 updates until at least 2 months after 
the Ion ships. (Allowing time for Ion version 1.01 bug fixes.)

That said, a big software update for a synth is a great way to 
"relaunch" it, so an "A6 2.0" is not out of the question. We know that 
BT loves his A6, maybe a bank of BT programs could be included? This is 
exactly the type of thing I would have suggested when I was working 
there (1993-1999.) However, this is TOTAL SPECULATION, I no longer 
represent Alesis or work for them or anything. If I did know anything, 
this would be a blatant NDA violation so nobody should read into this.

I will be attending the NAMM show and will ask Alesis about the 
potential for A6 software updates. If someone wants to consolidate a 
prioritized list of requested features, I will pass this along to an 
engineer I know at the factory. Maybe this can be a list project -- if 
someone has a list of features and wants to keep score, we can all vote 
on features and prioritize them for Alesis. I'm sure they would like to 
have that information, and it might help the engineers sell the idea of 
an A6 update to the VPs.

Thanks, -jl