[A6] micron musings

Fri Sep 2 06:52:45 PDT 2005

I agree with you on the bass "oomph" part.
I found I had to spend ages tweaking and applying various tricks  to get 
really bone-rattling bass drones. Then I got my hands on a mint condition 
Roland Juno-106, starting playing around with it, BOOM, insta-bowel-turning 
bass with minimum trouble (that fat chorus helps).
Even the strings sounds have so much bass in them I had to EQ it down. Never 
had that "problem" with the Ion.

On the other hand, I won myself a pair of fantastic Alesis monitors in an 
Alesis Ion patch competition last year. There were 4 categories, bass, lead, 
sfx and pad. I sent in all four, and a month later I won second price. 
(First price being an Andromeda). Two Alesis Prolinear 720DSP moni's, among 
the most expensive in the Alesis line. Ironically, I won in the Bass 
category with a superhuge, 3-osc droning bass sound (unlike all the other 
entries that were short snappy variants) with phasing in the background.
Those speakers are worth more than my Ion initially even (I bought it only 6 
months after it was released), so I guess it evened itself out :)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard" <richard at chorlton.com>
To: <a6 at code404.com>
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 9:58 AM
Subject: [A6] micron musings

> Hi
>
> I'm late to the party I know, but I finally got my hands on a a micron and 
> thought I'd give an Andromeda users comment on it:
>
> Firstly it feels great, good keyboard, love the rubber the knobs... the 
> layout is great, your hand just sits by the control knob and just feels 
> right and it was flying around it in minutes ... nice feeling.
>
> Secondly the OS is AMAZING - a brilliant piece of design which is soooo 
> much easier to use than the Andromeda  - despite mostly using only 1 
> knob! - the microns setup mode is so much easier than A6 mixmode and you 
> can flip between them without loosing data... the navigation is really a 
> delight and a credit to Alesis that they put in the time and energy to get 
> it right... in particular it really kills that old yamaha/roland/akai/korg 
> page after page way of doing things. The manual is excellent too. Patterns 
> and rhythms are nice extras... the assignable controllers are very well 
> thought out... you really want to use them. This makes me think the A6 OS 
> could be utterly, and I mean utterly, transformed if Alesis ever chose to 
> reconsider the A6 in the light of what they know now... yeah I know, 
> dreaming....
>
> Soundwise, well, I  like it, the extra filters are great, and overall the 
> sound is smoother than the nords (the only modern VA I have to compare it 
> with) and the filter movements feel nice, like you can feel them 
> physically moving which is not normally the case with digi stuff. Does it 
> sound analogue? No, not really, it sounds smooth digi, clean digi, nice 
> digi... but hearing all 8 layers of it sequenced it sounds a little 
> samey... you start to hear that lack of weight and movement... And some 
> animation is lacking the filters -  only analogue filters have that IMO. 
> And basswise, well its not bad but I have an A6, and an evolver, nord 
> modular, and a matrix1000 sitting here and it pales next to all of them 
> for bass, I think Native Instrument softsynths will do a better bass too - 
> so I wouldn't get one if your looking for a bass machine. I guess I might 
> revise this view when I get more deeply into patching but that is how it 
> seems at the moment. Does it sound like an A6? errm no, really not, its 
> too small and neat and tidy. But because of its design you can do some 
> pads and things with are reminiscent of it... which leads me to:
>
> What surprised me and what delighted me was that I already knew how to use 
> it : the structure of thing is so utterly based on the A6, right down to 
> the pre and post mixer sections etc. It almost is a scaled down digi A6 - 
> only everything about it is smaller. This meant that I knew how to 
> construct sounds immediately and think I grasped almost everything the 
> machine does in 2 or 3 hours, this is a record for me with any synth. So 
> if you have adjusted to an A6 way of thinking this is a great bonus 
> reward - I can sit with it in front of the telly keeping an eye on 
> cricket, sit in bed with a cup of tea and do some patching... I can carry 
> it between studios, take it home, sit in a coffee house with it... I've 
> never had a keyboard that wants to be used so much... and I think using 
> this may even improve my A6 patching...
>
> I paid £200 for this thing used.... 10% of what the A6 cost new - that is 
> just amazing, how the heck anyone is making a living from that I don't 
> know... but its really a delightful little synth which I would heartily 
> recommend, especially for people who already have an A6...
>
> Richard
>
>
>
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