Alesis MidiVerb IV

very easy to get a good sound out of this unit.
ediring patches is quite hard, but you will make it if you have ?ver had other effect-processors
the manual is very good and it helps a lot.

i can get the great 80's hard rock guitar sounds out of this unit
the delays and reverbs are absolutely amazing!
and the pitchshift is good too
i use this unit with my custom warmoth guitar, ADA mp-1 and marshall 9005 poweramp
the flanger is quite noisy but a noisegate will fix it for you

no problems so far.
i would gig with it without a backup, don have any :-)

never dealt with them, never had too.
but the online support is great.

i play 80's hardrock/metal and this unit works great for that kind of music.
i've been playing fot 4,5 years and as i said above i use it with my ADA mp-1
if it where stolen i would beat the shit out of the asshole who stole it, and it's impossible to lose a rackunit, so won't bother answering that question.
I love everything in this unit accept for the noise and that it's pretty hard to dial.
this thing is a hell lot better than the ART sgx lt
wich i replaced with the Alesis. i choose this one before the quadraverb because of the pitchshifter( wich in this one includes octaver and harmony pitchshifting)
the only thing i wish this unit had built in is a good noisegate.

Sound quality was great (if it worked)

This processor was very unreliable. Broke and now just collects dust.

When it worked it sounded great however, It was in the shop for repairs three times the first year. Broke a forth time three months out of warranty and the factory declined the repair under warranty. I wouldn't recommend spending any money on Alesis products at all.
I have a project studio and I have purchased many products (Effects,Keyboards,Mixers,etc...)None of them Alesis!

Divido mi opinion para este apartado en 2 puntos;
el primero la programacion de patches y el segundo la manipulacion real de estos.

En cuanto a la programacion; el uso de capas (leyers o pages) hace facil el mezclar los ditintos efectos. Cada parametro tiene una peque?a barra grafica que lo hace intuitivo y comprencible desde el primer encuentro. El defecto en este punto seria que cuando estas listo para editar tu efecto no te muestra el nombre del efecto que borraras, eso es vital sobre todo cuando ya has editado un numero superior a los bancos libres.

En cuanto a la manipulacion, el Midiverb 4 deja mucho que desear. Al no tener un panel numerico el paso de un efecto a otro en tiempo real es simplemente imposible asi como modificar los parametros en tiempo real. Probe este aparato con el "footswich" pero definitivamente el pedal debio haber sido de "expresion".

El MIDI y los controles divididos para el volumen del INPUT son muy latosos, sin hablar de que el "Auto Level Control" es una funcion inutil.

La calidad del sonido es realmente buena, con su extra?o convertidor a 18 bits y un sampleado a 48khz, con lo cual cumpliria con los requicitos minimos para trabajo actual de estudio, mas al no poseer una "salida digital" esta calidad puede degradarce en los procesos posteriores.
Aunque los efectos suenan cristalinos, libres de interferencias y nos ofrece buenos parametros para modificarles, en general suenan un poco exagerados para mi gusto.

El problema principal de uso, es lo que primero asumes que te fallara... el control de Value. Es muy fragil y era obio que seria el control que mas se usaria, con el tiempo perdio firmeza y me brincaba un par de bancos, aunque es mas bonito, prefiero los botones up & down de los antiguos Midiverbs.

El otro gran problema... estos equipos usan un eliminador de corriente un tanto particular, cuando por alguna razon no esta disponible te quedas sin procesador ya que ademas de caros son casi imposibles de comprar por separado. Alguna vez tube que fabricarme uno yo mismo, mas es aclaro qie no fue por falla si no por extravio.

Un detalle curioso, despues de no usarlo durante un a?o, mis bancos se borraron, sin embargo la bateria aun funciona.

EL manual solo venia en ingles. Fuera de eso Alesis tiene en su sitio la descarga del mismo. El ocho principalmente fue por la dificultad para conseguir el eliminador de corriente.

A favor:
-Gran calidad de sonido.
-Buena calidad general de sus componentes.
-Edicion de "patches" sencilla.
-Conectividad sencilla.
-Buen precio.

En contra:
-Carece de algun tipo de AMP EG, filtro y distorciones, asi como el
tiempo del Delay es muy corto.
-Algunos efectos son imposibles de usar simultaneamente.
-Pocas prestaciones para "recitales en directo".
-El cambio de "patch" genera un silencio del efecto en proceso.
-Carece una salidad digital.

This is my only beef with the unit. Needs some knobs to go with the buttons...too DOS oriented. Not incredibly difficult to understand, as a matter of fact very straightforward.

Not as good as my Lexicon LXP-15, but a damn close second. Reverbs on the Alesis are darker than on the Lexi. Great reverbs, nice chorus and flange as well. A/B'd with my Lexi and these two are close!

Owner it for 3 years and no issues thus far.

N/A

I use this in the effects rack of my home studio, along with Lexicon LXP-15, Joe Meek MQ3, ART Pro VLA, ART eq, TASCAM CDRW-700, and TASCAM 488 MKII.
This is a great sounding unit. Anyone who says differently either does not know how to dial in the unit properly or can't tell shit from shinola.

firstly, i really didn't care for any of the preset sounds...they all seem to be too overblown, too overdone, too much of everything...just way too wet....i tried tweaking a couple of them to get a more dry/less wet blend, and they stayed too wet clear to the point where the mix was 99:1 dry to wet...this is totally useless to me...i prefer fx that have subtlety, and this just simply didn't meet my needs...others may like it but i don't find it very good at all...my application for this unit was in the fx loop on a marshall JCM900 head driving a vintage Hiwatt 4X12 with Fane speakers....after a couple of trials in rehearsal, i finally gave up...it's been a dust collector since.....difficult to program, although it's obvious that deep programming is possible...i don't have the time or desire to get that involved in something...i need a simple unit that will give me what i need without my having to spend hours with it....

sounds are transparent, with little noise, but as i said, they're just too overdone...i also have a digitech tsr12 and digitech dsp16, and i like them better

seems well made and never gave me any trouble, outside of the trouble with the rack ears outlined below...i'd rather have an integral AC cord than a wall wart, particularly in light of the fact that the wall wart is 9VAC, which will be really tough to replace when it dies, and all wall warts die eventually...

one big thing that bugs me about this unit is that the metal that forms the front panel/rack ears seems extremely brittle...the top two holes in the rack ears have broken out, simply as a result of being in a rack and being transported that way...it was never abused in any way, and i've never seen this happen with any other brand...i would not buy another of these units....

Pretty easy to use....although you should have at least some experience with other effects processors.
The manaul is very good and helps a lot.

The sound quality is absolutly amazing! Sounds very proffesional.
It sounds great on all units, i use it with a mic, for vocals, or with electric guitar through the effects loop of my randall rh200 head, it sound exellent on both.
Specially with the guitar....I use the effects both on the clean channel and distortion channel.
You can reaalt get "Tube" sound with the reverb and delay.
The range of the effect is amazin too...and the numbers of parameters available for editing, the cascade option is useful too.
The reverb combined with chorus or delay or just reverb makes solos come alive and cut through the mix.
There is NO NOISE at all from this unit, if you tweak the input and output level correctly, and it doesn't color the sound at all when bypassed.

No problems so far

Very quick responses to emails.

I play a lot of styles mainly metal.
It sounds exellent for children of bodom or nighwish sounds...
Also very good for metallica ( which I am a BIG fan of )
I can get any sound of any of those bands with almost precise quality... the rh200 head with a graphic eq is a must have!
Absolutly the best in the price range under 400-500$.

Friendly interface. Very good reference manual.

Very clean sound. I use with bass and works fine. Very good reverbs. Great chorus, flange and Leslie simulator. The delays are very good and clean without "digital taste".

Sound Quality is good. Not noisy for me. There are better units in the market, but the Midiverb is cheaper.

No problem. It's made in Taiwan... but all the components and parts are good.

Not need it.

*** You can get any manual at the alesis site.

A very good unit for the price. It's very simple of use. Limited in patch configurations. You can only modify an existent patch, but this is enought for me. Works fine at studio and live situations.

Works fine with bass and vocals. I'm happy whith it.

The use basically revolves around finding sounds you like and writing down what they might be good for. It is really annoying though how there are no preset "normal" recording effects like basic reverb. I had to spend a lot of time editing a lot of different effects just to get a not so noisy regular reverb effect. Editing can be annoying because you can't do certain things. Each sound has a different set of parameters, so you can't edit exactly what you want. For example, one of my favorite effects on the midiverb4 is this slow tremelo effect, but I wish it had a little reverb. However, "decay," is not a parameter option on that particular effect so I'm out of luck.

This thing is way way way too noisy on a lot of the effects. It also "doesn't like" being paired with certain other effects and amps. Most of the neat effects have too much noise which makes them almost useless to record with, thus making the machine itself sort of useless to me.

Never gigged with it.

Lots of people own the MidiVerb4 because it's one of the only effects processors of its kind within a very reasonable price range. However, the bottom line for me is that it isn't all that great to record with due to noise and lack of certain qualities on the better effects. It always seems like it just does half of what I want it to do. I'll admit though, I've never gigged with it, so it might be better at live effects.

Manual was ok, I bought the Midiverb 4 to replace my Midiverb 3 that I had used for years. The sounds seem tailored more for keyboards than guitar. Because of that, it was tough to get any good sounds.

I used it in the effects loop of a Mesa Dual Recifier, with a Morley wah and Boss Distortion pedal up front. I couldn't find a chorus that worked for guitar, they were all too dark and intense. Verbs and Delays were fine.

The first one I ordered had a defect, the bypass LED stayed on all the time. I called Musician's Friend, and they sent me another one (after it was on back order for about ten days), and it had the same problem! Since I didn't like the sounds anyway, I got a refund. I called Alesis and they said it's a known issue with a batch of them. The Bypass LED was wired in backwards. Nevertheless, my old Midiverb 3 was very reliable, and had this not had a factory defect I would call it very reliable.

Customer support was ok, can't complain.

I play dance & rock covers from '70's - today, and have been playing guitar for 32 years. I don't understand why any guitarists would like the Midiverb, the sounds suck for guitar. Unless they're all like me, willing to put up with something for price and convenience and reliability, which this where this unit shines. I bought a Midiverb 4 because the price was right, and the selection of AFFORDABLE rackmount effects is very limited, especially with the current trend of putting the whole unit on the floor in front of the guitar player. I've seen gallons of beer and coke products dumped on my pedalboard over the years by drunk people in the crowd (on a good night :) and my experience tells me to keep nothing more than controller switches on the floor, and keep the electronics in the rack whenever possible. BTW, I finally shelled out a little more money and bought a Rocktron Xpression, and I like that a lot more than the Midiverb 4.

Extremely easy to use for a rack processor. Editing is straightforward, and the manual is very good.

I'm using this one in several setups, for acoustic and electric guitars, mandolin and as studio processor. The reverbs are excellent, with smooth tails and lots of parameters for those who like tweaking. In a couple of the dual configs there is a little hiss. Pitch shifter, delays and chorus are great.

I haven't had any problems so far, and I'm actually gigging without a backup. None of the Alesis products I've used (NanoVerb, NanoCompressor, mixers, pres) have ever died on me, so I'm pretty confident about this one.

Can't comment. Service for Alesis products down here in Argentina is quite good, though, so I guess they are good.

I use it for several types of music, mostly instrumental music, but some electronic stuff too. If ti were stolen and I could get one for the same price I would go for it. I definitely like it.