Alesis MidiVerb IV

A monkey could use this thing and get a good sound out of it. Believe me because I have just spent 6 months trying to master a quadraverb plus. This thing is very user friendly. It can make an average guitarist sound like a professional.

I'm using an American Standard Telecaster through a Hotrod Deluxe Amp (replaced the speaker to greatly improve drive channel). I have the unit plugged into the effects loop. There is absolutely no noise. I don't use any pedals in the setup because I like to keep it simple. I purchased the unit because I wanted a more presence in my sound. The reverbs are reasonable. They could be warmer. The delays are very good. The only setting I plan to use is the multi effects no. 84 which is a combination of reverb and delay. I like my sound to be as unartificial as possible. Its a great combination if you want to nail a clean Jeff Buckley like sound. The most important thing that you have to do before you will get satisfaction out of this unit is to make sure that your rig au naturale is sounding as tight as possible. Lots of tone because some of it will be eaten by this thing. The trade-off is tone for character. I use the mix at about 25% better otherwise it is too wet and artificial. Keep the reverb input down also because it is quite bright. This unit drives very well, oozing character.

Don't really trust it that much - Get surge protection

Never delt with them

If you want a Jeff Buckley sound don't buy a quadraverb as he used because you will spend 80% of your guitar playing time tweaking and 20% getting better. This unit is exceptional for the price but you have to have a good sound to start will.

It's pretty easy to use- a nice big display and several buttons making getting around the on the unit a breeze. Alesis writes pretty good manuals- this one is up to their high standards. Responds well to MIDI control. Several editors support it.

I'm running keys and vocals via the effects loops on a desk. Very quiet. Sounds digital, but pretty good.

For examples of only the MidiVerb 4 processing sounds take a look at Spider Sounds on MP3. The URL is:


http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/171/spider_sounds.html



The above sample is mostly factory presets working on a synth. Will give you a good idea of the MidiVerb 4 sounds like.

A lot of bang for the buck. Easily the class act in the price range- is not going to give you lots of strange sounds, but it does give you a decent effects that you'll be using for a long time.

Pretty good. The main knob seems a little light, but after years of use no problem.

A good unit. I'd replace it if lost. Very easy to use and edit. Excellent manual.

I've had this unit for 2.5 years; my first "pro" studio gear...The presets are good; the user programs are basically a copy of the presets you can tweak with up to 16 parameters. Editing patches is simple for a processor based unit, but give yourself about 2 weeks to learn it. The manual is very good; it doesn't read like an engineering textbook like some other Alesis products. Software version 1.04

I bought this thing first to process a guitar. Strat w/ emgs..on this it sounded just okay, a bit "thin." Sounds fuller on a humbucker equipped guitar. Then I bought a Behringer 16 channel mixer and stuck the midiverb in the auxiliary send. It is best suited here so it can process all the guitars and sound modules I have plugged into the mixer. Now, running my main tele with humbuckers thru a tube preamp directly into the mixer sounds the best...And the midiverb reverbs are excellent...I own a Roland VS recorder and the alesis effects sound much "warmer" and "fuller" than the Roland effects built into the multitracker and better than the effects in a Korg PX-3 which I use for practising. I love the reverbs, all of them... I still have not found a better sounding reverb unit, including the cheaper Lexicons, that sounds this full and lush...The sound quality of the modulation effects like the chorus and flanger are not too good- the flanger has some pretty harsh peaks that will fry any speaker so I don't use these effects. The Leslie simulator is decent. The Pitch shifter is not too good. Reverbs shine, the rest doesn't.

The display, which is nice, is fading as are the lighted buttons..I've had it for 2 and a half years

I emailed them about software upgrades a year ago and didn't hear a thing...

I play the blues, some classical, mostly mellow easy listening..I've been playing for 13 years...I own 5 guitars, and some recording stuff...If it were stolen then i would buy one for about $200 like they are going for now....Or maybe get a Q20. It was either this one or the Digitech studio 200 which was very "thin" sounding...It sounded, for lack of a better word, "fake." It definately helps me make music, the reverbs are absolutely incredible! So rich. Oh yeah, if your unit is making the hissing noise, then get a surge protector for around $40 from the computer store and hook up ALL your gear to one outlet to prevent loops. Mine made noise and I was about to toss it when I read something about ground loops and using multiple outlets in the home. Use one if you can. And, my Furman PL plus power conditioner was a waste of $140, because it makes noise, believe it or not..I am serious about getting rid of noise so I got rid of the Furman. This unit is a keeper....

I borrowed it to test drive it during i gig. I spent the night before
trying to find suitable patches. There's one thing I don't understand.
This thing has double DSP, why can't I use one program per channel?
You have to find a suitable program designed by alesis. Why can't
I put togeather for example chorus+stereo reverb, or chorus on
channel 1 and reverb on level 2? I don't want to rely only on presets when designing the fx program for a gig. Well I found a reverb +
chorus program so I could have use general reverb and a chorus for the
saxophone. Well I guess that's ease of use. You only have to use
the dial to choose a program, done.

It sounds increedibly good. The reverbs are very rich and chorus and pitch shift sounds good. I did the mistake of letting our saxophone
player get the mic with pitch shift on. He had a great time..
I hooked it up to aux send-return but there's also a mix mode so it
can be used inserted in the signal path. The reverb blended in nicely
during the performance and it sounded really sweet on the vocals during quiet passages.

Well if you rack mount it I guess you might as well forget about it.
I don't think it'll break.

They should give away t-shirts, not sell them! :)

I guess this is a great fx module for studio people looking for the
perfect reverb preset to use on a snare drum but it's not good for
live use. The presets are way too limited. Maybe I'd buy one for general reverb but I'd probably buy multiple Lexicons instead.

- This SUbMission I have just made to answer those pretensions below -
-I won't set any marks as i have already done that in last submission

So. Some of You wrote that it has too many parameters to set up. I don't agree with that as i thing 16 parameters are way too less. also help is very nice ( press and hold the buttton of interesting parameter ). Imagine having over 40 parameters and no help like in digitesh studio quad. mostly a lots of people cannot swim in settings as they can't figure out what do they do. that's beacuse of incompetence in processing techniques. sad thing ;). Let me learn something to you. to figure out what does these thing do you have to:

this example is for reverbs

1: Set all cool things to off and 0%, mix to 100%. this applies also
to filters, diffusions, swirls, predelays and gates.
2: Set decay to about 20 seconds.
3: have connected drum synth or microphone to input. the source you
use have to generate just a sharp click.
4: set all bypass (dry sound to off) on mixing console.
5: proceed with testing as follows:

play click. hear how it sounds. rotate interesting parameter to maximum. play click. see the difference. remember it. turn the parameter back off, and proceed with next.

about sound quality.

this device have to make NO NOISE at all. I have measured my own midiverb4 with laboratory equipment. over 96 dB s/n ratio is close to unmeasurable!
If You are having strong hiss.
> Make shure that You haven't too much of output and input.
> Make shure that You haven't burned adc. sometimes strong spike in input can no just kill the adc, but damage it makeing it unprecise.
> Make shure your cables are ok. use only low capacity, shielded cables. i prefer "proel".
> Read on below about power conditioning.

About FX Algorhythms.

they are way good. they are very powerful tools, till you can control them. i agree that presets are not the best... dont use them. try to make Your own reverb programs. reverbs can be made fantastically smooth and windy and also very rough and delay-like. this all is up to you - how you use it. choruses have to be used on soft pads and strings, in case you dont know.
About speaker burning.
hey, i dont think you have to keep it running at such high volume, while you test fx. i dont think that you are deaf, but it loox lyke. sorry.

Clicks between programs:
there are two cases:
1: old versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 of midiverb4 rom had this problem. this was solved in version 1.3. You can check version of your device just pressing [program] + [fx edit] and hold, while you are in program mode. rom updates (version 1.3) can be optained by contacting alesis. so visit alesis intenet site. also i can make a copy of this rom for you, but i don't know if alesis will permit me doing such...
2: Click between programs (where is performed dsp reset) may indicate a analog circuit or adc problems. this is because of a small dc amount in input.

Don't expect it to be a magic.
It is high precision very complex electronic device, which can be damaged by certain power or signal problems.

Device is very stable and in normal cases it have not to give You up.

some of you wrote having a lots of problems with backlight. there is no problem in alesis. there is problem in your power station.

backlight is way cool thing and is made up very cool way. some years ago this tecjnology would be called laike cosmic technology.
realy it is electroluminiscent pad. to make it light up You need having a high voltage e.g. about 400v. to have this done todays technics use system called impulse converter. it is used in lots of cases, where you have dc low voltage but need to have high. problem is that impulse converter make power noisy. thus it is not recomended for studio rack. therefore, if you have noticed. power adapetr for midiverb is AC/AC ! this makes easy converting ac to hi voltage ac with no noise. for this reasons there is a little trasformer inside mv4. so here it is: IF YOU ARE HAVING H/F NOISE OR L/F, DC IN POWER YOUR ARE HAVING IN YOUR SOCKET, THAN THIS IS THE KILLER...

ALWAYS USE SURGE PROTECTORS AND AC FILTERS. AND BETTER OF ALL
EACH STUDIO HAVE TO HAVE IT'S OWN POWER UPS (UNINTERUPTED POWER SUPPLY).

Power surges can damage also adc circuits and MEMORY. if dsp memory is not ok, dsp still works fine, as it is Convayer Processor. It dont care about what it is processing. so if low-bits chip (bits 12-15) is damaged it will make a quiet noise. if there is damage in higer-significance nibble - noise is more killing. If You ARE have a lot of noise and clicks give Your alesis to me of alesis sertified technican. he will easily check them. and can replace them too, of course.

email in alesis realy sucks. thats sad :(. read on my last submission.
i will tell somone in alesis to solve this. this realy frightens a lot of people. :(

Don't be angry to alesis if you are not shure about if you are not causing these problems yourself.

thanks for reading. cantact me if you want so.

Interface is way easy to understand. Menus (pages) are cool and easy to change using Dial Controller. However there is some BUTTs. There is way too few (up to 16) parameters to change. Most coolest parameters (like PitchShift amount) can not by controlled via Midi at all :(. Anyway design is cool. and makes you feel $ you have spent on it. Manual is way cool and also contains great page on Avoiding Ground Loops, which i conuldn't find anywhere. As i am also electronican i have reverse engineered ir a bit. Rom is easy checkable and replacable (as for all alesis stuff). Great is that alesis writes crom checksum on chip. Preset patches are nice, BUT too unsorted and mostly have inexpressive names. Saveing Patches is way cool thing as you can save up to 128 user programs. With names and everything. Not so good is that there are no Contrast setup for the screen.

Quality i super good. Amazing power out from 128 kByte ram, never got from any pc/mac software reverbs. This device realy gives idea about what's the difference in sounding of software and hardware fx !!! Pitchshifter is precise and fast with no Craks and low chipmunk fx. BUT some strange obertones (inharmonic) approches whil you play on lower tones. But this is ok, compared to lexicons, whoich always do crackling and gaping while shifting pitch.
As a demo for this device i use one program i created "Clouds". Name just says everything.

I realy could depend on it. however i think that power cable is too thin. i may broke if it is hardly curved (mine is still ok). Also, i still haven't taken it for a party, as i'm not sure if screen cannot be damaged by UV light.
Anyway - I have used it a lot and it had never give-up.

tonns of papers thay give in additon to manual book is promisig a mega support. but realy it don't look like so. I have found out a LOT of bugs (with pedal/midi/if) in firmware inside (latest v.1.3). I have mailedthem a lot of times with TOTALLY CLEAR stuff about bugs - also some fragments in asm as examples of problem.
They are just TOO LASY to answer my mails. This sux. I think thay could be the same lazy for sending me upgrades and manualz... :(

I am playing in a lots of musical genres. I realy care about quality noise level, spectral components e.t.c. I have played it a lot and gear i own is way combined with other manufacturer stuff. if it would be stolen i certainly would by a new one. It is reliable, cute and powerful sounding, but midi implemetation leaks... I wish i could be inthe alesis team, who developed it. I am sure I won't make the bugs it have or would be repaired them for now (created v.1.4.).
This thingy is way creative thingy, so it only helps to create music. Bed thing is that i cannot control a lots of parameters via midi.
Test mode which is created in ROM is also cool and expressive but also contains bug :(. Dsp Ram testing is also too slow...

I initially got confused with setting this unit up using the auto level sensing function believe it or not! So I was always getting a very wet signal (which really pissed me off!) before I realised what was going on (I wasn't giving a correct level into the unit).
After I worked this out, things were fine. Editing patches was really easy and to be honest there aren't really that many parameters to edit as opposed to something bigger like a TC M3000 or Lexicon PCM81 etc. I liked the reverb swirl parameter alot for making the reverb sound like it was modulated without using a chorus before it. It had (I've sold mine) a great manual (all Alesis manuals are very good!). I wasn't sure of it's OS number.

I'm not a guitarist so my opinion of this unit is in stark contrast to the many guitarists who have written in and rubbished this unit. I myself never used this unit on guitar sounds and I don't think that Alesis even designed this to be used in a full blown guitar rack system (my old Quadraverb Plus did much better at processing guitars). I'm a home studio operator and keyboard player and I used this unit mainly for it's reverbs and even for it's leslie speaker effects which I found quite good. It is a quite unit compared to my old Quadraverb Plus but I must say that whilst the reverbs were quite good for a unit of it's price, it did not compare with the great reverbs from my mates Quadraverb 2. My Alesis Wedge reverbs are much better also. I'm not sure if the Wedge algorhythms have been redesigned but they sound better! I generally liked what I could get out of this unit but let me just say that it's not the kind of unit for creating dangerous sounding weird effects, (use an Ensoniq DP, Boss SX700 or Sony HRMP5 for that). It's nice for the safe effects and I liked the delays alot. I must say that I preferred the choruses in my Quadraverb, I did not find the choruses in this unit very satisfying at all to be honest- the same applied for the flangers but they would do if it was my only fx device!!!! The pitch shifing effect was useless (as most are on this kind of unit). I ran this through an fx loop in a Spirit Studio 16/8 mixer. I must say that this unit sounded very different (ie- cleaner) than the Quadraverb Plus so they complimented each other very nicely.

I had problems with the backlight going out and had to get this replaced twice before getting another unit under warranty- this left a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth for Alesis products as the backlight also went in my Quadraverb Plus at around the same time and my S4 Plusses screen also shit itself one day although it 'fixed' itself up and I never had a problem with it afterwards!!!!!!!

I got treated OK by Alesis (Electric Factory are Australian distributors) when I had to replace my unit.

I run a midi based home studio doing small time demo work and backing tracks. I've been playing for 20 years and am a private music teacher teaching piano and organ. I traded my unit in when I bought my fantastic Yamaha O3D mixer. If I did get it stolen, I would not have gotten another one and would instead have gotten something like an Ensoniq DP2 (which I'd like to buy one day!). I liked it's ease of use and it's clean sound. It also looked good in the rack. I disliked the fact that it's backlight was unreliable, the rubber (crap!) buttons and I HATE EXTERNAL POWER SUPPLIES!!!!!!!!!! I compared it to the Yamaha REV100 and Zoom 1202 (both it's main competition at the time) but this was a much more flexible unit. I wish it looked, sounded and behaved like a rack of Lexicon, TC and Eventide outboard! (only joking). If the Midiverb was released 12 months earlier, it would have been a big hit but when it came out, there was much competition and I bought it because I got a good price on it at the time. I wouldn't say that this effects unit will go down in history as an all time classic but it got the job done for me. I think it would make a fine live processor (even though I never used it in that way) but I must say that I wouldn't use it as my one and only effects unit.

For having such a big display... it could be easier to program. The
datawheel is real bad... it skips around a lot when trying to scroll through programs

I find the reverbs pretty much useless... very harsh and not musical
at all. The flanges and the chorus are just a little better. All
I really use this thing for now is the multi-tap delays, which it
actually does quiet nicely.

It is very dependable, reliable. I have used it in studio and on
stage with no problems.

No need for support

I use this thing for dance music. The multi-tap delay is great
on keyboards... you can do some interesting things with the drums
too. But forget about the reverbs... forget about the "multi"
patches... they might sound sort of cool, but they have no musical value.

I've had this unit about 6 months now. The user interface is very easy to use. Editing is also easy. The manual is adequate to get started, but didn't do much to help me get sounds I wanted. I'm a bit miffed that even though the unit's description says "MidiVerb 4's MIDI controller routing and assignable footswitch input, you'll have complete creative control over every aspect of your sound", it doesn't allow me to use a continuous controller to set delay time.

I use this unit in the effects loop of a Mesa Boogie Mk IIB with my '67 Telecaster, and my 80's Stratocaster. Very quiet. The sound is a bit harsh and I just cannot get the lush chorusing my old Electro Harmonix Echo Flanger, or my Digitech DSP128 gets; both of which got very noisy and unusable. I now use the Boogie's (very nice sounding)reverb to get a little more control over the chorusing and flanging algorithms, but the chorusing and flanging makes the guitar sound out of tune.

No problems. It's dependable. I could get by using the Boogie without it so I don't even consider a backup.

No email support. If they don't do email, they should say so on the web site. They answer the phone though. I got enough information to help reduce the harshness but the lushness just couldn't be found.

It's OK for the Contemporary Christian I play in Church worship services. I do not use it for the big band stuff I do with my '68. Gibson L5CES. If it were stolen, I'd happily get something else. Though I like the low noise, the harsh chorusing/flanging and bother me. I'm getting some new gear and will probably replace it, but it's not a high priority.

Its an easy to use module...

sound quality is good.. i own 2 of them, one for keys, one for guitar, its best with keys... flange could be better, leslie is pretty good.

I own 2 of them, had one for a few years without problems, bought another one used, it fryed the 3rd day i had it... a local repair shop told me how to fix it, an easy problem.. one word of advice.. spike protector, power conditioner.... dont leave this unti plugged in.

when i did get ahold of them ( not thru email, they never responded)... they were ok.

I play ambient/alternative/progressive rock ( a.p.a rock)