Alesis ION

this is a follow up to my previous review here.
enjoyed the knobs, but disliked the menu design for modulation matrix.

very flexible design, but keyboard feels a bit cheap to play. real-time MIDI tweaking is great. arpeggiator is very limited.

creates good classical synth sounds, with the exception of emulating Roland JP-8 filter resonance.

well, mine broke down after a few months. I got it repaired and traded it in when I bought an Akai MPC5k. The MPC5k has a slimmed down version of the Alesis ION, but the modulation matrix is removed.

I got it repaired through the music shop. apparently some production series had bad amplifiers on output, or faulty knobs. It took 4 weeks to get it back...

I'm currently planning to buy a Waldorf Blofeld as a replacement.I enjoyed all the knobs and the analog sound of my earliest synth's. that's why I bought the ION in the first place
If you buy a second hand ION, make sure that all knobs, LED's and outputs are working, before you cash up ;-)
Akai has their new Miniak, that contains the full ION/Micron WITH the matrix modulation.

I had no manual when I got mine. The presets were 90% no very useful for "normal" music. When I say normal I mean music which could theoretically be produced with more conventional instruments, or at least more conventional old-school synthesizer sounds. Alesis seems to have focused (like most VA manufacturers) on wowing those of us are into industrial, trance and dance genres. But this is funny, see, because when they say the Ion is capable of emulating old analog synths verbatim, well...it's mostly true. Nothing else comes quite as close in the VA world. I guess they just figured that IF you were an old-school synth enthusiast you'd be creating your own patches and most trance and dance people like to tweak existing sounds but not spend so much time programming. SO the presets favor such people. Polyphony is not much. I don't remember what it is and I sold my Ion several years agao (SO-O-O F'ING STUPID!). It's not much more than it needs to be for normal hands on playing. That's fine with me. I don't use sequencers, I record direct. Maybe occasionally use the arpeggiator when I just feel like playing lead with another synth and let the Ion do the work. Editing patches is very straightforward for anyone who has programmed the older real analogs. Same thing with a few more modern tricks which are easy to learn. It can get a little involved when sifting through the mod-matrix...which is AWESOME, duuuudes! Once you start doing that you'll find that. It's one thing that really makes the Ion a modern synth even though its other architecture is modeled on the classic synths a bit.

I found the keyboard to be quite servicable and fun to play. No, it's not set up to be your main keyboard or controller. 49 keys is just enough to be able to really get into it with other musicians in some kind of gig (if this was your only synth). Any less and both hands start fighting with each other for notes. 49 is just enough to enjoy it. I have actually composed the core of several songs on the Ion (filling in around it with guitars, drums and adlibs on a Korg N5ex). Since my style is admittedly pretty damned unique, I might refer to it as "Softwave" in some cases. That is, a different take on semi-psychedelic New Wave music with more traditional beats and highly acoustic sounds supporting the Ion (or any VA, really) which is used as a strong bass/rhythm or lead intrument which is used to lay the first tracks of a song. Music conceived through a synthesizer, but which eventually invites much more acoustic elements into the mix once the synth lays down the foundation. My Ion was perfect for this. The only other synth I owned which allowed me to continue to develop this musical style was the Novation K-Station. I think perhaps Novation comes the closest of any other VA synth to what the Ion does.
As far as I know the Ion has no normal expansion capabilities (i.e. cards or boards, etc), but you can download new patches easily I am told. The arpeggiator works nicely with quite a few creative possibilities. No sequencer though. Not enough polyphony anyway.

There is absolutely nothing realistic about it, nor is there supposed to be. There are a few nice organs and EP's. These are ION sounds, and not at all supposed to represent classic sounds at all. However, they sound pretty good and unique! Alesis invented something new with these classically inspired patches, basically. The Ion EP is very soft and warm, like a firm pillow. Maybe even a cross between an EP and a mellow organ. The rest of the memory is taken up by mostly very wierd and unique sounds. It sounds very truly analog (although it's not) but it can do things with that basic sound that no real analog synth could do! The distortion is really cool when used in conjunction with the mod wheel. My GOD! You can almost get a funky guitar strumming modulated envelope sound. The tone is NOT the same as an electric guitar, but the ACTION is. Something Lenny Kravitz might get into. Seriously! Chunka-chunka-chunka br-a-aap! Something that really makes you want to hump something! :-)
As I was saying earlier, I enojoyed composing with the Ion. It's great in my case for laying down a few inspired tracks and then eventually embellishing them with other parts and sounds. But the Ion sets the pace and tone. You can really build off the sounds produced by this synth. Alot of synthesizers create dead ends when you lay down tracks with them because then you have to find the perfect complimentary patches for what you created. With the Ion a few inititial tracks sound full and juicy without creating any limitations, wheras a sharper VA would immediately set a limited humber of directions you could go with your composition. I have only found the same use for a Novation K-Station played via a larger controller keyboard with mod-wheels. Novation's sound is kind of soft and juicy too. Like bubble gum! And not hard rainbow candy like a Waldorf or a Virus. My rating for this catagory is based on how the Ion compared to real analog synths.

Buuilt like a Volvo! Tough. Boxey. Metallic. Good Euro-style controls and not Japanese techno anime spaceship buttons with multilayered display. Just good clean simplicity, as simple yet unsparing as you could get. Great. But one gripe I DID have about my Ion is that it often produced a slight hum which didn't bother you if you had it cranked and were jamming, but ease back a little and then you hear it and smirk. So maybe that flunks it right out of the live scene for some. If not for that I'd LOVE to have an Ion along on a gig.

Never dealt with them.

I WANT ANOTHER ONE! Or a Micron at least. I'm even considering selling my Micro Q to afford one. Ion was my first VA synth and my third synth period. I have also owned Novation K-Station, Alesis QS6.2, Roland JV-1080, Kurzweil K2000R, Kawai K3M, Yamaha TG77 + SY77 + SY22, Korg DW8000, Korg Wavestation, Waldorf Micro Q, E-mu's Morpheus + B3 + ESI32, Korg N5ex, Casio CZ3000. Alot of stuff. My best recordings feature Ion, N5ex, QS6.2, and JV1080.
If the Ion had 61 keys like its "big" brother Andromeda it would be a plus. I think to have the Ion positioned right above an Alesis QS7 or similar would be my ultimate setup.

Best user interface I've ever used, uncluttered spaciously laid out silky smooth continuous controllers that are fixed to the panel (so no wobble)with an edit button for each section if you need to get deeper. The envelope buttons can feel a little awkward at first being over the level/rate controls but you soon get use to it.
The decent large LCD automatically jumps to whatever parameter your editing and gives a nice graphic of waveforms, envelopes ect and also has a small sub menu at the bottom for more in depth parameters which is a simple back and forth affair to get to whatever you need.
I'm not a newcomer to synths but I pretty much had this synth licked inside and out in just over an hour.
Some people moan about the LCD being flat however I have my Ion mounted quite lower down so it's not an issue.

Only 8 voice 4 part but not a major issue as I use one 5 voice poly part and three mono parts and there's no need to layer sounds as it sounds pretty phat already. It also keeps the cost down as with say a Virus your paying more for polyphony and mutiFX.

The overdrive FX are excellent for giving this synth the grunge of a real analogue at it treats each voice separately so chords don't sound a mess. The other regular FX are a little disappointing but you do get four outputs so external processing is easy enough.

Sadly isn't now discontinued giving the Micron a few extra features like reverb and a simple sequencer.

Keyboard feels a little cheaper than some synths but I've had no trouble with it although I'm not really a player as such. The three mod wheels are nice to use and glow red when moved which looks really cool.

The synth engine is pretty comprehensive and gives you everything you need this side of a modular; X3 VCO with continuous wavform shaping, FM, ringmod, twin multimode filters with various routing options, 16 path mod matrix, X4 banks of 127 memories, 3 very comprehensive envelope generators with various looping and level stages which can be as simple or as complex as you like and is another virtue that puts this synth ahead of most.

First thing is NO STEPPING thanks to the high resolution 12 bit encoders that is soooo much better than the naff old 127 MIDI standard and gives the synth a quality feel and fine tuning ability of programming a real vintage analogue.

The waveforms are decent enough with a slightly nasally vintage 'US' sound about them, not bright as say a Q or Nord but this adds to the synths warm analogue factor.

The filters are the best sounding I've encountered on any VA and do some very convincing emulations of the real analogues they're named after. Ok they are not a 100% substitute than the real thing (no digital synth is) but they sound good (especially the Moog and TB)and as most synths are judged on the quality of their filters you certainly get your moneys worth with the variety on offer here which you'd be hard pressed to get on any other VA. The comb and other 'none analogue' filters are also a bonus to the synths sonic pallet.

Alesis have tried really hard to get rid the harsh side effects of digital sound and the overall tone has an attenuated (similar to the earlier Nords) quality too it in an attempt to keep the sound as warm as possible but I find a little external high end eq boost brings back a little sparkle and when, as previously mentioned, you use the drive FX wisely you can get some very rich analogue sounds that sound very convincing and whilst purists will always nit pick that it doesn't sound totally analogue it really doesn't sound a typical digital synth either.

In short a very rich sounding polysynth that comes closer to the analogue sound (especially with resonant filter sounds) than any other VA I've tried. Not an ideal synth for bright airy pads but it certainly has a warm individual character of its own and would compliment any setup.

Imho the presets are pretty lame and don't really show off the synths sonic pallet but this is a programmers synth so it's not a biggie.

Solid with no software glitches that I've encountered, very solid build quality with, decent (if a little small) buttons and silky smooth knobs that are attached to the front panel.

Discontinued a couple of years back but I guess parts will still be about for a while yet.

Great value easy to use polysynth that does a great impression of the vintage classics of the past and a lot more in a modern reliable digital package.
An ideal synth for those wanting to learn analogue style synthesis on hardware thanks to the excellent UI whilst enough depth for sound experimentation for the more experienced synth user.

The presets sound okay, standard VA stuff. Best to ditch and create something on your own.

Editing patches is a breeze. No patch editor necessary, as this may be one of the single most intuitive keyboards I have ever played.

Did not even need to bother to look into the manual, and I was already messing around with the more complex functions of this synth.

It is an 8-voice VA. It has some built in effects. I wish I can go through the features in all of its glory, but it is rather cut and dry, 3 osc., 2 filters (16 filter choices), and mod-matrix, and lots of knobs. It is how a VA should be...an analog, but some perks of being digital. Oh it has a really nice display too.

This is where I love this unit. Honestly, I don't know about aftertouch, but it does have velocity. I am not really going to concern about that and get to the nitty gritty.

This thing is a beatiful VA. Still. The very fact Alesis discontinued this keyboard and kept the micron around is kind of surprising. Yes, they both sound the same.

I have owned nearly 24 vintage synths. Ensoniq sq-80, Korg Polysix, Roland JX-8p, JX-10, Several Sequential Circuits keyboards ( Including a Prophet VS), a Moog Memorymoog (which died on me, RIP).

I have also owned numerous VA's all that I found disappointing. I will note, I never did get a waldorf, or Virus...but save for those...very few companies were left untouched. Roland, Korg, a Darkstar, a Nord Lead, and on and on.

When it gets down to it, when I compare in my head...the Alesis is as close to the weighty analog monsters as you can get. It has the certian it there with regards to how it sounds. I am going to say, it sounds closer to the roland and Oberheim side of things sometimes, but I have delved into Yamaha's analog polysynths with this keyboard, just accidentally. The reason why...this thing actually paid attention to the subtle differences in filters between the machines. It is one thing to have a low pass, bandpass, and hi pass filter with 2/4 pole system, its another to offer 16 different types. Oh the modulation matrix helps as well. Yeah, not something I found on my old rolands so much, but routing is a huge feature to some synths. My SQ-80 for example depends on it.

I could go on and on, but there is so much this synth does right, and the payoff is in how it sounds. I would say its not purebread analog, but it certianly competes with the best hybrids out there (SQ80, Juno 106, JX-8p/10, etc), if not hands down beats them. While its no waldorf or virus, its worth the price of admission. One to keep the long time synth player like me very happy.

Great sounds come with very little effort, and this is the mark of a great VA. Emulation is important, but ease of use, and ease to get what you want is key as well. And the fact I could get a great sounding Oberheim pad in the matter of minutes that was nearly identical to one I created on an OB-8 that took me nearly an hour to create, speaks volumes of how versatile this synth is.

By the way, this is a synth, and I am judging it as such. Beautiful pads, leads, basses, complex randomness...oh can this synth do complex synthesis brilliantly. I am not looking for realism, I am looking for an instrument that can sound unique and synthy.

I heard it can be glitchy, but this thing is good enough to gig.

never used it.

I rate this a 10, because it is a fantastic value. While it only has 8 voices of poly, so did my jx-8p, and it was my favorite that I ever owned. The poly does not hold this keyboard back. Its a VA, that kind of shares the limitations of analogs...who cares.
The fact that these are going for around $400 used is a bargain. Nothing in its price range is as brilliant, and as intuitive, and in fact it kind of beats stuff out of its price range.

What made Alesis cancel this is beyond me. Yes, the micron is nice, and has some additional features, but it is not comparable to this affordable master piece, that brings real time control synthesis at a budget price. I am hoping Alesis only retired it because it was planning Ion 2. The truth is, while it is a great machine, it can use improvements like anything else. It will be a mistake for Alesis to stay out of the full control market too. This is the one thing they do MUCH better on a great budget than the Japanese rivals. The fusion was a mistake, the Japanese just do workstations to damn well. Alesis refocus! You make a better budget competitor to Clavia, Access and Waldorf on the VA front than you do making dime a dozen romplers.

I would replace this in a heartbeat, I am honestly wondering why I took so long getting one, as they were always inexpensive.

Again this is a fantastic synth for the money. So it deserves a ten here, if only because it is worth every penny plus some. Please Alesis, the discontinuation of the Ion was a mistake, bring it back, and if possible, bring it back better (yet still affordable, keep it under $700).

OS v106
presets are fair, but not top notch
great with all the knobs, but the modulation matrix takes time to master. manual is not much help to understand the synth structure.
all my older synths had a graphic structure to explain the sound flow.

8 voices is OK. Keyboard is mediocre. FX are OK, but I miss reverb for live performance.Midi realtime tveaking is great.

great VA synth sound. no acoustic sounds and no sample sounds, so it's not a workstation all-in-one machine. sounds are very dynamic and respond to velocity, mod-wheels and knobs like a analogue machine.
the Roland Jupiter filters are lame and have no resonance feedback. other filters emulations are very realistic.

I do miss my old Jupiter-6. Why did I sell that beauty 5 years ago?!
I wouldn't take that machine on tour, but I see no reason not to to bring my Ion in a gigbag.

If I was to buy a new machine again, I would try to get me an Andromeda or the new Prophet 8.

This is an addendum to my previous review of the Ion. I've played with it for 5 months now. A couple of things to add; the keyboard scanning circuit as a major flaw when it comes to velocity, as the black keys are twice as sensitive as the white ones. So it's near impossible to have a consistent control over it when using it as a control parameter.

Second, the mod wheels are glitchy, especially when moving them slowly.

Third, a bug in the noise generator software produces a short looping-type sound from time to time when using the white noise source. (a known bug on the part of Alesis but no other software update is planned yet to correct it and other bugs too, since the synth has been discontinued)

Other than that everything else is as delightful as when I first bought it; the analog sounding oscillators and filters, the full control via the knobs, the reasonable price, the (almost all) metal casing sturdiness, the display...

Using OS 1.06
Presets are not as good as they could have been. But they're a great way to start by tweaking them! Anyone who has ever used or played with an analog synth will feel right at home. The high resolution of the pots (knobs) was a huge selling point for me. When creating sounds, I don't feel at all limited by the lack of resolution of the front panel controls like on soooo many other VA synths out there, with their 127 or so values! This baby has 8192 possible values!! And a bonus is that this eliminates ALL undesirable stair-stepping or quantization artifact when tweaking in real-time in live situation.

Editing patches on the Ion is a breeze, thanks to a well designed layout. Although some parameters could benefit from having their own knob like portamento, or glide rate. That can be solved by assigning the second mod wheel to that parameter though.

The manual that came with my unit was outdated. I bought the Ion brand new and it had the latest OS already installed at the factory, but the manual was for OS 1.0 . Not a big deal, since there wasn't any major changes, except a lot of corrected bugs. I seldom needed to consult it anyway.

The 160x160 LCD display is great for the graphical info it provides, and is such a relief from the usual 2 lines display found on other VA synths! Although the angle of view is a problem. No matter what the contrast level you set, you have to lean a bit over it to have a better view. They should have provided a way of tilting it. But it's still readable sitting down.

The gradually lit mod wheels are eye candy and are sure to make a good visual impression. One curious thing; there is only one LED displaying the LFO speed, even though there are TWO lfos. Would it have cost so much more to put a second LED for visual speed reference on LFO 2? And also that same flashing LED doesn't speed-up or slow down the flashing rate when the LFO speed is changed by a modulation source. Only if you tweak the LFO speed knob on the front panel. Maybe in a future OS revision? (I'm dreaming I know)

8 voices polyphony. For a synth well under $1000 is okay. I'd rather have a great sound with a somewhat limited polyphony, than a lot of awful sounding voices. Although this limit can greatly reduce the benefit of the synth being 4 parts multi-timbral.

Keyboard action. Well this has been a subject of a lot of criticism, but frankly it is exactly the same as my trusty old Roland MKII MIDI controller. AND is still better than my Moog Rogue which has no velocity and needs frequent maintenance for bad electrical contacts. The feel is the same as almost all the vintage synths it emulates. I would have liked another octave on it though.

No expansion capability, and only MIDI SysEx way of loading and saving patches or set-ups. Knobs will send either NRPN or CC values (menu option in OS 1.06).

Arpeggiator on-board with only presets patterns, not programmable (a shame). It's okay, but the Micron (smaller brother of the Ion) has a much improved one and a step sequencer much more useful.

This thing was designed as a cheaper alternative to the very expensive Andromeda A6. And a great job it does too! I've owned and played with a few real analog synths in my years, and I owned (and still own) some other VA synths too (Moog Rogue, Moog Opus 3, Korg MS20, Korg EX8000, Roland JX8P, Novation Nova, Korg MS2000, Roland JP8080, Roland SH32 etc etc... you get the idea) so I kind of know what I'm comparing it with.

I'll say this; it displays one of the best (if not THE best) analog emulated sound of all the VA synths I've heard so far. The fact that there are many filter types emulated (from Moog to ARP and Oberheim and more) contributes greatly to the diversity of the timbres you can create. The Moog filter isn't EXACTLY IDENTICAL to the Moog ladder filter it emulates, but unless you can directly compare it to a real Moog standing next to it, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference! Great work by the Ion team of engineers, who had such vintage instruments available as a reference.

Onboard effects? Pretty useless, except for some chorus and flanger, but not much else. Oh yeah, there's a distortion effect too, with a few emulated styles like Tube Amp and Fuzz, but nothing to write home about. Being digital in nature they're very quiet (no noise). They're okay I guess.

No aftertouch, only velocity and release velocity (controllable modulation source on key release) with adjustable curve and sensitivity.

The early units (remember this synth came out in early 2003) had some build quality issues, like bad pots, and poor quality output transistors, and some defective memory chips (the content of which could become corrupted). But according to Alesis, all those things are supposed to have been corrected. This model has been discontinued, although at the time of writing this review, there are still some brand new units left in stores around the world.
I had mine about a month now, so I can't really tell if it will last. Although the casing is all metal and feels very sturdy, as do all the knobs on it (they also have a very nice smooth quality feel to them, no wobbly pots here!)
Because of early units being of poor quality, I'll give it only a 7. If you want to buy one used, ask how old is the unit and test it thoroughly.

None needed so far...

For that price and all the features and the great sound, it is certainly worth every penny. If it were stolen, I'd buy another (new) one.

What I love:
the sound quality, the precision of the knobs, the mod matrix, the display (not the angle though), the casing (rock solid, all metal), the versatility of the filters, the extra mod wheel, the looks (reminds me a bit of the Waldorf color scheme) and the low price.

What I don't like:
the arpeggiator (non-programmable pretty much useless to me), the effects (too limited), the viewing angle of the display, the multi-timbral feature being limited by only 8 voices polyphony (this is no workstation).

When I decided for a virtual analog, there were 2 things to be considered: sound and sound access. There are a lot of knobs, but a lot of hidden things under sub-menus too.

Audio input is very interesting and usable. Eight voice polyphony is acceptable for an analog clone. FX section is poor - and this is not was you can expect from such FX specialists as the guys at Alesis! Good arpeggiator. No card or slot nor any sort of external memory location.

For a rock keyboardist like me, it's simply disappointing. Good low ends and monophonic sounds, but what about the warm pads? Forget about them! Those from my SR-JV ???Vintage??? board are much, much better. There are a lot of unuseful presets too. Looking for JP brasses or nice Oberheim polisynths? No way! This thing supposes to emulate 3 oscillators, and in fact it has a lot of sound modulation in its sound architecture, but whatever you may try, chords sounds always slim. The keyboard is unacceptable: ship plastic, bad quality synth action. Outrageous. My old QS6 had a decent synth action keyboard and I simply don???t understand why Alesis made such a bad choice for this thing. Even if you find a good lead sound (this the ION can do), the keyboard action keeps you shy and fright ??? no enthusiasm allowed. But even if you insist to play fast, some notes can be??? MISSED! Especially in fast repetitions of the same note. Shame.

It can NOT be my main source of analog sounds, even accepting a virtual clone to do the job. I prefer the Roland SH-201. The ION has a great look and feels solid because of the metal construction, until you touch the keyboard??? Bizarre blend???

Alesis has a reasonable service in Brazil, but the maintenance cost of parts and services is the same of higher priced brands like Roland and Korg.

This could be my 4th or 5th analog emulator. It can be fine for dance or electro stuff, but not for rock and roll.

There are some presets I like but I'm sure everyone who buys this will find sounds for their music production.

Everytime I use this synth I feel like Vince Clarke from Depeche Mode. It's a huge synth board and most of the time I am twisting knobs. It's easy to program to create new sounds however the Mod Matrix is another step up hard core programming that takes your sound production to the next level. I"m still learning that feature. I don't use a patch editor because I don't think the ION has one.. YOu don't need it because all the knobs are there.

PLus this keyboard is a good soft synth controller too as I use it as my controller.

The manual is straight forward.

I"m a mono type guy.. I don't use chords so the ION is perfect for my personality.

I don't use the effects because I use the WAVES plug ins. You would want to use the internal effects either because it doesn't sound cool to my ears.

Arpreggio doesn't sound cool either.

Ok, this is my main source for BASS sounds and Kraftwerk type leads and that's it. It's sounds really good on the low end.

The bass has a lot of attitude and grit.. I also have the VIrus synth but the bass on the ION is much cooler to my ears.

Perfect bass sounds aka Nitzer EBB and Depeche Modes A broken Frame.

IF you only use this synth as your main gear, it's possible to create all the sounds on the ION, Snares, Kicks, bass, hh, leads,etc.

Yes. I use a different keyboard to gig.

not yet.

I'd give it an 8. I will never ever trade this as I think I'm set with my set up.

The Alesis Ion, wow what a synth, ive owned a few synths in my time ( around 20) from the likes of Rolands Jp8000 & Xp80, Korgs Trinity, Triton and Prophecy, Waldorf Pulse, Novations Supernova, to name a few, and ive got to say, although many other synths may excell in the effects department the Ion wins hands down on pure quality of sound.
Many of the other mentioned synths "bury" the pure sound in effects which is cool to listen to on its own but dont mix to well when putting a track together, and this is where you really can tell a good synth from a lesser synth in my opinion.
Editing the presets is really a breeze and i love not having to dive through loads of menus just to change a waveform for instance.

The polyphony on this synth is 8 notes which i think for a VA is all you really need to keep things as near to analogue as possible and even the effects reflect the analogue thing, ie basic and mostly chorus/flange and delay types.

The keyboard on this beast is ok for a synth, its responsive and expressive what more do you want? i mean if you want a real piano feel keyboard then buy a real piano.

Would i feel confident using this keyboard on stage doing a gig? well ive never gigged but yes i would, ive had no problem with reliability in my stuio with it.

I have never contacted Alesis so i dont know.

To sum up this synth in a few words: its probably the most authentic VA synth ive ever owned and seen, its build quality is good, the sounds are excellent, the effects could be better.

Very easy. There are functions that can only be accessed by menus, but they're minimal and easy to get to. There will always be people for whom no VA will be good enough, and this synth may not be good enough for them. Its presets sound COMPLETELY analog to me, though, and I'd bet a lot of money that just about nobody would be able to pick it out in a blind listening test. (Those tests exist online, and true analog die-hard fans never seem to score very well in them.) The manual is OK. I've seen better, but it's not nearly as bad as a Roland manual.

8-voice polyphony is fine for what it does, although more would always be better for layering and long-release pads. The internal power supply is great, the synthesis features are amoung the most advanced ever for a non-modular synth, the knobs feel great and generate no zipper noise, etc. The big drawbacks are the pathetic arpeggiator and the terrible keyboard. The arp has only preset patterns, so it helps you make your music sound like it was made with a department store Casio. Don't be fooled by the "Random" pattern--it's not random as in playing random notes (e.g. Duran Duran's Rio), it's random as in selecting one of the other preset patterns at random. This synth basically doesn't have an arpeggiator. The keys are cheap and small, and they're not pressure sensitive.

Analog heaven. Fat fat fat, with punch and drive to spare. Plus, the comb and vocal filters, FM, etc. let you make all kinds of fantastic sounds that no real analog could ever make. The only synths more flexible than this one would be a Kurzweil VAST synth or some other high-end sampling synth, but they would give you a much different, and much less analog, sound. Expressiveness is great, except for the lack of pressure. The extra mod wheel is great, but does not at all make up for the lack of pressure sensitivity since it ties up one of your hands.

Too soon to say, but the build quality is top-notch.

I've never used them.

The terrible arpeggiator, lack of reverb/delay, cheap keyboard, and lack of pressure sensitivity are difficult to tolerate, but the sound engine is one of the best out there. And yes, that includes the Virus TI which costs four or five times as much. The Virus has wavetables and reverb, which really are great, but it aliases LIKE MAD. The Ion does not. This essentially IS an analog synth, but reliable and with much more power, for a fraction of the price of anything else.

Using the latest v1.06. This thing is a breeze to use. Just about every parameter has a real live knob associated with it at all times. Hunting through menus is sometimes needed for more obscure settings, but not a problem by any means. Indeed, just about every feature is at most 2 or 3 button presses away.
I don't believe there is a patch editor for this machine, but Unix geeks will be pleased to know that Alesis has a Perl script available for download at their website that will convert between SysEx dumps of patches and plain text files ripe for editing with your favourite editor.
The manual is excellent, even if I don't have a hard copy of it. I plan on calling and asking for one.
My only gripes in this area are very minor, like I wish each envelope generator had its own set of knobs, and that the envelope velocity sensitivity had its own knob as well. Barring this, I wish there was another high-resolution knob like the others in addition to the data knob that could perform the same function, since it can be fairly slow to adjust some parameters without their own knob. These are very minor points.

8 voices. A big step up from my old microKORG (which had 4), but still not as much as a workstation. I don't see this to be a problem at all; I got by with 4 on the MK and now being able to play organ on this thing with melody and more than just triads is very nice. Admittedly I don't do too too much in the way of layering voices or using unison every chance I get, but on the off chance that I have the 8 hasn't stood in the way significantly. The keyboard action is cheap and synth-like: exactly how I like it. I don't play piano or clav or anything so it's not an issue. A lot of my patches don't even use the velocity sensitivity, and I find I like an expression pedal better than aftertouch anyway (I started out on organ...sue me).
As far as MIDI goes, this thing is awesome. I use it with bars&pipes on my amiga. The built-in arpeggiator blows goats but I just use my microKORG's arp (or the amiga) and all is well. A lot of people liked to bitch about the fact that the knobs only send NPRNs and not CCs but the latest OS rev allows it to send and receive either. As for expansion capabilities, there are none sans MIDI, sustain and expression pedal inputs.

Velocity seems clunky at times but it's not too bad. There is no aftertouch (though the second mod wheel can be told to send channel pressure) and I'm currently looking for a cheap, durable expression pedal (the roland EV-5 is overpriced crap...I'm currently looking at a nice Alesis F2). I've actually found quite a few good (and some downright cool ones that made me laugh...like Baba O'Riley and Jump) usable presets on this machine. I have taken a particular liking to the "E.P? OK!" electric piano and "Stops on MW2" Hammond patches. The former sounds very nice, and the latter, while not really close to a real drawbar organ, is fairly usable. Some are tripe, but this comes with the territory. Any can be overwritten (not just the user bank, contrary to what some may tell you) and after all, this is a VA synth...it's meant to be screwed around with.
As for sounds though, this thing sounds very nice. It doesn't have that digital feel to it like my microKORG (not that that's bad...indeed I still use my MK on some stuff), and the filter emulations are awesome.
The onboard effects are fairly limited; the ones that it does have sound quite nice, though. The vocoder is fairly nice. I wish there was delay like most but you can't have it all...I'll just get a stomp box or something for this. I also wish the effects weren't shared between all parts but this is fairly minor since I don't do too much multitimbral stuff.
I find I can be very expressive on this thing...it reacts very nicely.

Well it weighs a bloody ton, at least compared to other stuff I've used of this calibre. Chassis is basically solid metal. Obviously if you treat anything like crap it won't last. I haven't gigged with it yet but I plan on it as soon as I get myself a nice flight case. I would use it without a backup, but more for the reason that I can't afford to keep multiple units around. I haven't experienced any software bugs, even before I went to v1.06 (was using v1.05). Seems like a very dependable piece of equipment.

Well, I did send alesis an email before about aforementioned hardcopy of the manual about two weeks ago and got no reply. I plan on giving them a call (plus we're both in RI so this isn't a big deal =]). We'll see how it pans out.

This machine is absolutely amazing. It would still be awesome if I had to pay twice as much. The sounds are amazing. I used to bash the micron (primarily because it had piss-poor realtime control) but since discovering this beast I'm glad that I have one. I've been playing synths for about a year and a half now, so I'm by no means an expert, but I do know what I like. My microKORG complements this unit very nicely. My main niggles with the ion are very minor in nature and by no means detract from the overall playing experience, though I do wish alesis had tilted the display just a bit since tweaking this thing while sitting down can be a pain in the arse. But this is, again, fairly minor. Not to mention that those light-up performance wheels look sexy as hell in the dark. I guess my last complaint is I wish alesis had used more blue LEDs on the front panel than just the blue bank select.
Lastly, I will admit that this was somewhat of an impulse purchase; I saw mine for fairly cheap on ebay and figured "I have to have that." Needless to say, I have zero buyer's regret. It certainly helps me to be very creative.

I'm using the latest software. Presets sound good for bass and leads, but that's it. Editing patches is very easy. I haven't really read the manual.

polyphony is 8, which is fine a lot of the time if you're not using patches with long decays or unison(this decreases voices). The effects suck pretty bad. The phaser is okay. Don't even bother with the delay, and the drive sounds cheap, but can be okay on some sounds. No aftertouch but I don't care about that. No onboard sequencer. Despite is missing a lot of features that other guys really want, i don't mind. it has what I personally need.

The keyboard action is horrible, it's very cheap feeling and there seems to be some sort of disconnect from when I hit a key to when a sound is emitted. You can adjust the velocity curve but it doesn't seem to help much. It's not a huge problem by any means, a few milliseconds maybe? It just feels like you have to press the key down a little further than most synths for it to sound, which you can compensate for by playing a tad early, but it just feels a tad unresponsive to me.

The actual patches/sound quality of this thing is a mixed bag. Monophonic basses and leads are pretty good, but pads and poly patches suffer. This thing just can't seem to do chords very well, and I'm guessing it either has to do with the filter models or the digital to analog conversion. When you put it into the JP8 filter mode, chords sound better in how the notes interact with each other, but it lacks punch and fullness. There is a kind of awful 2D quality to the sound, it's not very rich sounding overall, and I think that could be the cheap digital to analog converters. With good converters or a digital output, and better filter models, I think I'd like this synth a lot more.

If you have some sweet outboard chorus, delay, reverb, etc you could probably get this thing to sound 100% better. The leads especially sound WAY better with some delay. Get a virus if you've got the money, you'll be much happier unless you've got horrible ears. If you want something cheap this or an MS2000 are both good bets.

I've gigged with it plenty of times. never a problem.

sent it back to customer support because i thought something was wrong with it because the sound coming out of the synth didn't sound anywhere near as good as the demos on their site. I don't know if the demos are still up but they are either not this synth, or they were extremely processed. I got it back and it sounded the same, but there were some broken lights. I was gonna send it back again but then decided that i didn't want to wait for it to be sent to and from the factory again. Customer service was friendly and good but I have to take off points for the broken led lights.

if it were lost i'd save up more for a virus. It is definitely worth the 600 though. I've been playing about 5 years and own or have owned a juno 6, juno 106, nord lead 3, nord lead 2 rack, kurzweill k2000, yamaha psr540.

Super easy to use...if you don't know how a VA works than you'll be stuck playing with the presets, but once you get to know this thing, then it's all uphill from there.

All you got to do it turn knobs and you'll see a different world.

I like that it can be multi timbral, but it froze on me once when trying to do 4 parts.

This is where this thing shines. I think Alesis is trying to make a statement. They definitly got a good thing going with this thing.

The Presets are OK, but once you start playing around, you open yourself up to a world of synth sounds that rival the boys that cost 4 times as much. Even iffy presets will sound good once you start messing with the knobs.

I don't think Alesis knew what they had when they put this thing out. I wish it had reverb...which is what a lot of synth sounds rely on (other compeditors), but I guess that's what a really good reverb unit is for.

I love the sounds that come out of this thing once I start messing around with it. I love the filters!

I've got a couple other VA synths, and this thing is up there with the most expensive one.

I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't praise it.

I've got the DX7 which is a great compliment to this, they sound so different but they get along so well(once you program the '7, which isn't that bad, but way harder than the Ion..

When plugged into my mixer I can't hear any fuzz even at full level, but some of my ---newer synths--- make noise when I turn them up and jack them into my mixer.

Besides the freeze when I tried to do 4 parts, It's been super good to me.

I've been doing three parts just because I don't want it to freeze, even though it was probably a software issue(which I havn't upgraded yet)

I'm sure it was a freak freeze when I was doing 4 parts.

They seems to be on their stuff when it comes to upgrades. Havn't upgraded yet, but don't see no reason to if I'm using 3 parts at maximum.

I love this thing.

It rivals other synths costing 4 times as much. It can be deep and rich, if you program it right, and it can be thin also.

I love the ability to program in real time, which the little baby sister doesn't have...although I wish it had the reverb the little baby sister has.

I would advise this to anyone...it sounds great. I also have a bunch of softsynths and this thing is great if you love to play with knobs(computers will never be real synths...VA synths that is...nothing will ever take "real" analog synths over). If you think that softsynths sound great...this thing sounds better.

I'm not sure if this synth can be programed from the ground up, but if you start programing from preset one...I'm sure you'll love the results.

Why do European Synth Makers have 2k price tags, and American Synths sound better? I may be a hypocrite because I have European synths...but this is on the top of my synth list.

I think Alesis needs credit where credit is due!

Presets are very flashy, non-traditional. You're going to have to dig a little to get anything like a modern sound. The sound designers definitely were in their own world, closer to 1960's science fiction than modern synths (which isn't totally a bad thing; today's sci fi sucks). Editing is fine, once you read through the manual and understand how much the routing affects your results. If you don't, you'll be convinced that all you can get are vintage 70's leads. See my comment below for an important tip.

Polyphony is 8, I believe. That's fine for me. Voices will drop on orchestral type strings and pads if your release rate is extensively long. The effects are gorgeous and will do what you expect, plus a lot more. The drive, which provides your distortions, is more internal, but if you use the Tube Amp setting, you get a really nice warmth that comes closer to what the staunchest Analog Snob wants.

I did have a lot of trouble editing until I realized its "Default" patch was set to parallel routing, not serial. This is a great option but can confuse intermediate level synthists very, very easily. So, if you want to start editing from scratch, this will make it much easier to learn the capacity of the filters and waveforms:

1. Find "Default" in User bank, patch # 127.

2. Twist Osc knob 1 under the Pre Filter Mix section. This opens up the sound routing matrix (NOT the modulation matrix).

3. Go to page 3 where the diagram shows a line spliting through the two filters. Use the buttons and "soft knob" to put the ratios for the oscillators at 100%-0%, all of them. Once you do this, you'll note a radical change in the sound immediately.

4. Got to page 5 and find the category that says F1-F2. Put that at 100%-0%. Note the sound change again.

5. Hit the store button.

Now the patch will be at a conventional routing, and the sound will seem much more editable. And also you can change the ratios for all those routing junctions, and get a lot more out of your sounds. Now you can get much closer to those wonderful leads, basses and pads you hear on all those car commercials and trance tracks.

Enjoy!

This is purely for electro. House, Drum and Bass, 2 step, Industrial, Goth, 'electroclash' (a label I hate as much as Ladytron), and so forth. You can make wonderful electric pianos, wurlitzers, organs, Moogs and rhodes, but that's it for realistic emulation. This is analog, baby.

Again, the distortion is internal, not a suffixed layering agent, as with most synths. To get that kind of feel, you'll need an external effects unit. I'm currently running mine through a Korg Kaoss Pad 2, an Alesis Ineko, an Alesis Ampliton and a Korg AX10G (not always in that order), and that covers the bases. Starting with a cheap multieffects unit such as a Zoom G2, a Boss GT-3 (or 5 or 6 or 8), or a Korg AX series will take care of most of your needs. (Synthesizers are much less demanding of sound quality on guitar pedals than guitars are; just watch the sampling rate- 24 bit is the standard these days.)

Now, the sound engine sounds better than the Korg Z1, Yamaha AN1X, Roland SH-32, or even the Access Virus Indigo, all of which I have owned and tested. Less nasal than the Nord Leads, too. It just has more 'glimmer', more color to the sound. So, in spite of the limited effects options, I'm going to give it a 10.

Very reliable, and until I get that huge contract, I'll not need a backup.

They're twonks.

Yeah, this is going to be my main synth for quite some time. I've been playing for 6 years now and have owned about 13 other synthesizers. It's quite comparable to the Access Virus; in fact it blows it away. The only thing that might be better would be an Alesis Andromeda A6.

The Alesis Micron has exactly the same sound engine and with more effects, plus the perfect arpeggiator/sequence and drum pattern programming. If you know your way around the Alesis Ion matrix, then I'd highly recommend the Micron as well.

Last OS came installed. V 1.06. The instrument works perfectly, no bugs at all. The presets are 30% usable, 70% rewritable. Of course, you're a synthesist and you love programmimg synths(at least, I really enjoy sound shaping). This is one of the easiest synths I had played for a long time. Despite the possibilities(it's almost a semi-modular synth)is very intuitive and fast to create your own custom sounds in minutes, sometimes in seconds! There's plenty of knobs and buttons on the front panel and the display is always showing you the required information as long as you're editing. Manual is very clear and precise.

8-voice polyphony. Light synth action, not as bad as I expected. I like dry synth sounds so i don't care 'bout the FX, but you have some usable distortions and flangers. I think that this machine is for playing live and sound shaping so 8 voices are quite good, if you're looking for a studio synth with tons of poliphony and parts, buy a Virus! MIDI seems well implemented, Ion sends and receive NRPN's, not the traditional CC'S, but I use it within a Cubase-based system without problems.No on-board sequencer(you can make a few tricks with the tracking generator but it's not a sequencer by itself). Arpeggiator could be better(i don't like the built-in patterns)but using it the traditional way works as expected.

Now I arrive to the most interesting part. I'm not the first, but i gotta say it, this instrument sounds UNBELIEBEAVLE!!!!I was a few minutes playing it, travelling through presets, tweaking parameters and I said: Can I pay with credit card? I'm totally in love with this machine. It sounds incredibly analog! No one with a couple of ears can doubt it! The warmth, fat and organic sound of god-synths like Minimoog or Jupiter 8 are in this board. I'm not joking, it's true! It seems alive with a slight touch on the "analog feel" parameter. I'd like to personally thanks the team of designers for this new god-synth, you're genius!

I had heard a lot of things about it. I was, in fact, scared about buying it for that reason. But I took the risk because it's the best VA of the history for me. And now, what do you want me to say? My unit is solid and perfectly constructed, seems hard as a rock. The only thing I would improve should be the keys, that seem a little more fragile than usual.

Yet no need for deal, knock on wood.

It's clear. If you're looking for a cutting edge wavetable synth with tons of poliphony and parts to use it as sound module in a studio setup, this one is not for you. If you belong to the analog community and since you were 12 you dreamed about playing Minimoogs, Jupiter 8's, Junos and all the legendary stuff, you can't afford the price of this beasts, and you always thought that Virtual Analog synths sucked as long as you're listening "Wish you were here" and "The man-machine", then your time has come. Alesis made it, all you have to do is buy it. Sincerely, for the price i bought it, i feel it like a synth heaven gift. Thanks Alesis.
Greetings from Barcelona, Spain.

I'm a guitarist and long-time reason user but wanted to get a hard synth to use for the stage. I used the Micron briefly last year and was interested in moving up to something with more features. Except for my Ensoniq EPS, I'm a newbie essentially so there's been a bit of a learning curve.

The ION has more preset banks than the Micron. Call it lack of experience, but I've found more than a couple presets that I like. That said, the billion knobs and buttons on this synth are an open invitation to tweak and the large lcd screen makes it easy to see what values are being changed. Once you get familiar with the placement of the knobs and their functions, the ION is pretty easy to use in low-light conditions, which is a definite plus.

The manual is written in plain english and describes every feature in detail. I've only had to use it when I can't figure out a function on my own. In other words, the synth is designed logically and has a very intuitive interface.

Features for the ION have been well-documented. It's unbelievably well-equiped for a synth of this price range.

Cons:
The action is pretty lousy
The latch feature isn't useable, especially compared to the Micron, and the arpeggiator is just lame

What stands out for me:
30 (count 'em!) knobs
Multi filters
3 mod & pitch wheels
Giant LCD screen
Looks cool as shit!

I've found about a dozen usable preset patches that I was able to use on recordings, right out of the box. There are some good frameworks for others that I was pleased with after some tweaking. Creating new sounds is easy-- select User patch 127 and hop to it.

To my ears, the sounds are extremely organic. Bass patches shake the floor, leads are very sharp and punchy, pads can be just as intense as with the excellent Yamaha AN1x.

The vocoder IS useable if you are sending it a decent signal. I recorded a vocal track using a MXL990 condenser and a Presonus preamp onto my digirecorder and then played it into the ION. I don't doubt that vocals would sound muddy using a RadioShack mic.

The effects section is alright, but nothing to write home about. I have a Roland SRV-3030d for reverb which is the only glaring omission in the ION's architecture. I'm pretty sure this synth would sound SICK through a Sherman Filterbank.

The ION is easily the least tempermental keyboard I've ever used. It seems better constructed than the Korg MS2000. I can only afford to have one at a time, so there's no sense worrying about carrying a backup.

Alesis stopped production of the ION but are continuing to offer support. Although we're not likely to see further OS updates the engineers do return emails.

Even better, there are great user groups on Yahoo and Google to support Ion/Micron users. If you post a question you'll often get a response within a day, if not within hours.

I'm not sure why Alesis pulled the plug on the ION because it seems like an unmitigated hit. I'd definitely replace it if it were to vanish unexpectedly. I've played guitar for many years and have started using synthesizers only recently. I've had experience with Korg and Ensoniq samplers. The last synths I had used were an M1 and a Casio CZ1000 from back in the day.

I bought the synth to get a little closer to the sound of bands like Air, M83, Interpol, My Bloody Valentine and it's been a good match for this style of music. Having it around has made me want to sit at the keys and experiment with different sounds, so it's worth its weight in inspiration.

Very easy to edit patches. The manual is perfect. It explains how the synth must be operated. It doesn't learn you how to be a musician or a synthesist. So be careful when you read reviews from beginners who don't understand what they do.

The keyboard IS VELOCITY SENSITIVE but DOESN'T HAVE AFTERTOUCH. The previous review is not accurate on the features. If you want to know the exact features, go to Alesis website, don't trust the reviews for that. Midi works like any modern synth (ie all you expect from a modern midi synth).

Knobs are great, but you can't change 2 parameters simultaneously with 2 knobs. You have to assign them to a mod wheel via the mod matrix. It sucks A LOT.

The sounds are excellent. You can use it for every kind of modern music. Pop, rock, dance, techno, etc. It's virtual analog synth so as usual no realistic sound, blablabla, you know that already, don't you.

The lack of aftertouch can be compensated by the 2 mod wheels and an expression pedal. Those who cry for aftertouch should learn to use their feet. I personally think an expression pedal is much more useful than aftertouch anyway.

The onboard effects are not good at all. External effects are necessary.

Not very reliable. Alesis wanted to offer a great sounding synth at a low price. The sound is great, so they had to sacrifice other parameters, ie the awful keyboard action and the overall reliability of the machine.

Connecting a jack in the rear panel gives the impression it will break inside.

Software problems are still happening even with the latest OS downloaded from their website.

I now have a high frequency noise in the left channel (both with headphones output or main line output).

Never dealt with them directly.

I would never buy it again. In any circumstance. I would go for a Clavia Nordlead 2X, much more reliable than Alesis keyboards. The Alesis ION is a low budget synth, with low budget quality. It's sad to say, but that's it. If your ION has none of the many problems mentionned by ION users, you are lucky.

I'll try to fix the problems in mine and sell it as soon as possible, before the problems reappear. It bought it in 2004, so there's no warranty anymore.

This Keyboard is SO EASY! Lots of endless knobs that update the main menu when they are moved. No more digging around through layers of menus to get what you want. Intuitive. This is probably the second strongest feature of this board (The first being the quality of sound).

You proabably already know the features so I won't bore you.

This board does analog. Period. It sounds analog. It is thick and very musical. I dialed up a patch in my Alesis QSR that had pitch-shifted downward and noted that a) it could only pitch-shift through two octaves and b) it sounded like ass. The ION handled the pitch shifting task with aplomb. It descended through a dozen octaves and sounded musical through its? whole range. I love the effects. I don't miss having a reverb with the ION because...why would you want to bury beautiful tone under reverb? I have found that the ION just plain sounds great. It compliments and augments rather than contrasts like digital boards do. It is hard to describe it as digital.

No issues here. I bought the store demo model 6 months ago and it still works fine.

No dealings with Alesis yet. The website is great.

I have read that this is a synth for analog users who hate analog. This is the most correct statement I can use for this board. The filters are amazing and the diversity of filter choices is excellent. Dozens of filters that model famous analog synths of old...all with resonance and performance-controllable parameters. I can dial up a patch in a few minutes with ease AND I can adjust sounds on the fly while at rehearsal - even while playing the song! Try doing that with any other digital board.

As for limitations, this keyboards greatest limit is the polyphony. It doesn't take too much to use all 8 virtual oscillators especially if the voices are layered themselves. This is yet another way how it mimics the synths of old...

I can?t survive without my ION. It is an indispensable tool to my sonic arsenal. If I had to perform without it I would cancel the show. The only other substitute would be a real analog board, but even then, I split this board four ways and midi control it during our show so it would be difficult to do THAT with an old analog board. Really the only thing better would be an Alesis Fusion or an Andromeda.

BTW ? if you are thinking about saving a few bucks by buying the Micron ? don?t! The controllability with the ION is well worth the extra few hundred.

Bought it used in November of '05, was looking for a less expensive alternative to a Nord Lead. I had previously played with the Micron, their slimmed-down, "performance" version of this synth, and although I felt the Micron was cumbersome to edit and the small keyboard was uncomfortable, it sounded good, so I figured I'd give its big brother a shot. Immediately I was impressed with the screen - not something you see every day on a $500 synth. This makes editing patches easier, although there are some key functions that are not in the main menus and are thus unnessesarily hard to get to. I was also impressed by the two performance wheels. They feel great, look awesome, and open up a lot of performance options. However, the knobs, while they feel nice, are small and easy to knock into, ruining carefully made patches. Also, the Arpeggio and Effects sections are underwhelming and hard to edit, which is a major bummer since I'm an Arp and FX guy. Rectifiable with external effects processors, but irritating nonetheless. All the problems are with the software however, so hopefully Alesis will update the software to rectify all this.

8-voice polyphony. "Ugh," is my immediate reaction, but I use it mostly for leads and monophonic basses, so it's not such a major bummer. If you're really bent on getting pads out of this thing (and you can get some great pads), get a MIDI controller keyboard. 49-note keyboard, which is small, but there is octave control, and again, if you're bent on using this as a pad machine, get a controller. Keyboard is not velocity sensetive, but it does sense aftertouch. This seems odd to me - if you're including aftertouch, why not just throw in the whole kit 'n kaboodle? Again, if you're determind, you can imitate velocity with the mod wheels. It's all fairly basic, but there are ways around the cut corners, and for the price, there's quite a lot of beef.

Very nice synth sounds, not-so-nice emulations of acoustic instruments. Characteristically, the sound of this synth is very spacey, surreal, and at times unpredictable. Three fat oscillators per voice, which is impressive for a synth in this price rance. It also includes many "analog" nuances, including a fantastic analog drift emulation, which are delightful and very welcome. Many comment that this synth doesn't sound as warm as a real analog synth - I tell them to stop being snobs and accept this machine for what it is. Immediately delete all the presets and make your own sounds, because this synth has a lot of potential and invites one to reach out and twist some knobs.

It's made of metal, and holds up as one would expect. The plastic sides have been denounced by many as looking "cheap." I don't agree, but some wood paneling or "vintage" touches would have been welcome. Freezes are rare, but they do happen occasionally. The keys feel slightly spongy and overly delicate, but I've gigged with it and it holds up quite well. I have and would gig without a backup, if simply because I have several other synths that could substitute. It's definitely sturdy enough to stand up to whatever light abuse it may encounter.

Never had to deal with them.

The bottom line on this synth is that it's cheap. It's bare-bones, it cuts corners. Deal with it. Many people expect this kind of synth to have absolutely everything that those more expensive synths have. If you want a MiniMoog, buy a MiniMoog. If you want a reliable, excellent-sounding synthesizer for as little as possible, look no further than Alesis's excellent Ion. It sounds excellent, and although it has shortcomings (especially with the software), there are ways around everything it doesn't have. Even if it doesn't have the bells and whistles as synths twice the price, it sounds better than pretty much anything on the DSP analog-modeling playing field.

Only the Supernova II, with its gazillion knobs, is easier. Or maybe some vintage Jupiter or Prophet that can't do half what this synth can. Presets are pretty good, but it would be a shame not to program your own sounds into this synth.

The keyboard sucks. I've been spoiled by the Supernova II, which uses the same keyboard as the E-mu E-synth and the Kawai K-5000. They actually feel like real instruments, while this one feels like a toy. Polyphony is 8, which is OK, but 16 would have been better. This isn't a workstation, but layering, long sustains, and fast arpeggios eat up polyphony. I don't use the sequencer. The synthesis features are GREAT. I won't go through everything I love about it, because that list would be too long. I wish it had a few things, though: 3 LFOs instead of 2, a "random" wave for the LFOs (like a sine wave of randomly fluctuating amplitude) instead of just S&H, and digital waveforms or even real wavetables As far as the hardware goes, I love the feel of the knobs and wheels, I love having 3 wheels, I love the internal power supply, I like the colored buttons, and I like the size of the screen. I wish it had sliders for envelopes instead of knobs, tiny buttons in front of large knobs (not behind them where they're hard to see), 76 semi-weighted pro-quality keys, and I wish the screen were angled like the one in the Yamaha Motif.

The sounds from this synth give me chills, and every now and then I hit on one that gets me grinning like a lottery winner. It sounds utterly analog. I used to think that the specific filters and choice of envelope slopes would turn out to be useless novelty, but I was wrong. Those features, or something else in there, turn this into a revival of every great analog synth of the 80s. I'm all for synths that have their own characteristic sound, but you just can't pass up a Jupiter, Solina, Prophet, Moog, ARP, Oberheim, and Juno all in one box for $600! Of course it's not identical to any of those, and if you're one of those people who has to have the real thing, more power to you. (There's a Prophet T8 on eBay as I write this for $2,600 and counting, with no guarantees that it's 22-year-old circuits are working properly.) I just wish Alesis would add wavetables, so I could add "PPG" to the list above. Or even four oscillators per voice and a joystick or trackpad, so I could add "Prophet VS." My wish-list doesn't detract from the score, though--they set out to make a no-compromise analog emulation, and they succeded perfectly.

Too soon to tell. Seems solid.

I've never had to deal with them. Can they possibly be as bad as Roland?

Pretty close to perfect. Certainly the closest you'll get to analog without shelling out much more for an unreliable relic of uncertain history. I actually considered trying to find a good, used Jupiter 6 (my first synth, sigh..) until I listened to this. This is all the analog I need. I'd replace it in a heartbeat, unless Alesis made a rack version or a 76-key version, or a version with wavetables. I'd buy one of those even if this one didn't get stolen.

Just bought the unit about a month or so ago--Firmware v1.05. I had played the Ion at Sam Ash before and was always impressed with the patches. I've read a few other reviews where people complain that the presets are just OK, but I think that "out of the box," this VA synth is great! Of course I love tweaking, and all those knobs are a plus. This is the first synth I ever owned with this many knobs. If Alesis would have slapped some wooden end cheeks on the ION and given it a raised front panel, it could become "the poor man's Minimoog." Editing is a breeze, once you get used to the "soft buttons." There are extra parameters that the knobs can edit, which requires some manual reading and experimentation--well worth it.

By the way, the manual that came with my Ion was outdated. I was looking for the parameter to adjust oscillator detuning, and the manual's explanation inaccurate. I finally called Alesis' tech support and received the correct info. Alesis could have easily included a manual addendum page for this and other OS updates, but....

The Ion allows you to play individual patches and "setups," which are combinations of patches. You can do splits and layers in setup mode, which allows for some interesting sounds, grooves, and noises. However, the manual is not clear on how to go back and forth between the two modes. I also own a Korg Triton, which has clearly marked buttons on the front panel to indicate combination and program modes. The Ion is not set up this way, and its manual is vague on how to go from setup mode back to playing basic patches.

Polyphony is only 8 voices--but for $600......let's not complain. The keyboard action is OK; the keys themselves are a bit smaller than the ones on the Triton and other workstations. I like the design of the Ion, although I wish the front panel wasn't completely flat. Every other synth I've played has an angled front panel to facilitate operation and view of the screen. The Ion's effects are good, but lack a reverb. No clue why Alesis left this most important effect out. I will say though, that the unit sounds great with minimal effects.

No expansion capabilities that I'm aware of, except firmware upgrades via MIDI. I haven't spent much time with MIDI capabilities by the way.....just been playing the unit by itself. No sequencer, but the Ion does have an arpeggiator (not-user programmable though, yuck.)

This is a real synth-players synth. No piano presets here, thank goodness. It's designed to be played and tweaked.....and tweaked some more--that's why I bought it. There are some factory patches that are named after famous synth players, bands, or songs of the past (like "jump," or "car's sync," for example) that sound pretty good, but require some tweaking and effects to really nail the original sounds. The onboard effects are good, and the extensive choice of filter types, modulation routings, plus so many patches to start with is enough to keep almost anyone busy for weeks. The Ion comes with three mod wheels, which is a plus. All three wheels are large, easy to manipulate, and they light up. The synth really looks cool at night! Most patches are pre-programmed to be extensively manipulated via the wheels--a great learning tool.

Like I said before, the Ion comes with loads of presets. Many are extremely FAT sounding and warm. It's a great lead instrument. The pads aren't all I expected, although some tweaking and external reverb should improve those. The blips, bleeps and ethereal sounds are fantastic, and this opens the door for even more tweaking. You won't easily tire of this synth!

I haven't been out of the house with the Ion yet. It came with a nice gig bag and I'm looking forward to seeing how it integrates live with my other keyboards (mainly the Triton).

I've had to call Alesis twice with questions. The first time I called, the service was great (in reference to the osc detuning manual error). However, when I later called with questions regarding playing patches and setups, the person I spoke with sounded like it was his first day--not very knowledgeable.

Overall....it's a great little synth. I would replace it if it were lost or stolen. I've been playing keys for over 20 years, and like I said before, this is the first synth I've owned with real total front panel control--none of the "digging through menus" nightmare! I wish it had a screen that would tilt, built-in reverb, more polyphony and wooden end cheeks. But once again....$600 is a great price for this much horsepower. There isn't anything on the market in this price range that even comes close. Lots of people out there are opting for the Micron, but that seems like a toy. Yes, it has the same synth engine as the Ion, but with so few knobs and that mini keyboard, you're missing out. Being able to tweak "on the fly" is something you need to experience for yourself.

It's a keeper.

Not sure of software version, only had it a couple of days. Presets are ok, not a patch on my triton. This synth is excellent for those who are just starting out in synthesis, as each control is logically positioned. The best thing I find, is that each wave is shown graphically, and you can evan morph it into other waves, and this is also shown graphically. EXCELLENT!! I also like the way all of the filters are so easily layed out. My Triton is a bloody nightmare when it comes to editing patches, and I really appreciate the ease of use here. Not really looked at the manual as everything seems to be clearly layed out for you.

8 Notes, can't complain here. This is not a piano, nor is it trying to be a keyboard. It is simply a analogue modelling synth which is used to produce sounds. Effects are chorus and flanger and many difference variations besides very easy to use. Don't think there are any expansion capabilities (only had it two days). Usual MIDI stuff, although no aftertouch. But again, I cannot complain here. My only complaint would be the arpegiator. This contains some really complicated arpegios, and they cannot be edited at all. Don't mind though, as I have a decent arpegiator on the Triton which I can use to play the ION.

EXCELLENT SOUNDING SYNTH. (No more to be said!!!!)

Only had it 2 days, but seems to be very solid indeed for the price. I was also impressed with the keys on it. Other reviewers have said that the keys are rubbish, but don't listen to them. This is a #400 synth, and you cannot expect synth action keys for the price. Would definately use on a gig.

Don't know..

Love it. Until now I have owned the Korg Legacy Collection and the Microkorg. Both were great sounding synths, but for a beginner, were quite difficult to use (Microkorg especially). The ION on the other hand lays everything out in front of you, and you can tweak what ever parameter you wish without having to delve into complex menu structures. I would definately replace it if it were lost or stolen.

I think this synthesizer sounds like the 80s. Sounds interesting for me but i think it sounds a bit to cold for a minimoog-fan. The presets are avarage. The leads doesn't cut through without tweaking.
You can play very expressive with the 3 Wheels and it looks amazing in the dark!!!
I don't like the effects very much. They're not very extreme and for me there's missing a delay. This synth can sound awsome if you know what you're doing or you're like to play around. I don't think that you can get a synth like this for this price.

no problems

Just to give you a little background, I am a guitarist in a rock band (post-rock, epic rock, lo-fi influences), so was a TOTAL synth novice when I started looking for a synth. I posted messages on the vintagesynth.com site asking for advice and read as many reviews of as many different products as I could, finally settling on the ION due to its versatility and good price.

When I got it out of the box, I was a little disappointed in the presets - most seem geared towards dance music or cheesy soundtrack work. I was looking to emulate someting a little more organic - electric pianos, organs and the like.

As I am a novice when it comes to subtractive synthesis, it seemed a little daunting at first, but I started tweaking the few usable sounds I did like and soon enough I was coming up with the kind of sounds I was looking for. I have now programmed lots of electric piaon type sounds, fender rhodes type sounds, glockspiel type sounds and ambient sounds. Also a couple of electro Kraftwerk-esque sounds. I am very happy with them all. They really sound very organic and not very "digital". Nice.

Editing sounds is really easy to do - the only difficult thing is getting your head round the sheer number of optoins you have at your fingertips - the possibilities are ENORMOUS, which is great if you like to have as much control over the sound as possible (as I do). The good thing about the ION is that is has lots of dedicated knobs that make editing much easier for a novice. The graphic display of waveforms and envelopes are also great for learning the techniques of sound generation.

The manual is comprehensive, but the best way to learn this thing is get involved and start seeing what the different features actually sound like.

I'm not sure what software version I'm using for this - but I purchased it about 2 months ago. Sorry.

Polyphony is 8.

Keyboard action is good for a synth - but it doesnt feel anyting like a piano. Easily good enough for my needs.

Built in effects are pretty poor to be honest, the delay isn;t long enough and the other effects are fairtly cheesy. Distortions don't sound great - I wouldn't focus on this aspect when thinking of purchasing this. They are easy to use though.

MIDI capabilities/extensions etc are all greek to me at the moment, I'm not really up on this kind of thing and didn't assess this when I purchased the ION - I was interetsed in how it sounded.

No sequencer.

The best thing in terms of features is the sheer number of options you have to create sounds - 3 Oscillators, Pre-filter mix, 2 filters, post filter mix, then effects, arpeggiator, envelope generator, 2 LFO's - so much to play with and so much to shape your sound into anything you want!!!

The ION isn;t really great if you want to make realistic sounds of instruments like Piaon, Horns, strings. It's not what it's designed for. I'm also not really ananalogue synth enthusiast, so I can't tell you if it can realistically emulate the analogue synths we all wish we could afford! However, the sounds it makes are very very organic sounding and natural. Try not to base your initial thoughts on the presets though as they just sound weak.

I play rock music, influenced by bands like Sigur Ros, Radiohead, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, Interpol... that kind of thing and it's great for getting Sigur Ros type organ, electric piano sounds and Kid A era radiohead sounds. Really nice. It fits in well with the style of music I play. I would imagine it'd be great for dance music too as the 'synth' type sounds can be very agressive and expressive.

Onboard effects - not great - don't consider this if that's what you're after.

feels pretty decent to play, but the keys are probaly not as weighted as higher-end models.

In the amp envelope generator, you have the option of setting keyboard velocity from 0 to 100%. This is absolutely delightful and the keyboard really responds to playing very well - no aftertouch for all you piano plyers though.

To me, once you start programming in your own sounds, this thing realy comes into its own - so many possibilities of creating great sounds - very impressive. It's a shame it can't do realistic pianos, horns, strings, but that's not what it's built for.

Had it for 2 months, haven't gigged it yet but I would do so without a backup. No problems so far (touch wood!)

N/A

I would buy it again if it was stolen/lost. Been playing for about 2 months - I'm really a guitarist who owns far to many guitars and effects.

I love the natural sounds it can make, I don't hate anything about it, but can get frustrated with my lack of programming expertise. Only ting I wish it had was a sloped top - can be difficult to see the display at certain angles, and the design is a little cheesy - looks too futuristic, I'd rather they;d gone for avintage look like Korg's MS2000B. I really had it down to either the ION or the MS2000 and went for the ION because it simply had a greater number of options, better polyphony and the Sound On Sound review was so great.

I wish it had better onboard effects I guess, but that's not such a big deal for me.

It definitely helps me make music. As a long-time guitarist, it is so refreshing to pick up a different instrument to seek inspiration - the different way of playing it and the huge variations of sounds you can produce really inspire writing. I love it!

I can really recommend this piece of kit - the sounds are great and it's a joy to play! P.S. Mine was an ex-display model so I got it less than RRP.

Very easy to use. Plenty of knobs.

The manual was useful for me. It explains every step of editing. Sometimes I'd like to have deeper explanations though. So you have to experiment a bit with the synth.

Polyphony: 8. Not huge but I record every track directly on an audio track so it's enough for what I do.

Keyboard action: bad. But I'm a synth player, not a pianist, so it's good enough for what I do with the ION. It's not meant to be played like a piano, so don't worry too much about the keyboard. No aftertouch but I never use it anyway. You can use an expression pedal if you miss the aftertouch that much.

Midi is easy to use. My ION receives data from my XP80 workstation and it has midi thru sending data to a sound module. I can set the midi channels easily (I push 2 buttons and it's done). It has 4 parts, you can assign any midi channel to each part. So with the sequencer of my XP80 I can trigger simultaneously the internal XP80 sounds, the ION sounds, and the sounds from the sound module.

The arpeggiator is bad. Never use it, though I may use it someday for very basic rhythm parts to add in a song.

The vocoder is a great bonus. I just need to find a sound that will allow me to do some intelligible speaking through the vocoder. You can process external signals with it too (not only the internal sounds), so I used a "vocoder patch" I did on my XP80 and I process it with my voice through the ION. My microphone goes through a preamp though, because the inputs are line-level.

It sounds very good but most of the presets are very bad.

THOUGH BE AWARE OF THIS: you must realise -and it's true for every synth on earth- that some sounds are terrible when you play them alone (when you try a new synth you usually check all the presets alone), but some very very bad presets can give very interesting effects in a mix.

THE QUALITY OF THE SOUNDS MOSTLY DEPENDS ON HOW YOU COMBINE THE SOUNDS IN YOUR ARRANGEMENTS. So you can take 5 bad presets and make a very listenable piece of music with them. But it's so subjective, and it requires some kind of talent I guess.

Does the ION sounds like the synths it tries to emulate? I couldn't tell, cause I haven't heard those classic synths in the same conditions. If you want to sound like a Moog... well, go buy a Moog. Personally I've bought a Virtual Analog to have a different approach to the sound than with my Roland XP80 workstation. I don't care about re-creating the sounds of older synth, I just want to make useful sounds for my music.

Now you can do a lot a great sounds with the ION... Just experiment and remember that the beauty of the sound lies in the way you combine the sounds in your arrangements!

I give it "only" a 9 because of the presets. With better presets it would have been 10.

By the way, expressiveness is great - with 1 pitch wheel + 2 mod wheels + expression pedal connection, be sure to play very expressive synth solos!

I give 7 because of the small buttons. One of them needs to be pushed a second time before it reacts and I bought that synth only 9 months ago. But the Ion seems reliable, it's not too lightweight and it's a mainly metallic instrument (except the solid plastic parts at both ends - and the keys of course). I would gig without a backup, though not as my main synth (which means I could carry on with my XP80 if the Ion let me down, though I don't think it would stop working just during a gig).

Only thing I had to do is download the most recent OS from their website. Very easy to do. I liked to have a lot of audio demos on the site as well, it helped me when I decided to buy it - I knew what I was buying. I've never dealt personally with the company.

I'd like to give a 10 because you have to consider the price. 1135 euros was interesting compared to other models, but I regret that the price is much lower now :( I could have saved 300 euros.

If it was lost or stolen, I would consider buying it again but I would consider many other virtual analogs. A V.A. is a nice addition to my music. Maybe I would buy something cheaper still (a rack unit), because I don't have the money to buy another synth right now.

I record rock/pop music with electronic sounds. I did some great sounding things mixing acoustic & electric guitars and the ION.

Other gear I have:
- Roland XP-80 (use it for acoustic and electric pianos, bass sounds, percussion and vintage synths such as mellotrons and roland d50, thanks to the expansion boards)
- Korg Wavestation SR (great for evolving pads)
- Soon to arrive from an eBay transaction: the Korg 01/W FD.

My XP80 serves to re-create "acoustic sounds", so all my other synths are there for their electronic sounds. I don't regret to have bought the Alesis ION.

I use OS v1.06

the presets just suck, just as they usually do on VA synths. my worst synth for this was the Waldorf Q and I must say the Ion falls quite near the Waldorf as far as presets are concerned. I mean these guys have not been out in a club or a concert since the early nineties.

but forget the presets, it's that kind of machine that begs to be edited. I usually start with the default patch (a plain sine , one osc, filter bypassed) to leave all possibilities opened, and I must say when I came back from the shop and started playing, I immediately wanted to hit that store button everytime I changed a parameter. always a good sign.
in the first hours I made a dozen of sounds just like that, from scratch. forget the presets. do your sounds and hit that "store" button.
editing is a joy and very intuitive. it's full of tiny little features that make you go "ahah" when editing. well done. for example, one neat feature I liked is that detuning an oscillator by more than +99.9% (% of a semitone) will automatically make the "semitone" parameter increment by one... and your detune back to zero.

clearly not your average virus synth as far as ease of use is concerned. the LCD is clear and does a good job of giving you instant visual feedback of what you're doing as well as extra editing features, not accessible via onboard knobs and buttons.

the manual is clearly written but if you 've ever used an analogue synth you won't need it.

polyphony is OK. you won't write whole songs on it like a workstation but it's clearly not the idea.

I don't care having gazillions of voices when I have 8 good voices like the ones on the Ion. plus if you think about it, how many hit records were written on a Jupiter 8 ?

effects are good, I like the solina string phaser, and the distortions/compressions are OK. They won't replace a good hardware unit but they do a good job at dirtying things up

the keyboard is ok for anyone who's not a good keyboard player (like me). friends of mine that are good keyboard players said the keyboard sucks but it does the job for me... I don't care not having aftertouch...

no onboard sequencer, but a neat little arpeggiator to throw ideas around. would not replace a good midi programming though.

overall the features are more geared towards analogue synth addicts rather than workstation lovers... having this synth is like capturing a bit of synth myths like the jupiter, moog, etc.

fat and ballsy

as said above, it's good for analogue sounding patches.

I have various analogue synths ( Juno 60 , Oberheim Matrix 6 , MacBeth M3X , Prophet , etc.) and this one has nothing to be ashamed of in comparison. the oscillators are just incredible. so are the filters. I agree though the best filters are the emulations of the vintage ones, the "Ion only" are slightly less useful.

it's NOT sounding exactly like a jupiter or a prophet but it's as good and a joy to work on.

will beat any DCO based polysynth from the eighties... and won't stand ashamed in front of a prophet or a jupiter.

What I like is when programming a sound, it's just sitting well in a mix, no need for harsh EQing like a VSTi , no need for compression and valve processing. it's just good as it stands. dreamy creamy pads ? just add a bit of reverbe and you're done.
rough basslines ? make it a unison patch.

oh and I also like the fact that sounds will play very well up and down several octaves with no apparent digital artefacts like aliasing.

mine has nothing to complain about. no ghost paramater bug, no self editing, no dodgy modwheel.

it was a bargain, I got it for #300 almost new from a second-hand shop in London...

n/a

I would definitely buy another one if it were stolen . In fact I'm considering its baby bother the Micron to add another 8 voices to the set up !

I compared this synth with a Nord Lead 2x and a 3 , a korg ms2000 , and various VSTi and to me it really beats all of them for pristine vintage synth emulation. I also compared it to an Andromeda and boy I loved the Andy but at this price, the Ion cannot be beaten.

I sold my Juno 60 and Matrix 6 as a result of a session where I successfuly managed to recreate a few of their patches on the Ion.

I'm using OS 1.06 and have had my Ion about a year and a half.

The Ion is a well laid out synth which makes sound design easier. I am an ambient musician and for the most part I find the presets not all that usable for what I do. There are a few which really are fine. But overall the presets seem to be dance-orientated.

Editing the patches is very simple. Many of the presets have some good ideas behind them, and you can find out how they were designed and tweek them for your own use.

The manual is pretty good and explains the workings of the Ion plainly.

The Ion has a polyphony of 8 which for most cases is adequate. But there are times on a multi where I wish I had more.

The effects on the whole are weak. The Chorus and phaser are Ok but the delay is weak and there is no reverb. I assume most players have an outside reverb that they prefer, but I wish the delay was better.

There is no expansion capabilities.

The keyboard is adequate. There is no aftertouch, but it is velocity sensitive. It has two modwheels which I find a great bonus.

There is no sequencer yet, although its little brother, the Micron, has one. I'm hoping a OS update will add one. The arp is not great and is limited in editing.

The Ion offers FM and a Ring Modulator which can add some color to your sounds.

I like the filters and the envelope generators. There are quite a few filters, but the Moogish LP filter is my favorite. The envelope generators have loops which I find very useful in making interesting sounds.

The Mod Matrix is fairly extensive and easy to use.

For an ambient musician this synth can really be a great tool. It is so flexilbe and can come up with some very unique and usable sounds. The Ion cuts through a mix very easily.

This is not an instrument for realistic sounds. It is very easy to create some unearthy sounds. The pads and drones are incredible as are the basses. But you really have to go into the Ion and create them yourself. If your are into dance or pop music you might find the presets useful. The experimental and ambient musicians are going to have to trash a lot of the presets and start from scratch. The sounds are there and the Ion can really excell in there genres.

It has always come through for me. I have gigged quite a bit with it.

I have only had to call customer service once with a question, and they were very helpful and responsive.

For the money I don't think anything can match it for its sound and capabilities. I would replace it with another Ion if this one was ever lost.

I love the sound and dependability. The Ion is well laid out and easy to figure out.

I think the delay is weak in the effects as is the arp.

As an ambient artist, the Ion has helped to inspire me musically.

It is certainly worth the money.

I also own a Waldorf Q rack, Microwave XT, Yamaha RM1X, and various soft synths such as Reaktor and Absynth.

I FOUND THE EASE OF USE FOR THIS KEY OK UNLIKE A REAL ANALOG SYNTH A DRAMATIC SOUND CHANGE OCCURS WHEN YOU CHANGE ANYTHING LFO RATE, CUTOFF FREQ. SOUND PRETTY MUCH REMAINED UNCHANGED NOT VERY FLEXIBLE.
BUT 2 MOD WAS A NICE TOUCH.

THE VELOCITY SENSITIVE KEYS ARE NICE, COMFORTABLE PLAYING ACTION BUT THERE'S NO USE FOR 3 DIFFERENT PHASERS IN A SYNTH IF YOU CAN'T MAKE THEM SHINE THROUGH, AND THE DISTORTION EFX SUCK!!

THE SOUNDS ARE NICE,BUT I DO AMBIENT MUSIC SO MY SELECTION IS A LITTLE LIMITED. THERE'S ABOUT 25 PADS ON THIS THING. THE JUPITER PAD IS DREAMY WITH THE RIGHT REVERB BUT ALOT OF THE STRINGS ARE POOR AND THERE'S A COUPLE CHOIR WHICH AREN'T THAT GREAT. THE FM SOUNDS ARE NICE BUT IN NO COMPARISION TO A YAMAHA DX-7 SYNTH.I ADMIT ALESIS IS RIGHT IT'S THE CLOSEST TO ANALOG SOUND, BUT THE FILTER MODELS ARE A JOKE. IF YOU CYCLE THROUGH THE GOOD PATCHES LIKE THE BASSES, AND PADS YOU'LL NOTICE THEY RELY ON THEIR DIGITAL VERSION OF THE MOOG FILTER WHICH MAKES YOU WONDER HMMM..WHY INCLUDE 17 FILTERS WHEN ALESIS RELIES ON A FEW FILTERS FOR THEIR SOUNDS(BECAUSE THEY'RE THIN AND LIFELESS)

IT'S BUILT TOUGH I ADMIT, ADAPTER FREE USE IS A PLUS.

N/A

I WOULDN'T BUY THIS PRODUCT AGAIN. I OWN A FEW KORG AND OBERHEIM PRODUCTS SO I WILL SIDE WITH MYSELF THAT I HAVE A DIGITAL SYNTH OR TWO,HOWEVER A SYNTHESIZER IS MEANT TO IMITATE A INSTRUMENT (PIANO,STRINGS,BRASS, AND MAKE SOME SPECIAL FX) HOWEVER WHY PURCHASE AN INSTRUMENT THAT IMITATES ANOTHER VERSION OF ANOTHER INSTRUMENTS SOUNDS? FOR INSTANCE, SOME OF THE PATCHES: ODYSSEY LEAD,OBERHEIM STRINGS,STIX MINIMOOG,JUMP,TOM SAWYER,MOOG TAURUS PEDALS,ETC. I'M GLAD THEY DIDN'T TRY TO IMITATE A MELLOTRON WITH THIS SYNTH, WHO KNOWS HOW MANY PEOPLE MIGHT CHUCKLE!!I THINK IT'S TIME TO STOP THE ANALOG-MODELING FAD AND START DESIGNING REAL SYNTHESIZERS AGAIN!!!

at first, this synth looks ominous, brooding. so many knobs and buttons and blinking lights, if youre a beginner, you'll probably wet yourself.

i did.

but once you get in there and start going crazy with the twisting of the knobs and whatnot, its really not a difficult machine to work. like learning piano, its fairly easy to play, hard to master.

its got 8 polyphony. only 8 voices.. a little limiting. but with some tweaking of your sounds, you can make anything sound like anything.

thats all i can say. you have almost complete, utter freedom to change everything. EVERYTHING.

the only thing this thing can't do is make you dinner.

and im sure they've got a patch for that.

okay, so the pressure sensitivity is iffy... but you can tweak that.
no Q-cards. but you have 127 slots to save your own stuff.
limited built in effects, but you can simulate them if you have the patience.

this is where this machine shines. you can't give this machine anything below a 10, because if you don't like the sounds, you can make your own. you can make what you want. so if you don't buy this because you don't like the presets, you don't deserve it in the first place.

so far, i've had no problems with it, and i've been super brutal with it. i've left it out in my car over night in the snow, and i've thrown it around at shows. it just keeps trucking.

about the only problem is the software, which is getting fixed bit by bit with the patches. so eventually, this will be a ten.

i gig without a backup, but if you can afford it, have one. make sure to customize both in the same way, otherwise, you have two completely different keyboards that just look the same.

never dealt with them.

ive had it for two months, and im nothing but happy with it.

i've made everything from grinding, horrible static-filled sounds to awesome rock and roll organs.

tweaking this bad boy is a breeze. doing so with any amount of intelligent agenda is another story. it just takes practice and time.

i looked at this and the Alesis 6.2 (two completely different keyboards), and decided upon this based solely on how it looked.

my vanity chose well.

i wish it was a 64 key keyboard, but aside from that, i love it.

im using the original version of the software and, this aside, the ion performs wonderfully. it has a few issues with "holding" sounds when its not supposed to, but this is more human error than mechanical. the presets are what you would expect from alesis - anything from mind blowing to quirky to absolutely abysmal. all in all, really good, though. the manual? eh. its an alesis manual. you can use it for any number of useful things, like lining birdcages, or blowing your nose.

editing patches on this is a breeze, but doing so with any skill or confidence is another story entirely. tweek a few knobs here, scroll around randomly and start playing. you have yourself a deep, booming bass sound. could you recreate it? of course not.

in a weeks time, things get easier. editing is intuitive and fun, but can be daunting and confusing for a first timer (myself included)

the polyphony is low. only 8 voices to work with, which can get in the way sometimes, but can be worked around by editing patches tirelessly until one voice mimics multiple voices.

the built in effects are scant and dry. but thats not why you bought this bad boy.

no cards to install, but you can download new software and patches from the site, or various yahoo and msn groups.

the keys are pressure sensitive, but only just barely. the curve is insanely steep, but this works well for its character.

theres no onboard sequencer, but really, its not needed.

this is where the machine shines. the presets are alright, but what youre really interested in is the insane amound of tweeking you can do. the world is your oyster. make your own sounds.

the instruments have the potential to be realistic, if you have ten years of your life to waste on making a piano sound on a keyboard that was never intended to play piano.

trance, techno, dance, hardcore. anything needing electronic sounds or scathing leads. the 80's live on in this instrument.

the ION completely molds to fit your style. it grows as you do.

the velocity is, sadly, only so-so and aftertouch is nonexistant. but these are easy to overlook, giving the nature of the beast.

using version 1.00, i can't say this machine is entirely dependable as is. updated, however, and properly cared for, i think this keyboard will live longer than its owner.

im not sure i would gig without a back up. of course, im also paranoid.

never dealt with them.


the downloads are simple to get. plug it in, download, enjoy.

i would cry my eyes out if this thing were lost or stolen. so far, its been worth every penny. the crowd truely eats it up live, and it works well in recording.

i've been playing for about a year and a half now, and i own an Alesis qs8.1 and a roland Juno-D. the ION fills the niche i never thought i needed to fill.

i absolutely adore the quirky nature of the keyboard. the sounds seem so lively, so full of personality. this is limited, however, by the low polyphony.

i compared the ION to the andromeda and the Micron, and although both offer more in every department, i still went with the ION and so far, have yet to be let down.

I bought the Ion off ebay. It is exactly the synth I've always been looking for. I studied the manual online before I got the synth in the mail.

The manual is very good at explaining the definitions of technical analog synth terms. If a person who has never been exposed to analog synthesis reads this manual, they will receive all the information they need. But in my opinion, the manual does not explain well enough how to implement the ideas of analog synthesis to the ion. For example, when I turned the synth on for the first time, it jumped right into a preset sound. I could not find a place in the manual that describes how to start over from scratch with just the base analog sound. I have always played a minimoog, and it's obvious how to start over on that synth. However, since the Ion is setup pretty much just like the mini, the only difference being the digital layout, once I mastered the menus I was able to reset the sound.

Other than the manual, the synth is very easy to use and the layout is very logical, and after playing with the menu system for a while, anyone will be able to jump in and start making rad noises.

As for the presets - the Part/Program/Setup thing took a little getting used to. It still blows my mind, having been a minimoog user, that patches can be stored. But once you understand that part=patch, things begin making sense. The presets themselves are awesome and inventive, but (personal preference) I like making my own sounds. That's why I like the analog scene! I know with my own creation that I'm not using the same sound in my songs that a million other people have in theirs :O)

I never thought I would say this, but this has everything I ever wanted in a keyboard. I would never have purchased this if it not for the fact that it has EVERYTHING on it I could possibly ever dream of.

3 Oscillators - two oscillator sythns are great, there have been many good ones. But have three oscillators is like difference between have a fridge with a freezer & a vegitable crisper or NO vegitable crisper.

Waveshape - it was important to me to have a versatile amount of waveshapes. This Ion has all of the waveshapes as the Mini WITH the ability to variate the waveshapes into whatever shape you want. For example, you can fine tune the width of your square wave to be a Big Square or a Little Square! How cool is that? I didn't know it did that until I got it home and started playing with it.


8 note polyphony - I'm happy with 1 note polyphony. It is understandable that 8 notes might leave some unhappy in certain respects, and depending on the technical depth of your creations, you may find 8 voices unsatisfactory. I feel as though I make quite sophisticated sounds with my Ion, and (sorry for bringing it up so much) having been a minimoog user forever, having just a little polyphony is worth it. I have never run into a problem with the 8 voice limitation. Never.

Mono/Poly - you can switch easily between a mono and poly synth by use of a dedicated button right on the main keyboard.

Filters - The filter section is unbelievable. My minimoog is in the #5000 serial numbers, so it has the old/new oscillator board - the one with the phat sound. The Ion not only replicates this sound, it also replicates the filters of the Oberheim, the Jupter the Arp and some Alesis original filters. The envelope section is also quite detailed and powerful.

Effects - It must be noted that this keybaord does not have a Reverb effect. That having been stated, it does have Chorus, distortion and a really excellent flanger. Personally, I wouldn't use reverb anyway, since, like most of you, I have different external fx processors. But the flanger is a pretty good one and the distortion is pretty cool to have on a synth, too.

LFO - The low frequency oscillator is powerful and features s/h (sample and hold). I dig it.

Arpeggiator - You can select from a whole lot of different types of arpeggiation. The Ion also allows the arpeggio to extend beyond the chord you're playing into different octaves and all that other stuff. Pretty neat, pretty neat.

In terms of realism, you shan't find a piano patch on the Ion worth writing your grandma about. Of course, an analog synth isn't what a person buys to take to their first piano recital.

In terms of emulating the classic synth filters which it hopes to copy, the ion does a great job. There is nothing like it that I've heard. It does the minimoog perfectly. And as far as I can tell, it does the oberheim, rolands and Arp 2600 with precise accuracy as well.

You can make any sound you want on this keybaord. Snare drum? You've got it. Hi hat? Wussup. Bass drum? Better dig it. Bass guitar? Shutup. That sound in the Goonies when they meet One Eye Willie? Better believe it right now.

There is no aftertouch, which I don't mind too much. But it does have touch sensitive keys. And release sensitive keys!! Which is neat for playing those cool mono solos.

You can edit all of the sounds while you're playing. The ion is completely configurable. There is nothing on it which cannot be f'd with.

I'm going to give this a 10. I have the latest software version on my ion and the operating system seems solid. I've never had a problem with it. The unit itself is built of metal. Real metal, not plastic-looking metal. Real metal! The red side panels are a little cheap and cheesy, but I never look at the sides anyway. Although I'd never do it, it's pretty safe to say this keyboard can easily survive being beat up and dropped around.

I've never dealt with a company representative directly, but I have been to the alesis web site. I suggest you go there as well, if you haven't already done so. You can find it on google.

I'm giving them a straight up 10 for their web site. It is easy to navigate, without a ot of bars on the top and sides that I can get lost and have a hard time finding my way back again.

But most of all, the web site has downloads of the new OS versions and sound bands. AND downloads of the manuals and sound bank lists.
It is safe to say I would not have purchased the Ion had I not first read the manual, which I would not have been able to do if the company didn't offer it for free on the internet.

The Ion rules. It is cheap considering all of the features it has. Even if you buy it brand new and pay dealer mark-up, you're still getting a deal.

I believe the world may soon catch on to how flipping cool this keyboard is and prices will skyrocket.

The sound emulation is great. There are no digital side-effects. There are three oscilators, 2 filters, great effects, arpeggiation.

You can layer up to four sounds! Imagine the freaky symphonies you can make with four moogs topped on each other! Each with two filters!

I also have a couple 80's casios, a microkorg a Moog MG-1, a Jupter 8, a crappy goodwill organ and a Minimoog to which I have compared the Ion. I'm not going to be ebaying my other synths or anything, but I'm also not going to be taking them on the road with me anymore, either (except in situations where I feel I must up my Moog credibility).

This synth is the best buy I've made in a long time. There is nothing I wish it had. I am not disappointed. I've never said to myself "gee, it'd be cool if did this..."

In closing the Ion rules over the mule.

I give it a nine. You have a menu of presets and user programmable banks but it is a little hard to go from one settting to another if you're onstage. For the studio, this would be great (so maybe I should give it a 10). The manual is great and you'll need to refer to it once you think you've screwed everything up (there is a return to default settings button). This thing is programmable and I love that because I like to make my own sounds. You can tweak the presets too and save them in assignable locations. The presets are unbelieveable and I'll mention them more in a minute.

The Ion is polyphonic (8 voice, sort of like the old Korg DW-6000, but I still like it). The keys are fine (not weighted but not cheesy like those old Crumar keyboards in the 70's). There are some programmable effects and a really cool arpeggiator that can send midi out to arpeggiate your other keys as well. It is expandable and you can download operating system updates friom the Alesis website. The manual is great and that really helped me figure this little bugger out (I tend to experiment and then read the manual after I've messed everything up). The keys are pressure sensitive and it is a digital synth that operates like an analog synth (knobs and sliders included).

This is the ion's strength and weakness. The synth sounds are awesome. This thing has presets that replicate various fat synths from classic rock songs. You've got your Rush "Tom Sawyer", your Who "Baba O'Riley", and your ELP "Lucky Man". Loads of these things with cute titles to remind you of what classic rock synth sound you're playing. On the other hand, the pianos (there aren't many of them) are weak. The brass sounds like a synth doing brass but that is a plus for you 80's music afficianados. After playing and recording with this thing for one day, I became comfortable with it.

I want to get more comfortable with it before I take it on a gig but I foresee this being one of my main synths (I still love playing my old Korg DW-8000 and an Alesis QS-6). The synth leads are fantastic and I love the bottom end delivery on many of the patches. If we ever cover some of the Who songs I'll just have to bring it with me.

Alesis is pretty good about supporting their products as far as I can tell. I've had no problems. Their website has so much on it that you can pretty much help yourself.

I think I would buy another one should this one get ripped off. I've been playing for nearly thirty years and I like my old analog stuff the best. This one fits right in. I have my Korg DW-8000, my Alesis QS-6, and old Roland Juno 106, and an Ensoniq Mirage (it still works and has some cool samples on it for a non-stereo rig). The Ion is closest to the DW-8000 and the Juno 106 as far as programming and playing. I think as I grow more accustomed to this keyboard, I'm gonna love it even more.

easier than my prom date. i plugged this guy in and started making music and programs in seconds. i've never felt so instantly creative, nothing held me back from rockin!

8 poly - enough for me right now.
the effects are chill. i wasnt really looking for effects though. so honestly i dont think i should comment on this.
as far as expansion? i dont know about any cards or boards, but i know alesis' website offers plenty of downloads...
velocity keys are a plus... and from what i understand there are even more updates on midi control espcially for use with a softsynth.
nay, no on-board sequencer. which i think would be a huge plus! but at the same time... have you heard this thing? it sounds amazing, especially for the price. im glad they thought of sound before sequence.

holy shit.

i've only had it for one day. but i bought it used and it still works. if i had the choice of labor between a sweatshop kid or this synth... it'd be this synth. (but who would make a kid do work?)

never dealt with alesis... but the guy i bought it from was helpful )

if it were lost and stolen, i'd be bummed. i like it and yes, i would buy another one. couldnt imagine buying any other synth in this range. if i were going to spend more i'd buy the A6 oh snap, thats a nice one. i *do* wish it had a sequencer, but at the same time... i spent $450 and it sounds way to kick ass, i can get any sound i want from it, and what do you people really expect for something under a thousand... if you want everything you're going to pay for it. damn.

Very easy to use. Great synth!

8 voices ... I wish it had more but it works out fine for what it's designed to do.

Sounds are AWESOME!! I looked into Kord MS2000 and Nord Lead2X before I bought this.

The only issue I have is that it is very noisy, if you have it connected to studio monitors, turn the volume all the way up and you'll hear all kinds of noise.

NO NO NO ... I just bought this board thinking that Alesis has worked out all the bugs from earlier boards, well I don't think so. I got mine two days ago and now I found out that the M2 (modulation wheel) doesn't work. The light on it kept going on and off the first day, I thought it had something to do with the way the patch was programmed, but the wheel completely died this morning. I am getting ready to send it back to the place where I bought it from.

I need to get another one to see if I will keep it. If the new one has some issues then, bye bye alesis for me. I can't have an un-reliable machine in my studio

Pretty easy to use...I jumped right in without reading the manual. Pretty easy to edit and save your patches and multi's. Manual is easy to navigate though..No complaints here

8 voices is ok just wish you could expand. Key action not the greatest..My KS4 has better action for velocity, etc. Effects are good just wish there was delay and or reverb..I usually just add a little release to get the reverb effect so I just use my 01V for needed effects.

Best part of the ION is the sounds and how easy it is to get a nice tweaked patch!! I already created about 20 patches in one Day..Kickass Strings, Sweeps, bass, pads, soundscapes...Not good for percussion thought, but that's not the reason why i brought it :-) It's also 4 part multimbre which i like..Wish it was 8 part cause i could actually use them. Nice look..i like it when the wheels light up red as you turn them...Cool live / video effect! 512 presets is nice to add in there...In my opinion the best VA synth out there...Even better than my Virus B and that's saying alot there...

Had it for only 6 days now..let ya know on my update in a few months, but so far so good.

Never had to deal with Alesis yet..let ya knowon the update.

I purchased this brand new in the box for $565.00 and is the best sounding VA synth out today! Better than the Virus, KS4, Nord Lead's, but probably in the same category as the Waldorf Q and XT series synths. I just wish it was 16 part multimbre and had delay and reverb effect onboard. But can get a round that.

This synth is simple to program considering its many features. It helps to think of it as a modular analog synth, using the mod matrix as your "patchcords". I reccomend every Ion owner to join Yahoo Alesis Ion group- very active and all questions will be promptly answered. Many patches there in files section. ( I have 50 or so there). The only synth easier to program is a NordLead, and that is because it is much more limited than the Ion. There is a blind guy in the Yahoo Ion group who can program it just fine,except for maybe the mod matrix, which requires the use of the display. Patch editor not necessary; no patch librarian yet but there will be one soon. Some people have had problems updating OS; the key to a successful update is to slow down syxex transmission. If it doesn't take the first time, just try again. Midiox works great for OS updates. Latest update, 1.06, adds arp send midi and choice of nrpn or cc# for knobs.

I can't believe Alesis could cram this much stuff into a $700. synth! 20! filters- some of which have to be heard to be believed.(Phase Warp filter). Effects are useable but not necessary. 8 note poly is plenty unless you are doing layers. Unison mode not even necessary to get a fat sound. You can use the OP 4pole hipass filter in conjunction with the Mg 4pole lopass filter for HUGE BASS! Very good chance that Alesis will add the Microns' step sequencer and user arp patterns in a future OS update. My only complaint is re key action. It has a short action, meaning that the keys' pivot point is right where it enters the case. Feels weird at first, but I'm used to it now.

The best sounding VA ever made, regardless of price. Does it sound *exactly* analog? No. As close as you're gonna get, though. Ion is great at emulating old analog stuff; Minimoog,Arp,Jupiter,Oberheim,etc. Doesn't have a Prophet 5 filter (yet). It also has its own unique sound if you use "Ion only" filters- especially the Phase Warp filter, which is based on an analog phaser effect. Presets are OK and a good starting point. Some are sorta thin-sounding (intentionally?) but are easily fattened up. If you want realistic get a rompler.

I bought one of the first Ions and had many ghost editing problems, as well as several bad pots. Alesis exchanged it for another one, and the 2nd one was worse! Then they found out that a bad batch of pots got mixed in with the good ones, and there was no way to tell the difference. Also the knob response was overly sensitive. An OS update made the knobs less sensitive. This means you have to rotate them nearly two full turns to go from 0 to 100%. Some people don't like this,especially with filter cutoff. If tweaking filter cutoff is important to the patch, just assign it to a mod wheel (it has 2). I sent my 2nd defective Ion in for repair, and they replaced *every* knob on the synth. Been perfect ever since, and it gets used every day. The more recent Ions have had far fewer problems. I'm buying a Micron, partially as an Ion backup, but primarily to use as a bass synth. Program a Rhodes Bass, Park it on top of my CX-3, dial in a Vox sound on the organ, and do my best Ray Manzarek impersonation! (always liked the Doors).

Alesis customer support is the best in the business. They actually answer the phone at tech support, and are most helpful. When I sent my Ion in for repair, they had it for 3 days and sent it back, fixed.

I'd definitely buy another one if lost or stolen. Great "bang for the buck". I went in to buy a minimoog voyager, and ended up buying the Ion because I liked it better!

This is a re-review of this synth because I have some things to gripe about!!! As far as ease of use, I have not yet(after several tries)gotten the pitch envelope to do anything. If any one can tell me how to get the pitch envelope to JUST DO SOMETHING! please e-mail me. I have tried to sync this synth (Arp,Lfo's)to MIDI several times and after several bars the thing starts to lose sync. I dunno, maybe i'm doing something wrong I thought...But, NO! Overall though, ease of use is not the problem...READ ON!!

This synth does have some great features when it is working correctly! I still am not happy about the features described in the manual that are not in the final OS code...And, Oh yea, why does the new Micron have a reverb algorithm and the Ion does not? Also I sent in the coupon and copy of the receipt for the free gig bag they are giving away with new ION purchases and It was no suprise to me that I NEVER GOT IT! And it has been since the beginning of APRIL! So, I called them today to find out what was up with that and the woman on the other end said "It will go out this week" So I guess I'll have to wait and see about that.

The sound is great! This is one of the main reasons I bought the thing in the first place was for the sound.

Now...Here is where I have my biggest complaints! The first one that I bought had a large dead spot on 2 of the encoders and there was a shrieking squeak on the mod2 wheel when rotated after not even a week! So I sent that one back to Alesis to have those things fixed. When I got it back the mod2 wheel was so loose it would bouce back and forth if you let it go when rotating it!!! Plus a few of the edit buttons were not working as they should and felt very flakey! So, of course I was unhappy and I then took it back to the store where I bought it to exchange it for a brand new one without incident. I got that one home and soon noticed that SEVERAL of the knobs were loose and wobbly! UUUGGGHHH!!! Everything else seemed fine at the time so I decided that was not that big of a deal after cursing Alesis's quality control a bit! Not even 5 days passed before I soon noticed that a few keys were not working correctly and were dropping notes when played!!...DOUBLE UUUGGGHHH!!! This synth has been such a complete nightmare for me I don't know if I will ever trust another product from them! I would depend on a dope addict crackhead stranger to watch my house and feed my pets while I'm gone before I depend on an ION!!! Well...Not really! but you should get the point. I guess I'll have to roll the dice again and send it back to Alesis for warranty work! AGAIN!!!!

Overall, IF! you get a good one this synth is unbeatable for the price. Like another guy said in his review on the ION on this site, Think about if owning one is worth the headache you may get from the troubles you have a good chance of having from it. I want to give it an overall rating of ZERO because of the trouble I have had but I must admit it can be a very good synthesizer when you have not a problem with it....Write me and let me know if you are having trouble with the pitch envelope too.

OS V1.05.
The Presets that come on the ION give you an idea of the variety of sounds that you can program on this board. There are some that are a scream, for instance Red Bank #11-Sizzler. Play a low note on this patch and move up Mod Wheel 2, awesome. I primarily play classic rock and wanted a VA that sounds like some of my old analogs without having to carry them around and deal with drift and not enough program memory as is typical with the vintage gear. There's anice selection of lead sounds, lioke Stix Mini, Lucky Porta MWZ, Framkemstein (Edgar Winter Group) and numerous other lead sounds.' I also like the wide array of sound effects patches. Although I'll only use a few of the factory sound effects, I can program my own and replace sounds I won't use. The ION has 512 patch storage, so there's plenty of room. I've been making modifications of some existing patches I can use, and making a list of patches that are expendable for patches of my own. The ION is quite usable right out of the box, and will only get better as you put time into it with your own stuff.
Manual is straight forward. It gets to the point and tells you what you need to know.

The 8 voice polyphony is right for this size board and the selling price of the ION. What's nice is its the price of a lead synth and is polyphonic. Not stuck with just being capable of mono lead. Some people have complained about the KB being cheap. I think its quite playable and a lot better than some of its vintage breathren that were a lot more expensive years ago. No, its not a Yamaha weighted keyboard, but if you can't play this board, you need to get your chops in order. Don't compare the action or feel of the keyboard to a $3500.00 keyboard, not only its not fair, it's unrealistic at this price. The effects are minimal on the ION, and I knew that when I bought it. I don't care, I have plenty of dedicated effects and don't want to pay for yet another reverb. Alesis did the smart thing by only putting what is really needed on the ION....Great sound and plenty of real time controls. The ION doesn't have any expansioin capabilities, but again, you're talking about a $699.00 lead synth, not a MOTIF ES. Standard Midi Capabilites, and the KB is not pressure sensitive, no after touch. I'm going to use this as a lead synth and not violins, so aftertouch isn't important to me on this board. I can use mod wheels for vibrato if necessary, but I don't see that adding after touch and making the ION more money would fit into its target price range. The on-board arpegiator patterns are set, they're not step or user programmable. Big Whoop. I wonder how many times I've needed a arpegiator? Not often.

The sound, the real time controls, great selection of filters, the user interface that you can operate via the LCD screen are what makes the ION what it is. 3 OSC per voice with the standard wave forms. You can soft sync or hard sync the ocs which is a nice idea. Sometimes hard sync is too much for editing a patch to get the results you want. The pots are 360 degree pots with high resolution (12 bit) so you don't hear any steps, very smooth. You can change octave up/down on each osc, or on all 3 osc at once with front panel controls. The buttons on the front panel are small, are the right size for the size of the board, and work great. You have the option of monitoring every change you make to a patch on the LCD screen, or shut it off for live playing so you know where you are and can move to one patch or the other with the master program pot. Alesis did a great job of putting the most often used controls on the front panel, and other parameters are easy to get to using the LCD screen. You can find what you're looking for just by touching a pot for the parameter you want to change and it comes up on the screen. It makes ADSR changes a lot easier and faster because you can see the slope on the fly and make the appropriate changes. The envelopes are controlled with the same 5 pots so you can't change the amp and filter settings at the same time, but again, there's only so much room for the pots Alesis put on the ION without making it a bigger box. That's really not a problem for me, I usually only work with one parameter at a time anyway. The envelopes have six stages besides the usual ADSR. There are also length settings for decay and sustain. Very cool. The mod matrix is like using a modular synth. The operation reminds me of some of the vintage synths capabilities. Its an up to date replica of an analog synth, without a lot of the short comings. You can set "drift" if you really want and to what degree you You can detune the oscillators to fatten up the sound and make it sound as analog as the ION sounds. Also has a 40 band vocoder to keep you amused. As I mentioned previously, the KB doesn't have aftertouch, but again, it sells for around $699.00 so they had to cut corners somewhere. KB with after touch is getting to be the exception rather than the rule.

I've only had this less than a month but I'm really happy with it. None of the problems that the early OS had, it works flawlessly. I'm actually pleasantly surprised just how capable the ION is and I'm sure I'll have years of service from this board. I would use this for giggin without a back up. Although at the selling price of the ION, I could actually afford a spare!

I called Alesis two times. Once when I was trying to determine if I should buy a used ION off EBAY or pass on it. Tech support was very objective about the used ION I was considering. They told me what they knew about the problems they had with OS 1.00, which the used board still had on it. They didn't try to talk me into a new one, they just told me what they knew. The second time I called was right after I got a NEW ION, asked for some advice on getting an expression pedal to work with it properly. The tech I got on the phone didn't know the ION well enough and told me he would have someone call me back shortly. Within 20 minutes I get a call back and got the info I was looking for. Also-I sent in the form for the free gig bag and got my bag in 10 days. Alesis also sent me their 2004 catalog and a bunch of other promo stuff and a nice thank you letter. Nice touch. Nicely done Alesis. I will look to Alesis again when I'm in the market for other things they make.

Yes if someone stole the ION, I would get another one. It fits my music and my budget. Its the right size for my KB rig too. I've been playing KB over 40 years, have a lot of vintage gear and have just started buying new stuff for a live KB rig. The ION is a nice addition. What I like the most about the ION is the sound. The price/performance makes this 2004's best value. I compared it to a Korg MS200B, which I thought was a bit more harsh and less appropriate for the music I play. I also considered a DSI Poly Evolver, but the Poly alone is twice as much $$$ as the ION. So the ION was my choice for a great sound at a reasonable price. I'm glad to see Alesis is getting their act together, they went through a lot of changes of late and I'd like to see them stay in business. They are doing a great job with the less expensive synths, and have the flagship analog synth in the Andromeda. I will look to Alesis when I'm in the market for more gear, in addition to Yamaha.

Using the latest OS 1.05
Presents are mostly expected to be flat and boring...but some do shine. the 808 kick ain't bad at all! Editing patches was a frustrating thing at first - then i learned how to manipulate the mod matrix to change the personality altogether. Tell you the truth i have had my ion for about 4 months now and i think i made a reference to the manual like once! All in all i gave it a 10. It's one of the most simple VA synths i ever used.

8 polys - Keyboard action doesn't bother me at all. I make hip hop and electronica experiments so all i care about is the noise. I may gig with it in the future who knows? But if i want aftertouch i will turn on my Virus KC. Effects are a little of a disappointment - but that's okay - cause i never rely on them unless i become desperate. Maybe Alesis should have implemented a "Random" button for hitting walls. My Virus KC has this...it's helpful for creative blocks. Filters are pretty easy to use...but to get more sounds and personalities from this board you gotta twaek it from all angles...DO NOT rely on effects to spit shine your sounds. Expansion: i foresee Alesis giving us a lot of goodies in future OS versions...beyond that...i don't see any hardware expansion unless i do some mad scientist rigging under the breast plate. That'll void your warranty faster than a nano second! ION has Midi in, out & thru. Keys are pressure sensitive. I have to adjust mine though. Never used it (if it has one)I gave it a 6 simply because i know i need to learn more that's all.

Sounds on this thing blew me away the first time i touched it. I mean i bought a Korg MS2000B - kept it for a weekend, and took it back to exchange it for the ION. I am glad i did! But i do miss that Korg though. Realism? well i got a VERY realistic guitar pluck and electric piano sound out of it. A lot of times you stumble over the best sounds. But save em quick!i make basically Reggae, Dub, Hio Hop, Elecronic, 80's video game music, but not very conventional for Classic or Jazz...but if tweaked enough you could get away with it. You wont get soft satin sounds out of the box...more like twisted stuff blood curdled stuff. Effects are really shallow. wished it had more to offer. Reacts pretty good...sometimes unexpected - but thats just the values in my OSC's and filters. Sometimes unexpected is good. velo and after touch is allright - i give this section a 9. I love the sounds on this synth. Just raw and different.

Yeah it's very dependable...i don't juice it too much, this board is a real treat for me to play. So it is still a very new instrument in my studio. Man i get butterflies when i am away from it for too long. Sure, i'd do gigs w/o a backup. I would just handle it with super extra care. No heavy gigging. 10 for this one.

Alesis has the best customer service available. Quick, friendly and they actually take time to chat with you. I called Alesis out of the blue to ask for a free gig bag since i had to send it in for an OS repair and they sent me one that same day. 10 for customer service

If it were lost or stolen - i'd sell the thief's body parts for a nre one. I'd DEFINATELY replace it. It's a classic already. i hva been playing for about 20 years...on and off really. I remember in college we had a Jupiter...i still listen to those old demos and get a chill. I also have a Virus KC, an MPC 1000, a Zoom sampler, Cubase SX, Reason, Audition, Korg Legacy Collection, Yamaha RY30 drum machine, and a Roland MC-303 Groove box. Oh and a little plastic Casio i bought for $35 ...everyone needs a little cheese right? love the look - sound ...hate the weight...damn thing weighs a metric ton!!! But thats cause it's so PHAT! I hate that it's only 8 polyphonic..also that the LCD is flat. I wished it could swivel up like a Mini Moog. Compare to MS200's and Virus KC...like i said i like it better than the Korgs, and i just didn't see the big deals about Tritons and Motifs...Nords either. To me (off the subject) Virus KC kicks all these ass. Chose it for the price and capabilities...also because i needed another fix. Making music with it is great. I find that it takes over a bit...but thats just me getting carried away. It meshes beautifully with my samples and other synths , 10 for this

EASE OF USE

For the most part it's a highly intuitive synth thanks to the major functions being mapped to knobs and buttons on the face of the board. For instance, if you want to change an arpeggio it's as easy as hitting the arp edit button and everything you need is right there in front of you. I don't have the manual. Bought a floor model (get to abuse it until a new one comes in :)

I'm still not exactly shure how/why splits seem to be happening on every path (I don't like splits, so maybe I need to download the manual :)

I think the polyphony is fine. I can play some pretty rich chord textures with no worries thus far. Just keep in mind this isn't a multi-timb keyboard.

The effects are fine. Then again, if you're a decent programmer you can make this board sound like anything you want it to sound like... without ever even turning the effects on. It is that versatile. The filters are insane. And while we're on this topic, don't ever trust a gear reviewer who says "the effects suck." You will never hear a bonafide musician say that about ANYTHING. Why? Because musicians are focused on the music, not the (eg) modulation rate of the chorus. For all you young gals and guys out there coming up, always remember: it's not about what's coming out, it's about what's going in.

This board has no expansion capabilites whatsoever. It's a no frills synthesizer built for players. Period. It employs the same MIDI everyone else employs. Seems responsive to me.. although admittedly I'm going straight into my DAW with the signal. No, there is no sequencer integrated with the Ion. Again, it's a player's board. If you can't play keys, don't even bother. That's my advice.

I'm not going to ramble about the sounds. But I will say is this: the board has a distinctive character. It sounds very different than my Motif ES (which is why I got it). It can growl, hiss, whir, buzz, belch, sweep, wah and change colors in ways I've never heard a synth do. There is no aftertouch but in all honesty, with the third wheel (heh) it's a moot point. Aftertouch never works right anyways. I love having tremolo mapped to the wheel for almost every patch. I think it was a great idea on Alesis' part.

Overall the tone is warm and lush and then cold and bitter. I'm really floored at how good it sounds. Converters are dynamite. Sounds BIGGER than my Motif ES.

Who knows. Just got it

No clue

I'll give it a 9 overall. I would have given it a 10 but the display is FLAT and I have to crane my neck to read it :( Haven't checked into software for it yet but I'm betting something is out there. Anyways, it's a sweet keyboard and I love the sound it makes. Just love it. Will be in my studio a long time.

I just picked this up used at Guitar Center for $449. It was filthy, but a little Windex and a couple of paper towels, and it's as good as new (well, almost). It had OS version 1.0 on it when I brought it home, and it didn't take long to notice it was flaky (especially the display, which was jumping all over the place when I played the keyboard). The good news is that I updated it to 1.05 (via the Sysex tool in Cakewalk Sonar), loaded all of the updated patch files from Alesis, and it has worked perfectly since!! Selecting presets and doing some minor edits on them is pretty easy. Hitting an edit button next to the oscillators or filters (or just about anything else, for that matter) brings the parameters up in the LCD window, and you can scroll around and make any changes you like. There's even a compare feature so you can assess your changes on the fly. Saving your changes is as easy as hitting the store button (and then verifying). Having owned a Juno-106 for 15 years, I had some knowledge of programming an analog synth, and I felt right at home on this one! I have several ROMpler synths, and almost never do any editing. The Alesis BEGS to be experimented with, and so far all of my efforts have been rewarding. The manual looks ok. I haven't spent much time with it though, because much of the Ion is pretty intuitive. Alesis has done a nice job with the interface.

You can get the specs at www.alesis.com, so I won't repeat all of that. Polyphony is only 8, but that doesn't seem to be a problem (hell, the Minimoog is still monophonic!). Built in effects aren't much to speak of, but I plugged an Alesis Picoverb directly in the signal path between the Ion and my mixer and WOW!!! Like others have said, the keyboard action sucks. No, I take that back, it's hideous! When I'm in the studio, I play the Ion from another keyboard. Live, however, I just have to suck it up. No onboard sequencing and no expansion capabilities.

Ah...how does it sound??? First of all, I've been lusting after a VA synth for a few years. I really wanted an Access Virus C, but couldn't justify the expense given that I have a lot of soft synths (Minimoog-V, Pro-53, B4, Absynth, etc). I took a chance on the Ion after reading some reviews, and I have to admit, I've been blown away by it. My old Juno-106 and JP-8000 were jokes compared to this thing. It really nails some of my favorite Moog, Oberheim, Roland and Arp patches. The modelled filters are really impressive. It can sound FAT!! The onboard effects do not include a reverb, but like I said earlier, inserting a Picoverb in the signal chain made a HUGE difference.

I have only had it a few days, so I can't say much here. It seems solidly built (aside from the keys, which are cheap). In any case, I'm going to baby it as much as I can. I will be gigging with this, and I'm hoping for the best!

Haven't had to talk to them.

I would get another one if something happened to this one. If you want a VA, this is probably one of the best sounding ones out there. Sure, the $1500 Virus C has more polyphony and more built-in effects, but for less than 1/3 the price, I can put up with having to plug in my little outboard reverb.

The layout of the keyboard 'omne knob per perameter' etc- makes it very simple to prog or just tweek-
I LOVE the look of this synth- I know it shouldn't matter, but it does- it makes you want to play-

Lets be honest- this is a lead type synth - 4 parts and 8 poly wont let you program a symphony in cubase...however 512 patches (all over-writable) is great-
I scored this on what it is designed to do- not against a workstation....

Did I mention the wheels light as as you rotate them :-)

I don't miss aftertouch - I prefer the second mod wheel - but thats me.
I also own a VIRUS and (too many) VSTi's.....
This is the best VA synth I have ever used....it sounds alive and it doesnt get any better than that.
A few reviews moaned about the lack of effects (reverb and delay)- the INCLUDED effects are great and are suitable for the type of sounds this synth makes- I'm sure most people run through external mixer/VST effects (I know I never use keyboard reverbs...) so this probably wont matter to mo9st serius users...

Seems well made, heavy, solid and proffesional looking.

I paid 375 GBP (UK) new from a music shop selling them off on ebay. Spur of the moment purchase that I will now NEVER sell- I can't believe more people are not saying how great this is- As I said, many of the sounds are better than Virus (though less poly etc)-

For the price 'I' paid- it is 10/10 value (I have paid as much for software synths!)

Go in to a music shop- try patch RED 11 (called sizzeler) and move mod wheel 2-

Thyen get your credit card out ;-)

A previous reviewer wrote:
"Still wish it had aftertouch though but since second mod wheel acts as aftertouch I can still give it a 10."

I don't know how many times I've come across a comment like this, and can't figure out why this misunderstanding (or ignorance of terminology) persists. But I hope this helps to clear things up. Please Note: AFTERTOUCH is a function of the keyboard, not any other knob, slider, wheel, or joystick. If the keybed doesn't alter the sound by pressing harder after a note has been stuck, the synth doesn't have Aftertouch, period. Aftertouch is not a synth parameter like Cutoff, Envelopes, Resonance, etc., it's a controller that you can assign any number of parameters to (depending on the synth). This function can't be replaced by some other device that forces you to remove a hand from the keyboard, thus a 3rd mod wheel is just a 3rd mod wheel and cannot replace the Aftertouch function. I think this confusion persists with those who are mostly into using synths for dance, i.e. noises/effects/bleeps, etc., a largely post-1995 phenomenon when Aftertouch became a less appreciated and demanded aspect of synth offerings, and was dropped on many synths. You can only really appreciate how expressive Aftertouch can be as a keyboardist (live player) not as a knob twiddler. It truly makes the instrument feel like a living, breathing thing, responding to the touch from your fingers, just like an acoustic instrument would. Even though you are creating and using synthetic sounds, real Aftertouch (in the keybed) brings the instrument out of static, robotic world and into expressive world, putting the musician in touch and in control of the sound dynamics without removing hands from the keyboard.

OS 1.05. Everything is perfect now. This Ion came out of the box with OS 1.05 on it. The newer Ions have had all that knob issue stuff ironed out. Presets are nice but come on, this synth was not bought for presets, it is made for creating sounds...3 oscillators per voice! Powerful sounds.

All the features are terrific and work just as they should. his is one powerful synth. I chose the Ion over the Nord Lead series. Only feature I would like to see added would be aftertouch but second mod wheel basically acts as this feature.

Again, I chose the Ion over the Nord Series because it sounds to good. Took the Ion home with me the first night I ever heard it, I was that impressed with it. Still wish it had aftertouch though but since second mod wheel acts as aftertouch I can still give it a 10.

The newer Ions are flawless. Cut Alesis some slack, it was a brand new product and there were bound to be some bugs but Alesis took care of it all.

First ion was bad but customer support did not waste any of my time. In fact they sent me out a new one the same day I called them and before I even sent mine back in.

This synth is just too amazing. I would absolutely replace the Ion. I chose it over the Virus (although very tempting) and the Nord Lead based on its sound. I already have a master controller board so I didn't need that in a synth just a sonic powerhouse like the Ion. Does not sound thin or brittle but fat and analog.

I really feel that this keyboard deserves all 10s which is unusual but I can't find any faults with it. I feel it is underpriced which gives the perception it isn't powerful or that it is a toy which is so far from the truth.

As of now, i'm running v1.03. Thus far, i'm finding the Ion quite easy to get around. Most of the common parameters have a dedicated knob, though to get to all of the possible changes that can be made, you'll still have to page through a few menu screens. We're used to this by now, however, and the layout is quite logical. However, I could easily see a patch editor being a benefit, if only for patch creation that requires a better view of everything simultaneously. Beginners may have trouble wrapping their heads around the 'part' settings, but a flip through the manual easily remedies this. It's a dry read, but clear enough.

Big points to Alesis for the inclusion of endless-rotary knobs, btw.

There's one thing that makes all this a bit more difficult to use, however.....

I haven't done any heavy sequencing with it yet, but thus far, I haven't found the polyphony limiting at all.

Playing is very comfortable; velocity sensitive, no aftertouch, but I can live with that. Very well suited for creating electronic music, which is exactly what I was looking for. 'Professional' players will likely wish the Ion was available as a rack, however, as the keys are a bit springy. I tend to like this in a keyboard, though.

Modmatrix, filters, and ADSR are very nice, and invite you to go nuts tweaking your sounds. Very flexible, many possibilities, it should suit the average beginner or a seasoned pro. I would've liked a bit more direct modification of the waveforms, and a larger selection than just saw, sine, pulse... but this is really just nitpicking. Mod wheels are very comfortable to use, and I find myself frequently reaching for them to thicken or modulate the crap out of a tune...this is particularly nice when you assign the M1 wheel to modulate LFO. Perfect for those 60's sci-fi moments.

Haven't delved into MIDI much, but Alesis was kind enough to include MIDI Thru, which I greatly appreciate.

I read for months about how analog this thing sounds, and while I don't necessarily disagree, I just don't *care*. For those of you who want authentic analog for your latest rocktronica or prog visitation, fine, whatever... for me, and i'm sure many others, I wanted a synth capable of producing mutilated rhythmic sounds, gutteral drones, and alien soundscape kind of stuff. I have *not* been disappointed.

The overall tone falls somewhere between a Nord Lead and a Waldorf Q, imo. Capable of being very light and airy, yet just as easy to push over to the digital darkside and get those cold pads and FM metallics.
If, like me, you're looking for something that spans everything from Dr. Who to Aeon Flux to Skinny Puppy to Haus Arafna, you'll probably fall in love just as I did.

As for the FX, they tend to range from excellent and pure crap. The distortions are quite nice, esp. the tube amp.. chorus, phaser, and flange bring me back to late-80's/early-90's Front 242 kind of stuff - very synthetic, but strangely lush, too. I'd highly recommend an outboard delay and/or reverb, though.

Easy to use, yes. Easy to use, no?

You've heard about it already - Parameters that suddenly jump around to something else. There seems to be a particular insistence with this thing to jump to the filter settings constantly, even if you're not editing anything remotely related to them. I've been able to prevent this by setting it to 'edit only', which is somewhat of a pain, since I have to hit the corresponding 'edit' button for whatever I want to tweak in order to see the layout on the display. Likely due to the OS, and something I hope will be corrected when I update to v1.05.

Apart from that, the keyboard feels sturdy enough, but is a bit cheap. Every so often, you can see a little of the underlying circuitry between the keys.. not too encouraging, but again, sturdy enough. The knobs are quite comfortable, and don't really have any reliability issues, but the pots could be a bit tighter, as it's *very* easy to brush something you weren't intending to change by accident.

Dunno, haven't had to contact them.. we'll see if that still stands after I upgrade the OS.

Rather than being a one-trick pony, I like to think the Ion has a nice position right between analog and digital. I'd initially been looking at a Nord Lead or a Waldorf Q, and with the Ion, I feel like i've gotten a little of both in one affordable little package. It may not have as many features, but where it lacks certain on-paper specs, it has such character and distinct tone that I don't really give a damn.

I'm a software-fiend making a transition towards hardware + software, primarily pairing the Ion with the likes of Reaktor and Absynth. Thus far, they compliment each other beautifully, and I couldn't be happier. I'm sure a few jaded oldies will step in here and make the usual 'it's not a Moog!' comments, but c'mon; if you're actually comparing a $700-$800 VA with some legendary analog that runs past the $1000+ mark, you're too blind to see the Ion for what it's really capable of. Awful synth if you're the type to spew that kind of swill, great synth if you want to sit down and tweak the crap out of the thing and make it scream like the psychotic wiremother that it truly is.

I am using software version 1.05 as of yesterday. The presets sound pretty good to me. Many are usable with only slight tweaking if any is needed at all. Editing the patches is pretty easy, after all it is a analog modeler so most of the important parameters have a dedicated knob. I have found it very easy to get some excellent sounds for use in techno and house type music. There is a manual with the Ion that is "so-so" if you know what I mean. There is some stuff in the manual that is not in the final version of the software like an arpeggiator note output through MIDI on/off toggle. When I called tech support to find out what was up that is what I was told, and he said it will be included in a future software update. The rest of the manual is ok for just "looking up" something about the Ion. No great detail is given on any particular subject of the synth in the manual.

The polyphony is a litte limited at 8 voices when you want to do some mutitambral sequencing, Although I guess It's not really a problem if you just want a good synth to perform with. The Ion does have some built in effects that sound pretty good. Especially the vocoder! I have never really considered a vocoder to be an "effect" But that's just the way that alesis has it set up in the Ion. The Ion has the usual suspects for effects such as phaser, flanger, slapback delay and such. I sure would have liked to have more delay time to play with. The effects are fairly easy to use also. There are no expansion capabilities with the Ion. It's too bad they didn't make a polyphony expansion board to go with it! The MIDI capabilities are pretty solid. Although the knobs don't send "regular" control change info because of their special design and resolution. They do send NRPN's(Non-Registered-Parameter-Numbers) though! So that should be good enough for most. The software is upgradeable via MIDI system-exclusive. The keys are pressure sensitive but there is no aftertouch. There is no onboard sequencer to use, but for most this should not be a problem. There is a pretty cool arpeggiator with some innovative rhythmic functions that allow for "instant techno"!

The sounds in the Ion are not meant to be "realistic". most are geared towards techno/electronic type stuff. There are many sounds that are faithful recreations of synths from classic rock tunes and such. Which is cool for a classic rock cover band I guess. The Ion is, in my opinion a dance music powerhouse! It has excellent playability and probably the best tone closest to the tone of a real analog in any of the "virtual analog" synths.

The reliability seems pretty good to me. It is made of mostly metal except for the red plastic end pieces. Taking it to a gig without a backup would probably not be a problem. It seems reliable to me. I have only had it for three days at the time of this review, so I can't say too much about it's reliability! I did soon notice a dead spot in one of the knobs, that must have been that way when it left the factory. So, quality control is kind of an issue with Alesis. For some reason, they shipped my Ion with the 1.00 software version on it when the 1.05 was available! When I started to upgrade the software to 1.05, the program I was using had the wrong setting for system exclusive transfers and for about 2 hours while I figured it out the Ion would not boot and gave a message saying "bad OS code...please reload OS code"! luckily I was able to figure it out and not be stuck with non-functioning Ion till I could get it sent back to fix it. Also there is a sort of sqeaking sound that comes from the Mod2 wheel when it is rotated kind if quickly.

I called alesis tech support to find out why i could not find the parameter for the arpeggiator send MIDI notes out. The guy on the other end was kind of rude and condescending! He said, "you can't find the parameter because it does not do that" in a condescending and what I thought was a rude way! Thay was when I was told that the parameter did not make it in the final OS code and was logged for a future update to the OS. I'm kind if not looking forward to when I have to send it back to get the dead-spot knob replaced/fixed. I have read other reviews on this site saying people have gotten stuff back from Alesis after a repair and their stuff was all scratched-up!

If it were lost or stolen I guess I would replace it, although I would have a hard time getting it at the price I originally paid for it! It is definitely worth the price that I paid for it. I have been making music with this kind of stuff since 1994. I also own a JD-800, ASR-X, JV-90, POLY-61M, SCI DRUMTRAKS, TR-505, Siel MDP-40, Doepfer Pocket control MIDI knob box, PC with Audiophile 2496, And various software synths and sequencers. I really like the Ion's arpeggiator, It's filters, Audio input and Vocoder. There really isn't anything about it that I hate or even do not like except for the knob that was sent out with the dead-spot on it and the squeak coming from the mod2 wheel when rotated. I guess that can be easily fixed with some lube though? Mostly I chose the Ion because It is loaded with great features and at a great price. there is not really anything in it's price range to be compared to. Except maybe the Korg MS2000 and it does not have nearly the great tone and sonics of the Ion. The only thing that I wish it has is more polyphony and maybe a longer delay. The Ion definitely does alot for my sonic arsenal and gives me much music making power I was only dreaming about before I got it.

The going price of the ION's, as of time of writing, is generally $800 - but can probably be had for less if you try and haggle.

I currently have os 1.05, upgraded it right out of the box. It appears as though the older generation of ION's had significent problems, both with hardware and software. I will explain that more in depth later. The presets that come with it are OK in my opinion, some of them at least. There are several great ones, some good ones that need tweaking, but the point of Analog Modelling hardware is to be able to create your own patches. Yes, there are some inspiring ones, and there are a few patches that will give you an idea of how the vocoder works, but you'll most likely want to program patches over them.

Editing patches is quite easy. It features a great deal of endless rotaries which send Non Registered Parameter Numbers, and you may have to take some time apart to setup your software sequencer(If you're using one) to deal with them. Working with these endless rotaries is lovely, and gives you a great depth of control over the various settings. Unfortunately, the entire panel is pretty much flat, and very hard to see if you're not standing directly above it, as others have mentioned. There is a contrast setting for the LCD, but in my opinion, it doesn't do much. The writing next to the parameters doesn't seem to show up that well unless you're in good lighting conditions, and standing over the board. On this board, there really aren't many menus to get lost in, each parameter has its own menu, and, by default, will come up everytime you make a change, and display what changes have been made in real time. All in all, this is a pretty easy 'board to program, and if you know what you're doing, then programming it will be a breaze - as its a VA synth.

The manual is pretty straight forward, no real complaints here. Its short, and to the point.

One of my gripes about this board... polyphony. It has 8 voices of polyphony, and is four parts multi-timbral. You can layer and split the keyboard into those four groups. Each part is represented by a button directly above the middle of the keybed, labeled parts a-d. You can have all parts active at once, and depending on how you configured your setup, it will allow for those various parts to be played.

It features three oscillators, Sine, Triangle/Saw, and pulse. Next to the waveform select buttons, there is one rotary per oscillator, which controls the shape of the wave. This is a really neat function, with each waveform, the shape can be + or - 100 points. A -/+ 100 Sine wave will feature a more jagged wave(As jagged as sine waves will get), with the Triangle/Saw waveform, it will go from being a triangle, to a saw, with -100 being a down-up saw, and +100 being an up-down saw, and finally, with the pulse waveform, you can change the width of it. Each oscillator can be set +/- 3 octaves. There is also a noise generator(White or pink), a ring modulator and an external input, which can be put through the filters and effects section.

At the pre-filter mixer, you, of course, set the levels of each individual oscillator. As well, you set the ammount of noise, the ammount of ring modulation and the level of the external input(which, is stereo btw). Next in the mixer section, you can set the balance for each oscillator between the two multimode filters, the ring mod balance between the filters, exterinal input, and noise, plus the type of noise(White or pink). Finally, you can set the overall mix that will be sent to the filters.

The built-in effects are very sparse, and consist mainly of phasers, flangers, a chorus, and a slap-back delay. There is no 'real' delay, to speak of, nor a reverb. Alesis seems to have focused most of the DSP power in the oscillators, and I imagine that the bare-bones effects greatly help to keep the cost of this unit down.

The keyboard action, in my opinion, feels very springy, and rather cheap... but after more extensive use, it has grown on me. The keys do not feature aftertouch, at all, but responds to release velocity, a somewhat rare feature amongst synths and to make up for this, the ION features a three wheels, a pitch bend, and two mod wheels. Though the action is useable, and release velocity tracking is nice, I would not recommend this for someone's main controller.

Also featured, are two LFO's with an assortment of waveforms, which can oscillate at up to 1000hz, a useable but non-user programmable arpeggiator, unison mode(You can stack 2, 4, or the full ammount of voices), portamento and three envelopes(Attack Decay Sustain-level Sustain-time and Release), one for the Amp, one for the Filter, and one which can be assigned to pitch/mod. There is a 12-slot mod matrix, which is quite nice, and you can 'patch' just about any parameter as the source, and any as the destination.

For the price, the ION has quite a few features packed into it.

The ION is a Virtual Analog synth, so it features no realistic sounds, per se. The sounds that it does generate, are lovely and warm, and in my opinion, this has to be one of the most 'analog sounding' VA's available, with a wide assortment of filters. The filters it has are based on filters from classic analog synths, as well as a few of Alesis' own. To name a few, it has filters based on the 4 pole low pass filter on the moogs, the 2 pole Low/High/BP off of the Oberheim, a 4 pole LPF based on the ARP filters, a tb-303 18db LPF clone, etc. The filters are absolutely wonderful, and can really make the sound warm, fat, and lush. In my opinion, the filters are the gems of the ION.

The ION's sounds will fit well in just about any mix, from rock to dance to hip-hop.

This unit has a section titled drift, which will simulate analog drift, and can be set from %0-100. This feature really livens up the sound and gives it some character.

As I said earlier, no after touch, but it does respond to both note-on and off velocity.

This is quite a toss up really, from my experience, the original models were very unstable, and were plagued with various problems, from dead spots on the rotaries, to ghost editing. I am happy to say though, that the model which I have now, has none of these problems, and is in good working condition. But only time will tell, and the ION is still rather new in terms of synths.

Used-buyers beware, if you can, make sure you demo the unit to make sure that there are no problems with ghost editing, dead spots on the knobs, dead buttons, etc. Buying used, with the ION seems rather risky.

I have no dealt with Alesis yet. The original unit I had did not work properly, so I simply took it back to the dealer and had it replaced with a new one.

The ION is a beast(If it is working properly), I've found it to be one of the warmest, lush, and fat sounding VA's on the market. My only real gripe is with polyphony, when building pads using unison mode. Aside from that, this is the perfect VA for me.

If lost/stolen, I would most likely get another one. I love the filters on this, and would be willing to buy this simply for use as a signal processor with the filters.

It would be nice if it had more effects, but if you're a serious about what you do, then you will most likely have an external FX unit, so that should be no problem.

Overall, the price-feature/sound ratio, IMO, cannot be beat. This would be a fine keyboard for a beginner, and would allow them to learn the basis of subtractive synthesis and then some(It also includes FM synthesis), and compared with the MS2000, when the new user starts to grow, they won't feel as limited(8 poly vs 4, more than a dozen filter-types vs a few). For the professional, this board would easily adapt to any studio or live usage, and would fit very well in a mix.

There are major problems with these keyboards. Before buying one, visit the alesis-ion forum on Yahoo Groups and see what problems people are having. Some people have gone through 5+ keyboards, every keyboard having problems. Alesis is having owners send them in for repair, then sending back scratched up, damaged keyboards - and even then the problem isn't fixed. It's a great synth, if your not having problems, but think about if you want the possible headache of owning one.

Alesis' customer support was rude and acted like they were doing me a favor.

Great idea, but POOR quality. If Alesis threw a few more bucks into quality control, they'd have a winner.

Currently using version 1.5 of the OS. After reading issues with the initial build, I immediately updated it as soon as this synth was out of the box.

Personally, I don't buy a synth for the presets. Most of the time they are useless (although some inspire some ideas to mess with the particular patch). The presets are organized very simply: Bass->Leads->Strings/PADS->FX->Drums. The drums (as I always find) are crap on any VA, adn I still don't know why anyone would buy a synth for the drums sounds, unless it's a drum machine. The presets seem to cover a broad range of emulation of some well known originals, and some patches are even named after them.

Editing on this box is fairly straight forward. Most of the knobs cover the bare necessities, like OSCillation, Filters and ENV, however the envolopes are cut up into 3 sections (Filter, AMP, MOD) so u gotta sort thru some editing pages there (which I find annoying)

Haven't seen any software on the net yet that can edit this thing thru midi, unless someone would be kind enough the "dive" into sounddiver and make a plugin for that program. Don't know why though..it's not really necessary.

Well, the ION seems to fit into the same category when it comes to other VA's on polyphony. Though this thing does just fine with 8 voices. One can do a 3 fingered chord with a PAD in all out Unisonmode, however your are restricted pretty much to 1 part timbral. No worries there though...once you cranl the "drive" on any patch, the sound seems to just expolode!

No effect worth mentioning. I personally never use any effects on any synth, and I've always though of them as a waste of space (or DSP cycles) I use all outboard effects.

No expansion capabilited to speak of (after all it's not a Roland). Has external input as a sound source, and runs the full course of the internal subtractive circuitry (haha I mean "virtual" circuitry)

I haven't noticed any advanced midi on this thing. I had one glitch of Cubase changing pactehs/modes on the ION without me telling it to, so I had to change a few settings to get around that. Does all the normal CC data handling, in and out, as well as sync.

Doesn't appear to be alot of after touch on this board. The velocity is par on this board too. The keys themselves are relatively cheap, though I didn't buy this thing for the keys themselves.

No on board sequencer. One thing I like is a step sequencer (like with the MS200) for modulation or even a custom ARP. If the ION had that...damn this thing would be a one stop wonder.

Some of the reviews here say the sound isn't at all realistic. WTF did you buy this synthesizer for? Go buy a Roland, or Yamaha if you want realistic.

All the presets at least use both modulation wheels, mostly for filter sweeps, and some for LFO traking etc.

So far, there's that A-Typical Leads sounds made famous in Dance music. But in origin those are simple to create. There are some really awesome bass sounds as presets, if you tweak them a bit.

I've personally never owned a piece of analog gear in my life, and probably never will. I didn't buy the synth for it's analog emulation, though that's what it's aimed at mostly (so I've read) I do like thiose classic sounds though. I've gotten some real grinding tones out this thing it my short ownership, that I can use in my style of music (industrial). Some of the filters on this thing are crazy! They can make a patch come to life, almost screaming terror into your brain! I have played on a TB303 before, and there is one particular pacth in the user section called "Old Favorite" which is obviously modeled after the 303. At 1st, it sounds like a decent emulation, until you add some "drive" to it (particularily the Tube Amp). That's whn it comes alive! Add some res to it and there you go: London Acid City ;)

Sometimws I've found on certain VA's, the highpass and bandpass's can produce a digital "flange" or "phase" effect at high frequenciesm but thus far I haven't heard any. The filrtes are buitiful on this thing. The only other filter that I like more is the one on the MS200 (on certain sounds) which to me sounds liquidy. By no means though does this synth compare to the ION. Each is unqiue.

Sometimes I've found a crackle here and there, especially when using unisyn, and pretty much overdriving the signal thru the synth. Other than that the sounds is squeaky clean, and Big. Very BIG. One of a kind in it's emulation for sure.

I had some glitches with sequencing with this boy at 1st, but I sorted it out. I've never done a gig, because I do all studio work, so I can't answer this question properly. However, I would ALWAYS back up my patches for sure, no matter what ( and probably have a backup unit itself).

I haven't delt with Alesis before, and this is my 1st Alesis product that I've owned. I read issues from other owners about OS problems, defective components, and even RMA's, but thus far I haven't had these problems.

I fit were lost or stolen, I would be pretty pissed off that's for sure. If there was something better out at the time, I would consider it (only if the sounds was the same, and a steo sequencer was thrown in). The price for this beast is unheard of though. I would say they threw in cheap keys, no FX (really they aren't worth a damn) to bring the price down a bit, to focus more on the sound, not the gravy. In that comparison the ION is a box of spicy fries, and why would you put gravy on that :)

This thing is rather large for it's capabilites. Almost makes you think there is analog circuty inside (because of the space it takes up). It also weighs a few pounds to boot. The colour scheme is rather ODD...I think Alesis shoulda gone with a Blue backligh display, instead of a green one (to match the metallic silver colour), but that's a pure astetic taste my mine. I think the sound capabilites on the ION have yet to be discovered..the presets do not do it justice. this thing can really scream bloody murder if you play around with it a bit.

One thing I don't like is the 3 paged Envelope. There's room on the surface for at least 4 more knobs for control. At the very least if the knobs were smaller, Alesis could have fit knobs to control all the aspects of the ION.

From a astetic point of view, the LED faded mod wheels are a delight. I personally think the Nord Lead 3 still has it going on for lights. The knobs are sturdy on the ION though in the end, but the buttons seem rather cheap, as do the keys. For pure looks I think the ION come sup short. Te sound is mean, but the looks are simple, and generic to me. Because of the polyphony, this is another solo intrument for me, to go with my numerous others in an arrangement. Not a performance synth for me. I will use it for one sound at a time,to achieve the best sounds I can out of it. Fattest synth i got ( I own a Waldorf Q, Virus C, Roland XP-80...) I think AlL VA's have their own character :)