Alesis QS8.1

Being a guitar player looking for a midi interface and sound base this thing is great. Now I must admit prior reviews are definately done by some keyboard snobs (especially the last). The action is good, it reminds me of the old piano's I had to play while growing up. The screens are easy to use , as long as you actually have an inkling as (a: how to read and (b: how to follow instructions.
The LCD and menu keys are easy to interpret as long as the instructions are provided.

The keyboard is very easy to use. the action is good ,while maybe not the fastest. It is certainly a lot better than most dead MIDI controllers out there. There is quite a bit of reverb on the pianos, but that can be backed off if one has the patience to actually read the instructions(yeah, you dimwit frog)! The cards while old technololgy are great! I have three. "Sanctuary", by far being the best. If you have other sound sources and are willing to think of this unit as a controller with sounds as a bonus, it can't be beat.

The voicings are very heavy in post production effects. This is easy to remedy in the recording/project studio environment by following the instructions. By the way for everyone that bought this for "live performance, maybe you you should check out the specs. This keyboard like the vast majority of Alesis boards was almost exclusively intended for project-small/mid pro recording studio applications. The sounds are great given their own track, and that one can sort them out. My major complaint is that you don't get those great "cheat sheets" that Alesis used to give you for the reverb units.

Absolutely. It's a steel chasis whith wood caps. The same thing Roland and Korg have been doing for years. It is recommended that you use a support rather than just throwing it up on a two bar keystand.

Alesis is great. Even though Numark is now buying them out(bailing them out). They have always stood by their product. Once again, if you actually specc'd this product rather than got all hot about it's price, it may not be so suprising that it offers what it does or does not. If you are looking for a great sounding board with a hammer weighted action for a small price (not to mention 88 keys) this is the board for you. Everyone else that thought they were getting a 2,000.00 Roland....Duh why are you being so critical? If you can't afford the big guns,don't complain that what you can afford doesn't measure up. Anybody knows that you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

If lost or stolem, I'd buy something close. Let's all be fair here. If I had money to burn I'd be buying a Porsche. Certainly not working a day-job and writing to musician sites about my latest 800.00 expenditure. It works. It's quiet. It's cheap. Unless you are being a snob, what more could you want?

The key layout is quite good, and the menus are pretty easy to manipulate, but the screen is really cheap and mine blinks a bit on the left side.

well, i'm not a synth expert (this is my first real synth) but I think there is almost everything you need for editing your patches. I don't use MIDI too much but I had no problem while sequencing with my computer. No onboard sequencer, but it's normal in this price range. The keyboard action is horrible, I'm a pianist and I can tell you that the action really sucks. The keys are too heavy and fake. For pop music or things like that it would be fine but for a jazz player like me the action is a crap. The Yamaha S80 has a much better keyboard.

SOUNDS
hhmmmm
This synth sounds like shit, sorry...
The piano sounds are really poor, even if they are recorded on a Bosendorfer grand. There's too much reverb and the samples are too "dry". The electic pianos and organs sound quite good but not very realistic. (Who has heard a rhodes EP sound like the "Hard roads" patch ??). The winds are acceptable, but the saxes are awful, IMO. The drums are good. I think there are too many SFX, that could have been replaced by *good* piano patches. By the way, i like the bass sounds, except the 'fat upright'.
This keyboard will not work well for classical, jazz.

You can depend on this keyboard, it's very reliable but don't gig without a backup :)

I've had a problem with my main outputs. The keyboard has been repaired very quickly.

If my synth was stolen, i would definitely not buy it again. Why ? The sounds really suck. I did not take enough time to choose it. If I had the extra money, I would buy a Yamaha S80, or a MIDI keyboard+ roland JV-3080. I've been really disappointed by this unit. I hope you wont do the same mistake as me ...

I found the synth to be similar in this category to others I have owned in the past (yam, rol) although I liked the labelled keys that descirbe the function of each keypad based on the "page" you were in

I wanted an 88 key weighted board that was transportable. It has better action than any synth in its category within 1000$ plus the software and the factory patches are a great start.

The winds are lame (flute OK, brass and reeds terrible for ensemble stuff), the pianos are really good, the guitars are nice, the basses ar OK and the organs are adequate. But, I have downloaded libraries from midiworld that have saved the day in the organ dept. That tells me that I could do some sampling/tweaking and eventually get anything I want.

I gig with this constantly and have no problem - its a tad heavy, but lighter than most of its genre - I use a soft case w/wheels and i can hack it.

na

I like the fact that I got sequencing/Audio to HD recording SW, patch/library editor sw, freeloader and soundbridge with this thang - the sky is the limit, man. Plus it sounds great for my needs (jazzrock/funk) - the action is too soft for Hammond organ stuff, but I deal and what can you do? Key point - to play live you need a stereo amp or go through the board - mono doesn't do justice to some of these patches. Overall, I've had the thing for over a year now and I still love it.

Very easy to get around.

Keyboard action seems OK at first, but you'll get sore wrists after a while. The keys bottom out pretty bad.
There are built-ineffects, but they're limited and difficult to get to. Not for the faint-hearted.

There are alot of good pad sounds. Pianos- too much reverb. My main complaint about this board is the excessive reverb. Every sound seens like it's coming from a metal can.
The main reason I purchased it (besides price) was the ability to take almost any type of sound and transfer it to a PCMCIA memory card.
But those cards are impossible to find- old technology.

no opinion- only owned for 30 days

No opinion

There are better options. I wouldn't buy it again. In fact I didn't keep it past the 30 day trial period at Music123.com. (They were great to work with, and have good support and prices.) I traded the Alesis for a Roland XV88- which was a lot more money ($1989), but worth every penny. Also, check out the Kurzweil PC2.
The Alesis wasn't a bad keyboard for the money- decent sounds- (I miss some of the pad sounds) but too much reverb (in case I didn't make that clear.) Very easy to get around the sounds, but difficult to change sounds. The kicker was the unavailability of the PCMCIA memory cards. I searched the web, but they are old technology and very hard to find. Alesis needs to update their operating system to accept non-linear cards.

I bought my 8.1 from Sweetwater for performance use a few months ago.
The acessibility of all programs and mixes is very user friendly and
the variability of each is more than expected with 4 slide controls
and modulation wheel being used to control some aspect of the sounds in
most of the programs. I have not done enough editing to offer an oppinion
to the ease of its editing features, but from my reading I felt I
understood the instructions as the controls were pretty straight forward.

The manual is not terribly new-user friendly, but it is clear and concise for
the operation of the unit.

It has 64 voice polyphony, which from my research prior to purchasing the unit,
is really quite remarkable for a keyboard in this price-range.

There are many built-in effects that are not as easy to get at as the
basic presets which come in 5 banks of presets (effects are available to
most programs and mixes - or all if you prefer to edit). I have had some
difficulty applying effects in performance without having to resort to
editing new programs.

The keyboard accepts expansion cards in its PCMCIA slots (therea are 2)
called Q Cards. I bought one with the keyboard and it greatly expands
the keybords variety of sounds to edit with. It comes with 16 MB
waveform memory expandable to 32.

My very favorite feature of the unit is its keyboard action. The keys
are preset to have the fully weighted feel of a piano. Since that is
my background I am THRILLED to tell you they really do feel like piano
keys. I have played so many "weighted" keyboards that were a poor imitation
at best I can't tell you. The keys have velocity, release velocity, and
are aftertouch sensitive (these parameters are actually programmable if
you aren't happy with the presets here).

The MIDI capabilities are rather extensive and beyond my area of expertise.
I would refer you to the alesis home page for more information about its
MIDI capabilities.

I get a little frustrated with trying to weed through the hundreds of
programs and mixes to find the sounds I'm looking for in my performance
needs. The program and mix charts that came with the machine don't help
until you get familiar with the sounds. Since they are arranged in groups
by type of basic sound it helps, but it is deceiving. It is also staggering
to try to get through the extra 8mb of programs and mixes provided by just
one q-card. But after a couple of months with the machine I'm getting to know
it better and working with it has become easier. Mixing my own sounds
and utilizing the effects offered by the unit has become the next concept to
conquer.

The quality of the sounds is usually (9 out of 10 sounds) excellent. They are
clear and specific. There are no sounds that are so alike you can't tell
them apart (a problem I've had with other units with the number of programs to
choose from as the 8.1)

I use the QS 8.1 for performance mostly and some personal playing and have
had to try to adjust the machine to different types of sounds. I have found
that it works extremely well for Latin sounds, anything needing an organ (there
are more organs on there than I know what to do with) and any classical sound.
Its presets for velocity and aftertouch (enabled for almost every single sound)
are usually satisfactory. If you don't like it for a particular sound you can
edit that program or mix to your user bank and reassign the value you would
prefer to whichever.

So far so good! I have replaced the keyboard I was using at Church with this
one. I had bought it originally to practice at home and I used the Korg that
was at the building on Sunday mornings and Thursday night. I love the
keyboard so much that I now actually load it up and carry it with me both
times (which, if you purchase one you'll find out is quite a big deal- the
thing weighs 60 lbs at least).

The company is easy to deal with so far. But for the most part if I've had
any questions I've called Sweetwater (bought it from them) and they've
been more than helpful.

I'm new to keyboard playing. I'm not a professional musician. I play for
my church. But it is important to us to have a high quality insturment that
is reliable and versatile. Because of its capabilities I would LIKE to get
into more editing and sequencing and mixing. But being the mother of 3 small
children that will come later. In the meantime I am grateful to have an
instrument as nice as the 8.1. It is a high quality machine. I researched quite
a bit before I made my choice and in no small part chose the QS b/c of its almost
universal accalim. So far everyone who said it was more than worth the money is right.

The only thing I wish were different about the machine is that it weighed less.

I've owned a QS8.1 for about 1 1/2 years, and gig with it about 8 times a month. (Along with a Hammond XK-2 and yamaha W5) I use it as a general purpose keyboard for mostly pianos.

My biggest gripe is that changing patches has an annoying lag time of about 1 second. This makes it more than a trivial matter when you are trying to flip through patches looking for something...

The on-board display is far too small for the amount of editing that can be done, and is nowhere near intuitive. (I may be spoiled by the beautiful display on my Yamaha W5, however.) The buttons are labeled nicely for editing, but the whole scheme of the editing layout just rubs me the wrong way, and feels anti-productive- you have to contantly page through several levels to get from place to place when building patches. It is not a very good 'play around until you hear something you like' board, but rather a 'I know what I want" board. A larger display with much more information per screen would have been beneficial. There are plenty of computer-based editors for this board to fill the void, however. I use the sounddiver that came with the QS8.1 for doing anything beyond simple tweaks. I can't imaging doing any serious patch-building on the on-board display.

The organization of the presets is nice, with well-defined banks joining different types of sounds. (strings, pianos, brass, etc). But since you'll need to put just about anything you want to use into the user bank, this is a moot point. I'll cover why you need to do this later in my comments.

The manual fills the need, once you have several months with the keyboard. The manual is NOT a good place to start learning - it seems to be written with a lot of assumption that you know what they are referring to. It almost has to be read in a linear fashion - you can't really just open it up to a certain subject without knowing everything covered earlier in the manual.

Keyboard action is hard, which I like most of the time for my playstyle, but it has some quirks that may annoy anyone who really takes keyboard action seriously. The quality of on-board effects are good, but editing on-board is a chore. Being able to control parameters of effects real-time requires some tedious editing on a horrid display to map the parameters to the sliders and wheels.

I purchased a couple of add-on Q-Cards for this board. I bought both a 8MB and a 512k card. The 8MB card is for storing my own samples that can be used as the basis for new patches. The 512 card is used to add 8 user-defined banks of sounds. This card is great for backing up my user bank in case the on-board battery should die and wipe my user bank out.

From what I have read, MIDI is pretty full-featured, and this board could be used as a master controller very well, including splittiung the keyboard into seperate channels, etc.

The midi interfacing I HAVE tried to do with it has been frustrating. Trying to get it into the correct mode, and getting sequencers to change banks on it are guess-work at best. The terms given to different functions need to be translated into what the industry-standard terms REALLY mean.

There is no sequencer. This is not meant to be a workstation. It is better suited as a general-purpose performance keyboard. You can load midi files to memory in a rudimentary fashion for minimalistic use, if needed.

Pretty much a run-of-the-mill soundset. As with just about every board, some sounds are acceptable, and others are abysmal.

I bought the keyboard for the weighted-action keyboard, even though I personally don't care for the piano sounds for the styles of music I play live in a five-piece rock band. The piano sounds are better suited for very mellow loungy-type of solo piano music, but are too muddy when being played with a full rock band - they either don't stand out, or are far too tinny when using brighter patches. Our soundman agrees with this - he hates trying to make the pianos from this board sound good in a full mix. For solo classical, they are again too muddy, and have no crispness or pleasant attacks to them. I will consider buying a jazz piano card to solve this.

Most of the rest of the sounds are pretty much unusable for what I do. The horns/brass, strings, pads, etc simply sound terrible, and I can't imagine ever using them... I have a $400 yamaha 'toy' keyboard laying around the house that blows the QS8.1 away for these sounds.

The electric pianos and organs are excellent, however, and I use the rhodes and whirly patches a ton. The hard keyboard action is very Rhodes-like, and is great to play when using these sounds. Even though the organs sound good, it is impossible to get REALLY good hammonds out of anything but a hammond or a good hammond clone... The true Hammond sound is just simply too dynamic to be recreated by mapping sliders and controllers to different parameters. The on-board Leslie effect is abysmal. When I used it for organ sounds, I piped the QS8 through a Korg G4 leslie simulator with good results. The G4 added the warmth and 'woodsy' tone that the QS8.1 could not muster up. However, if you want good Hammonds, you will never get it from ANY synth. That is why I bought a Hammond XK-2 to cover organ.

I am not impressed with the speed or expressiveness of the keyboard. Playing something like a fast fill of octaves (i.e. Jerry Lee Lewis, or classical with fast runs or trills will expose the lack of speed. The keys just don't return fast enough, and have a muddy, clunky feel to them. Granted, it is better than most full weighted action synths, but I have found it restricts what I can play.


My biggest gripe about the QS8.1 is how the volumes of the presets jump all over the place. It is impossible to play the presets on this board live without first copying them all to a user bank and fixing their volumes. It is pretty obvious that whoever set up the presets never plays live. You select a piano, and have to crank up the volume - then switch to an organ, and have to turn the volume down 75% - select a string paed, and even cranking it is not loud enough to match the previous piano. It is absolutely unacceptable to have this lack of attention paid to balancing the volumes of the factory presets, and a constant annoyance.

I carry it in a SKB hard case to 8-10 gigs a month, and it gets tossed into the back of the truck like all the other gear. It is built like a tank with metal and hard wood, and if you do the smart thing of buying a quality case for it, it should stand up to the road very well. If you throw it into a cheap soft case, you will have to expect it getting damaged, as with any other piece of gear.

Never had to call, but there is a good amount of information in the manual and on the website. There is also a fairly good user base on the web to turn to.

I s'pose if I lost it, I would buy it again simply because it is a very heavy duty keyboard that stands up to the road very well. This is almost more important than sound quality since hard road use will limit the lifespan of a keyboard very quickly. As for the sounds, I wouldn't buy it again if I could find a similar weighted action board in the same price range. I would rather have gone with a Korg Triton or Kurzweil, but would never want to bring either of those on the road.

For me, the QS 8.1 is a generic multi-purpose board with the most bang for the buck that fills the need of a good road board. If I was playing in my living room, I'd be looking elsewhere.

As far as my background, I have been playing piano for 25 years (classical/ballad), and keyboards for 15 years. If it doesn't feel like a certain type of piano or a Hammond B-3, I generally turn my nose up at it. - I am very pick in that department. :-)

Very easy board to use. A steady gig that I did for a couple summers used the QS7 and I found the menus very easy to navigate. When I found myself in the market for a lightweight, reliable 88 key jobbing keyboard, I remembered what a snap the QS7 was to use and looked into the QS8. The 8.1 is even easier to use with a larger display and dedicated one-touch transpose and sequence buttons. Even easier to use are the four control sliders - you can affect the sounds in real time and do some really fun things live. For anyone who has any experience using a keyboard synth, they don't come much easier to use than this one.

The QS8.1 has some nice features. It's expandable via the 2 Qcard ports at the back. I found it REALLY nice to able to swap out cards on the gig without having to crack open the board. However, if you're using the QS as your main sound source in a home studio environment then the lack of true expandability may be restrictive.

Being designed with price as an issue, you won't find an onboard sequencer, the polyphony is a very ho-hum 64, the built-in effects are limited in both flexibility and quality. It's designed to be a solid 88-kry synth with few bells and whistles at a budget price, and at that it succeeds.

On the other hand, it does have some glaring faults. Of all the weighted keyboards I've owned, this one was by far the least expressive. The keyboard action is terrible. It's a budget 88 key keyboard that feels like a budget 88 key keyboard. I've been playing for close to 30 years, classically trained, degree in jazz, full-time pro. I have a VERY solid touch and no matter how I scaled the board, it didn't have the kind of responsiveness I wanted nor did it have a snappy enough return to keep up with really fast playing. I used it primarily for live jazz gigs and it was disappointing to say the least.

The limitations of the keyboard showed when I used the QS as a master controller in my studio. I had a flute sample that I use frequently on soundtrack projects. It has a little trill sample layered to trigger at a velocity of 127. No matter how I scaled the keyboard, I could never trigger this sample with the QS. My sequencer was recording velocities that topped out at 125, so I had to manually draw the velocities to trigger the effect. Same thing at softer volumes - the QS is VERY hard to play softly and expressively. Velocities under 10 seemed to be scaled to 5, 10 or 15 - no room for nuance at all.

The sounds were tolerable. They worked a lot better for live funk/rock stuff.

The "acoustic" instruments (piano, acoustic guitar, horns, winds, strings, etc.) were awful - dull, fake, and completely useless in a studio situation. I did get the Stereo Jazz Piano QCard to use on live jazz gigs. It was as major upgrade over the onboard piano sounds, particularly in the lower register, but it too seemed very tinny and mechanical in the upper. Combined with the terrible action, it wasn't nearly the piano substitute that Alesis touted it as.

Where the board shone was its electric pianos (Rayz Rhodes), clavs (particularly "ClaviTube - loved this patch) leads (alpha lead) and some of the wackier synth sounds. All these were a lot of fun live, seemed to react much better to playing nuances, and responded VERY well to the control sliders - you could get some really fat, rockin sounds just by playing around with the sliders.

Never had a problem on a gig - solid, reliable, and the lightest most portable 88 I've ever had.

If you're looking for a board that is in essence a portable piano, this is not it. If you're looking for a master controller, this is not it. Best suited to a jobbing rock/funk guy who wants fun sounds, easy navigation, reliability and portability.

I WISH mine had been stolen - I could have cashed in on the insurance ;-). Instead, I sold it in disgust and bought a Kurzweil Pc2x. Now THERE's a board - not in the QS's price range, but you get what you pay for.

I think it's easy to use, but I don't get into the real complicated settings.... sounds are great, especially strong are the fine piano sounds....

I play fast, and I use all of the polyphony...works fine, keyboard action can't be beat for the price, and is very acceptable...

Very fine sounds... i repeat that the piano sounds can't be beat...including the best Kurzweil and Yamaha...fine stereo sounds...

I wait six months to submit this review to be certain of the reliability... I can tell you it is flawless...doesn't even make the slightest static or problems of any kind at all...I don't move it around though...I would NEVER trust any single keyboard without backup at a gig...I give this a ten from my experience...

I haven't had any communication from them, but i was a bit disappointed that they don't send out by email a regular newsletter or anything....

I would absolutely buy the same one again if lost or stolen...i've been playing 35 years...i have a few keyboards, a few sound moduals and a Baldwin grand piano... After the problems I had with an Ensonic, the ALesis is really a pleasure...for what's important to me personally, (piano sound quality, reliability and value for money), nothing can beat this...

The QS8.1 for the most part is a very easy Keyboard to use. Its sound sets are arranged into logical groups and are easy to find. The screen is not the largest I have seen but it does the job. Editng patches can be done by variation of layers within the patch and depending on how you want to edit a particular patch it is fairly easy to do. The keyboard has a very easy to use button for transposing the key, all you have to do is hold it down and press a key to the left or right of middle C in order to transpose. The manuals are well written and they have even included a quick reference guide.

Be warned right now that this is a keyboard for serious musicians only! If you're looking for a toy this is not what you want. The reason I say this is because it's more for live performance than for sequencing and making weird sounds. I am using this keyboard by itself at the moment, I used it mostly for the piano sounds and to accompany my brother on the Guitar. The piano sounds are some of the best I have heard and I have compared it to some of the most expensive keyboards and believe me it comes on top. The keyboard action is great and has not been exaggerated by making it too light like some other keyboards. The sound sets are great for the most part but a little weak in the synth section. Some of the best orchestral sounds you will find are in the mix mode and they are quite impressive. I like the four controllers which give instant access to changing a sound. For example if you find that the Grand Piano sound is too dry you can use one of the controllers to wet it up.

It has been reliable so far. I have had no technical problems with it.

The company is not very helpful to your needs.

I play Rock, Pop and Classical music and this is a very good keyboard for a musician that wants to do a lot of live performance. What I love about this keyboard is it's Piano sounds, some of its orchestral and string sounds and its nice look (a very nice looking keyboard!). What I hate about it is that you can loose factory preset sounds if you're not careful and even by reseting the keyboard you can't bring them back. The only way to bring back the factory presets is by hooking the keyboard up to your computer and re-programming it again. I compared this keyboard to many others in its class and believe me for its price it comes on top. I only wish that the keyboard had some built-in sequences for accompaniment. But this keyboard definately inspires me to play and if it were lost or stolen I would buy it again.

QS8.1 uses soundbridge software. Easy to create programs and mixes, and you can add new samples for them. The manual is very easy to undesrstand. I put all the programs and mixes I usually use in the User bank, so it's easy for me to change the sounds of my synth during performance or recording.

My QS8.1 is full expandible and I love hammer action in keyboard. For sequences I use Soundbridge software.

Programs in QS8.1 are composed by 1 to 4 samples, so you can create your own programs and then use them in your own mixes. Piano sounds ar 10/10 realistic and effects work very good with them.

I love my synth. It is all I need to create and composse music. I love 88 keys full hammered keyboard and the options to create new sounds. I love piano sounds of Alesis synths. It'll be better if I can sequence in the same synth without using a PC or Mac with software