Alesis QuadraSynth

I have the QuadraSynth 1.0. The presets are decent for a digital wavetable synth. Nothing particularly outstanding, but not many clunkers either. It is missing a nice resonance filter and comp/distortion, which would have made this a standout. I consider this a "safe" synth - it seems to be designed to stay withing a certain framework, and does that well, that being namely pop synth standards. Editing is easy, in part due the the large LCD that always displays where you are in the hierarchy, but also because of the four large editing knobs. The manual is comprehensive and intelligable like more Alesis products.

As most may remember, the Quadrasynth was one of the first to offer a full 64 voice polyphony. This makes it outstanding as the basis for a all-in-one home recording studio situation - in fact, the market for which the QS was targeted. In addition, the full 76-key keyboard has a good action, and has velocity and aftertouch. For these reasons alone, it makes the QS a great MIDI controller keyboard. At the time of the QS release, Alesis was known for their f/x processors, so the QS' f/x section is pretty good. It is missing some of the nastyier types that would have made this synth a standout: distortion, compression, delay with lots of feedback - in short, anything to push it beyond normal. Overall, a great sound, but nothing edgy.

This works well for those run-of-the-mill synth needs: Rock, pop, ballads, etc. It is poorly suited to electronic music, as it misses some of the sizzle and pop that is generally needed for that type of music. With 76 keys, it is a joy to play, even if only as a MID controller.

Thios synth is built like a tank. I have gigged with many of these, using them primarily as MIDI controlllers. Part of our stage show involved severly beating on our rigs, and these puppies held up. They are cheap and take a beating, and that's why we used them. I literally destroyed the keys, and tossed them off stands, and they kept working. The chassis is basically a solid polycarbonate, making it lightweight and strong. I have had some minor problems with pitch wheels being off calibration, but not significant.

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If it were lost or stolen, I would probably check out other devices on the market, but this is cheap and utilitarian. It fits a niche nicely, and at the price you can generally get these at used, I would likely buy again.

I primarily use this as a MIDI controller and to sketch out quick ideas. My main synths are: Juno 106, Nord Lead 3, Ensoniq ASR10, Roland JD990 and various soft-synths.

I reviewed the QS for about 4 years ago but I can't find it anymore... well I try to remember even a bit I wrote then. Presets are ok and editing is quite easy with four knobs. I think they were great option long time ago when the most synths in 90's had no even data wheel, just few knobs, small lcd and tons of menus. So with knobs and very good and big lcd, it's fairly easy to edit. I tried the editor, but I didn't use it. Manual is ok and those days I even read 'em (back to -99)...

I wrote in 2000:
"I have owned QS for year now. I just wanted masterkeyboard and it does its job quite well (76 keys, aftertouch, etc). I downloaded some patches for it and it started to kick again. You can make suprisingly BIG basses and drums (D4 based). Quadraverb has nice effects, not good variety but good reverb, delay, chorus ; leslie is a bit noisy. When I bought QS I had korg 01/wfd too but I sold it because QS made all sounds than 01/w. Korg sounded shit in "multi" mode but combi sounds were great. In QS one patch can have max 4 voices, in 01/w 2 voices. QS has better acpiano, epiano, organs, drums, brasses (try "Moodypiano" great!) etc. only pads and strings are bit weak....and QS is A LOT cheaper than 01/wfd and it has 76 keys! QS is nice for the price and good controller for budgetdudes like me."

Well I wouldn't compare it to Korg nowadays but then It sounded better for me. I think 01/wfd is much better for some other things (and it sounds better in "patch" -mode).

Features is quite ok, the only miss is the resonance filter but It is actually possible to make it sound it have one (and there is plenty of high renonance sounding waves). Polyphony is 64 and multi 16. Built in effects are based on quadraverb using maximum of four effects at time. As I wrote in 2000, leslie is noisy but I think it works in live situation very well. THere is some 4Mb and 8Mb cards for it from piano to vintage. Haven't tried them because I really changed my QS for fully expanded JV-1080....

I make few of own sounds and really liked some of I found from net. Those times I had: Yamaha AN1x (still setup, owned since -98), Peavey Spectrum Synths (great synth with crap interface), Waldorf Pulse, Roland MVS-1 (vintage synth) and I remember I had Korg M3r too... So I didn't have to make everything with Quadrasynth. I think it strenght were e-pianos, some bass sounds, strings/pads and some synth stuff. Keyboard is ok and aftertouch is quite different than on other synths. Very good for master controller anyway...and dirt cheap nowadays. But if you have Yamaha Motif, EX-series, Triton, Trinity, XV/XP synth, I think there is no reason to buy it only for sounds. Good keyboard anyway.

Didn't have problems.

Haven't tried.

I sold it and got fully expanded JV-1080 and started to use Yamaha AN1x as masterkeyboard. It was quite hard to let it go since I used to play with 76 keys but AN1x is still my mastercontroller.

This is my review of Alesis QuadraSynth 76-Key workstation. Presets sounds are rather subjective, but to my taste its keyboard/mallet/organ sounds are rather decent but most guitar and string and rhythm/drum patches do not sound as DESIRABLE as I would personally expect out of a good sound module, say Roland JV1080/XV Series/TR-Rack(Korg). However, this workstation, I suspect come equipped with a sound card bcoz it has got some drumloop patches in it....unlike the Korg O1W (Basic Version)......and as usual, this workstation does come with a user manual.

Polyphony is probably 32-note at least, keys action is OK for my taste, though not as functional as that of Korgs (Korg keys have up to 3 action levels even if the keys are non-weighted). As far as expansion capabilities are concerned, Alesis DOES provide expansions - far as I understand, there are exp. boards for the QS range (the present ones) but I have yet to find out whether the sound expansions work for the older Quadrasynths or not.....

MIDI capabilities: this keyboard does respond to pressure sensitivity, tho, but I tend to think by the way its keys' action is, it feels much more like any Yamaha CS/AN 1X - a tad too shallow.....

Access to synthesis and onboard effects/level/pan are apparently difficult, unlike Yamaha/Roland (maybe I was in a rush at the time of the test)

Sorry, this keyboard DOES NOT come equipped with an on-board sequencer, which means one has to use a PC/Mac or

As I have earlier mentioned, its keyboard/mallet/organ sounds are rather decent but most guitar and string and rhythm/drum patches do not sound as DESIRABLE as I would personally expect out of any other good commercial sound module out there in the market.....for example, most of the string patches sound rather flangy and rather un-natural if one would compare to any orchestra/ensemble, Drum Kits sound rather XG (and NOT TAILOR-MADE FOR DANCE/RAVE/TECHNO) even though some percussion sounds are quite fantastic-plus some drum loops with some pad on top, I suspect CAN be edited (one can take ONE instrument's sound off, leaving the loop alone). As for onboard effects - seems a little difficult to access.....

As far as its role is in a live gig, I think they sound basically OK, but by its tough frame - I personally think a backup would not be so necessary - just be prepared to change the fuse when the need arises.....(I don't usually give high ratings for products that are commercially unknown to man's ears, tho')

Actually, the former main dealer for Alesis products in my country has changed hands to another, but the man has promised to lend his support should anything happen to the keyboard....

This workstation is OK or desirable especially for those who are more for home-based sequencing/hobby sequencing where the most basic of sounds are concerned. However, as I have mentioned earlier,

If it were lost or stolen, I think I'll just borrow my dad's Casio to do my home woodsheding, save BIGGER bucks for somewhat a Korg Triton/Roland Fantom and run the sounds with softsynths.....in time to come.....

This really depends on how deep it goes. I'm not using any software, I simply edit the envelopes, etc., on the machine and save as presets. If you want to simply switch around which elemental voices make up a program, that is very simple. However, the deeper you go, the more you find that this is a complex machine.

The presets sound great in some places, and terrible in others. Piano, chromatic sounds, and raw synthisized wavelengths are all quite good. The guitars, basses, winds, and brass sound terrible of course, but really no worse than any other keyboards. If you're going to use any of those sounds on a project seriously, you need more help than my advice. The strings need some serious work, but if you lengthen the attack, and add some soft ahhs, or something like that, they turn out all-right.

The manual is very good.

I don't know what a polyphony is exactly.

The built in effects are quite good. It does have expansion capabilities, however it has NO ARPEGIATOR OR SEQUENCER. It is a very dependent module. The main problem with the QS series is that it is very analog. It is really cool if you are working with raw synths, etc, because it acts very naturally. However, DO NOT EVER buy this keyboard for dance. The patches can not be changed digitally. Tempo and key changes come with the consequence of each-other. Slowing a rhythm drops the pitch, and vice-versa. It's really really cool if you know what you're doing, and in addition to an established sound. I play in a 6 piece band, and LOVE some of the stuff it can do. The more I play around with it, the more I like it. But don't go into buying it knowing nothing and wanting to create dance music or something, because that is not where its value lies.

Individual instroment ratings: (8 or 9 overall)

Piano - 10, beautiful. Aftertouch is very realistic.
Chromatic - 8, one awesome rhodes patch (hard rhodes) and some really cool clavs. The harpsichords are pretty cool, but not as thick as you may desire them to be. Vibes are pretty good. The patches are fairly light in general.
Organ - 7, some really cool leslies, and some awesome griddy, dirty organs. However, the lighter drawbag organs still have a synthesized quality to them. Accordians are serviceable, but not awesome. Church organs are all-right, but I've definately heard better.
Guitar - 8, actually, for a keyboard it's not bad, but please never use a keyboard's guitar for an actual show or project.
Bass - 6, some cool stuff, some sucky stuff. But if you're using bass from a keybaord, you're probably doing dance stuff, and you shouldn't have this keyboard.
Strings - 5, all-right in the background, and if you can tweak them. Raw presets, however, are really pretty crappy
Brass - 8, but who cares? You're actually going to use a trumpet from a keyboard? It's actually got a couple great muted trumpets, and has some very realistic breath, but pleease...
Wind - 5, its flutes are all-right, and saxes pretty good, but it lacks the ethnic flutes that i've actually used for stuff before.
Synths - 9, most patches are pretty lame, but you've GOT TO KNOW HOW TO EDIT THESE. There is some VERY cool stuff inside this machine if you can mess with the filters and release it. The presets on this thing (80-100) are pretty sad. But there are a few standouts. Afterglow, 83-1 is an awesome pad. Mindsweep, 85-1 is also mint. Water, 89-3 is a really cool one too. The 100s are scattered with great saws and 70s leads. I don't use much in the 90s-it's all sucky acid music stuff.
Rythm - 3 NOT a dance keyboard. I really haven't played around with this too much, so I can't say for sure. It's got some cool accoustic rhythm stuff, but this was not made for a club.
Percussion - 7, OK I guess.

It definately reacts to your playing and has a LOT of aftertouch options.

Yeah, I can depend on this sucker. I've used it a lot without a backup, and it's very user friendly.

I have no experience in this catergory

If I didn't own this, I'd love to have this onhand if I could afford it. Not that it's too expensive. It's very affordable, and has great value. However, it's got some great stuff, and some cruddy stuff, so if it was stolen, I don't know that I'd necessarily buy it, just to try something new.

I've been playing it for about 21 months, and don't own any other keyboard or pro-audio gear, besides one of the expansion cards. (Rap/Techno/Hip-Hop, and don't buy it unless you can really afford it-try another one. I got it cuz it was going out of print.)

As far as how it compares with other products, Yamahas often have very nice accessories, but aside from their strings, their accoustic sounds are often not that realistic. Rolands are quite good, but even the XP series' piano doesn't match Alesis' True Sterio. A Korg Triton is far superior in almost every way, but do you have 3 grand? If you've got less than 1000 dollars, and need a keyboard, go for the QS 6 or 7. If you're shooting in the 1500 plus range, I'd check out an XP or a mid-range Yamaha, or maybe a Trinity. If you're looking for THE BEST KEYBOARD, this isn't it. If you want the most value, it really just might be-if you know how to use it. I'm still learning.

I really really wish it had a sequencer, and an arpeggiator, and i wish it was digitalized.

It definatley helps me make music.

presets sound good

action won't stand up to a real piano
effects are limited
no sequencer

the guitar patches are un-realistic,and the organ,piano, and synthesizer patches work well
aftertouch and velocity are not very active

this keyboard is a workhorse, very dependable! i've used it 7 nights a week for two years, and never had a problem. as my main instrument
this board has never let me down!!

i've never dealt with alesis directly, but my local tech has always
been able to help.

i would not buy this keyboard again for my primary instrument, due to the fact that i am a piano player who is used to weighted keys, but i do like alesis products, i've been playing piano for 23 years, and
when i do get another rig,alesis will be whom i check out, and if they have a weighted key piano, i'll probably buy it.

Alesis Quadrasynth S4
At the time the Quadrasynth became available, its big display was a true innovation (good contrast, too). I prefer it even over the newer QS6/7/8 models with their small 2x16 character LCDs. In 1997, though, Roland's XP-80 and JV-2080 show what a perfect synth GUI means. Programming is relatively easy and straightforward if you have already learned proper sound design on other units.
The manual is a true help. It covers the QS' parameters along with basic explanations on synth programming. I miss a detailed appendix with information about the unit's MIDI implementation. If you want to program an editor etc. and need that sysex stuff, you can download a special file from Alesis' relatively new website where some sounds and further programming tips are available, too. Les Winters' semi-official homepage (http://midiworld.com/quadrasynth) is another great help. He owns a QS mailing list, too.

The 64 note polyphony (16 parts) was another innovation in 1994, but the polyphony is bought at a heavy price: The QS 12 dB low-pass filters do NOT offer resonance which is not only important for dance/techno, but for every analogue and brassy sound in general. Even though some of the sampled sounds are already recorded with resonance, that's still odd. A more complicated and much-needed filter algorithm would have taken more resources from the unit's processor and thus would have reduced the polyphony to - let's say - 32 voices.
Without good filters, the quite robust Quadrasynth is only a sampling player, NOT a serious synthesizer. Three independent LFO's and three envelopes are quite impressing, but what do you want to modulate with a third LFO, the filter? And panorama modulation is not possible either :-(
The 4-bus Quadraverb-style effects section is nice. Software version 2.0 (upgrade NO LONGER available from Alesis) adds some Quadraverb II effects like rock guitar distortion etc. Alesis delivered S4 Plus/S5 Plus Piano with software version 2.0 so they can send user samples to RAM cards (similar to the QS6/7/8 and QSR). Ordinary S4 and S5 musicians can only use one PCMCIA sample ROM card out of a collection available through Alesis or a PCMCIA RAM card to save their own *patches* there. I have not tried this, though.
A matrix modulation allows up to six links. And a nice tracking generator helps rescale a modulation source, but if the QS had more parameters, most of the matrix modulation would be obsolete.
The headphones output is *extremely* noisy. If you want to avoid the D/A-conversion, the S4 offers you a standard Alesis ADAT optical output. That's nice because even middle-class mixers like Korg's DRS accept ADAT. And most really good studio synth (like Roland's XP/JVs) do not even have an SP/DIF optical out. :-(
The QS4 samples are neatly organized into different categories (pianos, synths, organs etc), whereas the programs are randomly mixed: First comes a piano, then an FX sound, third a drumset, then a piano again... I do not understand why Alesis technicians haven't use the category concept there. Invision's preset sounds in early Quadrasynths drew some criticism, too. I recommend to load the latest banks from Alesis' homepage into the user memory.

The filter is odd (see above). The 16 MB waveform ROM (16 bit, 48 kHz) includes a lot of samples from all areas. Except for the drums, these sounds are terribly lowered in the high range. As Germany's Keyboards magazine (9/97) has pointed out, Quadrasynth patches often sound "cold" and a bit too "harsh". It is very difficult to make these samples come alive and it takes a good equalizer to make them sonically pleasing. In comparison, Roland instruments sounds very HiFi-like out of the box. If you want to use a Quadrasynth in a band context, it cuts definitely through the mix.
The bass samples are more than a match for most workstations, excluding a Roland workstation equipped with a Bass&Drums expansion. Some FM samples are quite nice if you don't want to buy a cheap, used DX7 or a new SY99 or AN1x which have FM themselves. Some of the natural sounds (especially the brass sounds and the S4's banjo-like grand piano) suck. The drums and ethnic sounds are good.
Before I forget, samples can only be placed on seven different panorama positions and - as mentioned above - panorama modulation, a very important synthesizer feature used for both synthesizer and expressive natural sounds, is impossible.

Its system software crashed once. I have never had any other problems with the unit.

Germany's Alesis dealer is very helpful.

I wouldn't buy a Quadrasynth again. I would save my money and go for a Roland XP-50/80, a rackmount version (JV-1080/2080) of these, or a sampler. They have got "the sounds in the bucketloads" as someone has said: better filters, effects, sounds. After a few programming steps, my own XP-80 patches already sound rich, dynamic, and organic.
Quadracards (most contain 8 MB ROM) are very expensive. They cost nearly as much as Roland's acclaimed SR-JV80 boards (8 MB ROM). Take Roland's ground-breaking data-compression and you have twice as much sounds (16MB in 16-bit linear format) as with Alesis' Quadracards. And I always thought the SR-JV boards were overpriced...

The Quad is fairly easy to use- it's submenus aren't that difficult to navigate and anyone who has had any synthing experience should find it easy to access the LFO's and envelopes. The only problems I've had with understanding the board is with the tracking generator and the modulation matrix. Editing is exciting almost infinite- the quad's got a ton of ROM samples (any 4 of which can make a patch), plus the expansion slot. The techno/rap card is okay, but not really worth the $$$. I haven't heard the others. The biggest problem with the QUAD is that it only has a low-pass filter. So if you want to raise that cut-off really high up to acheive those massive filter effects, I'd suggest getting another board. However, for all around versatility, the QUAD is certainly worth the $$$.

The QUAD has EXCELLENT polyphony- with a mono-option- at, I think- 64 voices. It also has 4 built in fx processors (but only 1 processor per multitimbral mix, so what's the point?) and 4 outputs, which puts the board a notch higher than many when it comes to recording or mixing sequences live.MIDI in/out/thru, no sequencer, but it does have several different low-cost expansion "quadracards".

The Quad is very mid-range. For those bright Roland sound lovers, I'd advise to stay away. The pianos are a little tinny, the strings are too flat, but it has tons of synth samples, and its very easy to create your own synth lead or pad. Aftertouch and velocity are decent, but not remarkable. The effects I usually turn off and process each stereo out indepently.

The synth is very reliable- we had to take it apart and check the motherboard, and the board actual got messed up in the process- but its still working fine...

Alesis-folk are pretty swell.1-800-alesis may take awhile to get in touch with someone, but it beats the hell out of calling roland's 615 area code in LA.

I would definately buy it again- well, okay, the board is my roomates but I plan on buying the module even after having had access to one for two years. It has a great LCD and is well mapped.

The presets sound very BAD, I don't like them .... Many presents sound similar :( In the area of EDIT the sounds, no exist problem, is very easy :) The manual is good, compared with a ROLAND manual ...

64 voices of polyphony Reverb, chorus, delay, resonator effects ... Accept PCMCIA cards for aditional sounds in ROM cards or RAM cards for aditional storage ....

The wind instruments sound good, but the percussive sounds don.t have punch :( It's fine for POP music, but for techno music it's very bad :(. The effects are very GOOD ! ... The feel of the keyboard it's very bad :( For velocity and arftertouch, I feel that a lot of pressure it's necesary ..

NO .. NO ...

I contact via e-mail, they don't help me to much ... the reason ... I live in MExico and the support is very BAD , I try to upgrade the ROM version, but all is difficult out of US...

I don't buy again a Synth from ALESIS, but for the price is good .. I love the easy of use for Multitimbral purposes and for control another instrument .. I compare with a ROLAND JV-1000, and the sound of ROLAND is WONDERFULL I choose the QUADRA for the price, and in part for the publicity :(
I WANT and XP-80 :)