Alesis Fusion

[natmoon]

Had to buy this today as i could not find a Yamaha mo6 for love nor money anywhere.
Mine wont actually arrive until Monday so i am itching lol.
Does anyone else on this forum own one of these?
What did you think of it and what kind of music do you create with it.
Anyway expect some much better weird tracks from me once i harvest and get my head around this new toy

Also of note as i know theres a lot of guitar players here you can plug your guitar into it and play it straight into the 4 track built in 80gig hard disk recorder and then use it as a normal track to make a whole song adding drums and vocals etc.

I dunno if you can bounce the audio tracks yet but i don't see why not,i am beginning to think that this might not actually be a sloppy second choice and that it may actually be better than a mo6,so maybe i got lucky that i couldn't find one

 

[CrazyChester]

If it has a USB or FireWire out you probably can dump tracks to a computer for mixing and processing. I looks like a great instrument. Let us know how it works out. I would get lost for days if I had one in my studio.

 

[natmoon]

Yes it has all of that but thats not what i meant because its audio 4 track you make 3 tracks and then copy all 3 at once to track 4 in realtime so then track 4 has all 3 tracks on it and you can safely delete the first 3 and then bounce track 4 back to track 1 and then you have 3 free audio tracks again but have not used up any more memory or space as audio is time based size limits so all though you have freed up 3 tracks the time that the audio lasts is still the same,so in essence because of the lossless audio compression recording thingy you have an unlimited track recorder that wont lose quality no matter how many times you bounce the tracks.

Heres a list of the connectors
Connectors
_Stereo Input L-Mono/R (Standard 1/4 Jack), Stereo Headphone Output (Standard 1/4 Jack),Stereo Main Output L/R (Standard 1/4 Jack), Stereo Aux Output L/R (Standard 1/4 Jack), S/PDIF Output (Coax/Optical), ADAT Output (Optical), MIDI In/Out/Thru, Sustain Pedal, Footswitch, Expression Pedal, USB (to Host), HD Recording Inputs 1-8 (Standard 1/4 Jack), External Drive (SATA), AC Inlet

 

[CrazyChester]

That's the beauty of digital bounce to your hearts content and no noise. I remember when I used to bounce tracks on a reel to reel and after two bounces the noise was unbearable.
My XP 80 records and bounces 8 tracks, I think. But it saves to a floppy and doesn't convert to a usable format. So in the end its useless to me. I end up recording directly into the computer.
Your system will probably convert to waves format or to pro tools. That would be great.

 

[dankie]

nice keyboard what are the sounds like? does it have any sound modelling features?

 

[silk]

Yes it has all of that but thats not what i meant because its audio 4 track you make 3 tracks and then copy all 3 at once to track 4 in realtime so then track 4 has all 3 tracks on it and you can safely delete the first 3 and then bounce track 4 back to track 1 and then you have 3 free audio tracks again but have not used up any more memory or space as audio is time based size limits so all though you have freed up 3 tracks the time that the audio lasts is still the same,so in essence because of the lossless audio compression recording thingy you have an unlimited track recorder that wont lose quality no matter how many times you bounce the tracks.

I have Protools and you can't bounce in realtime on that. The only reason why one would need that is if one was doing live performance sequencing which still doesn't need a bounce because you can just add new tracks in real time. The rest of your explanation is sound. You want more than 4 tracks to work with, I understand that.

 

[CrazyChester]

On small digital work stations (4 to 16 tracks) digital bouncing comes in handy. Unnecessary in computer based recording. I've used Protools and Logic Pro, it is possible to bounce with either program but I never used it to free up tracks.

 

[natmoon]

I have been using the pc to make music for years and to be honest i am bored with it i made a great song the other day saved it,loaded it up the next day only to find that the file is corrupted.

Having great fun making a track and then boom sound loop cycle crashes by the time ive finished restarting crashing etc. ive lost the will to live sometimes let alone make a track.

If you have lossless audio digital audio tracks as well as the 32 track sequencer you can play all of your live/real instruments into it record them all,bounce it many times then when you have used up your boards memory you play it as an audio track by feeding it back from your sound system into the keyboard.

Then you have 32 midi tracks and several audio tracks bounced into 1 audio track in perfect time and you clear the old midi data after saving it of course to free up all of your boards resources and then start the process again until you are happy.

Obviously if your on a pc this would be not so needed but i want to make some new tracks without the pc and im going to be using more real instrument sounds which i intend to feed into the machine as audio and combine it with the synthesizer.

After 10 years of fruity loops i have had enough of pc music and the sound quality of these new boards far surpasses any sound card except a korg oasys card which costs nearly a grand.

I wont get the board till Monday but i have demoed some of the sounds and they are very good,i also downloaded 22 free sound packs last night and there are apparently hundreds of free sounds for this machine.

The board has extensive synth options including sound modeling.
Sample playback: 272 voices
_FM: 240 voices
_Virtual Analog: 140 voices
_Physical Model - Reed: 60 voices
_Physical Model - Wind: 48 voices

I am hoping to use all of this to tweak my sound by adding extra bits throughout a track where as on a pc i would be scared it might crash or run out of cpu or end up sounding awful jumbled up and distorted all though this is probably due to my soundblaster audigy card.

I am still going to use all my vsts and my computer with my cme-uf5 midi keyboard but i am going to put all of its power into layering synths and playing in real time straight into the alesis audio tracks as my pc has never crashed when playing in real time only when recording many tracks at once

 

[CrazyChester]

I record 8 tracks simultaneously on my G4 Mac using Logic pro all of the time. (Wish I had a G5) Never have any trouble. And the old Yamaha 4416 records 16 tracks simultaneously without a hiccup.

 

[natmoon]

I record 8 tracks simultaneously on my G4 Mac using Logic pro all of the time. (Wish I had a G5) Never have any trouble. And the old Yamaha 4416 records 16 tracks simultaneously without a hiccup.

Ive never actually used any kind of real time audio tracking,ive just used the fruity loops piano roll recording,i suppose this is similar but not really audio tracking as it only records midi data.

Apparently theres no automated bounce function on the alesis but i can bounce 4 tracks to the pc and then bounce it back to the alesis as audio onto 1 track again so it will still bounce lol.

I am excited to be able to record my own vocal samples directly into my songs,weirdness will be issuing forth lol.

Do you have a web site chester for your music?

 

[natmoon]

Its a bitch to program,manuals as big as a bible and just as complicated and contradictory lol.
Has an 8 track hd recorder which is twice as good as i thought,not a 4 track.
After doing my own head in for 5 days with it i have finally learnt the basics and have made some pretty amazing sounds already with being able to layer 4 types of synthesis,samples,effects and up to 16 voices per key and play them in real time is good.

Looks amazing especially after a couple of spliffs with my blacklight gen on and my plasma ball in the dark.
So far i love this synth and seeing as it was launched with only a 40gig drive and a 4 track hd recorder for 1299.99 and i just paid 600.00 for a more powerful one i am very happy

Dont buy this synth though if you want out of the box usability the sounds that it ships with are pretty moderate to say the least and when i first switched it on i was a bit pissed off with the presets as they are fairly basic really,but upon delving into layering many sounds including physical and virtual sound modeling i made some very powerful noises and was impressed.

I dunno why they shipped it with such a drab sound set when its very capable of so much more,anyway if you like to make up your own mad sounds or play sounds that sound like real guitars,flutes,pianos etc. this is the keyboard to buy

 

[dankie]

Sounds nice how hard is layering the sounds? Does it have a vocorder?

 

[natmoon]

Sounds nice how hard is layering the sounds? Does it have a vocorder?

Its not hard once you know how,i would say only an intermediate learning curve for layering.
Learning the whole manual and everything it does will take a while to say the least.
Nope doesn't have a vocoder

 

[CrazyChester]

You'd get bored within 6 months if it were easy. You'll love the complexity after a month or so. As long as the keyboard is logically laid out.

 

[natmoon]

You'd get bored within 6 months if it were easy. You'll love the complexity after a month or so. As long as the keyboard is logically laid out.

Im getting my head wrapped around it now,have a smoke switch on blacklight and plasma ball and twiddle knobs lol.
But no seriously its very good machine but i will have to keep at it for a while before i churn anything complete out it and your right i wouldnt want something basic that would be useless after 6 months.
This synth has an 80gig hard drive built in so basically i will never run out of sounds as it loads samples into ram from the hard drive,also my sounds will never get old as i can just load in the latest sets.
Overall i am very happy with it,especially the glowing bits after ive had a smoke