Roland Clan Forums

Hey I agree on your aspect i was just saying how its odd that Roland's videos on the NAMM show sounded better than the Alesis to my ear when watching the old 2004 for the Piano off of Harmony Central and the Piano off the Alesis. but nonetheless its filmed at NAMM show and there for should wait till we get to hear it actually.

Nate, you should charge for giving tutelage like that! Very interesting and informative.

Nathan to work for Korg then...

I got to admit that the Oasys demo was extremely annoying - the 'product manager' liked the sound of his voice too much. I think he was waffling for the first five minutes of the presentation - fastforward - let us hear it and we'll be the judge.

There was poor interaction between the performer and 'his nibbs' which just gave the impression of whose working for who and I thought it was VERY patronising for the performer - after all people want to hear the board, not a manager. There were also several technical cock-ups with getting the right KARMA sequence - completely destroyed the last song LOL! I don't get why there needs to be two people on stage - it just doesn't work - they could have presented it to be so much more cool - give it some atmosphere, drama and theatre - no we get blah, blah, blah, Korg innovation blah (how many more buzz words can I get in) blah.

Steve

I really like the Fusion, I like what it says on paper, but have no clue what they would be like in person. Id love to see one. Although, to me they look almost "plasticy" or cheaply made, especially compared to Rolands.

I really didnt like the presentation of it. It didnt spark any interest of mine what so ever. The songs he played werent impressive, very boring and dull.

However on the brighter side, it has some neat features, like 20gb's of anything. Great design, very sleek and a Pretty nice display.

Hopefully ill see one at GC soon, just too see what they are like. The price tag certainly is sweet.

Phil

Well, the Fusion website says it will be out "Q2" of 2005. Which could mean June 30. And that's if it ships on time.
They don't even have mp3 demos up yet, which they said would be available in February, and they aren't answering most of the question on the "Ask Alesis" page. I have the suspicion that the model at NAMM was a proto-type, and they're still finishing the code for the OS and the synthesis algorithms, and probably finalizing the sample selection that will ship with the base unit.

But I will make it a point to go to my local GC as soon as it's released. I'm cheering for Alesis on this one. I hope they get it right.

Actually, I think the Fusion looks rather ugly, unlike the sleek gorgeous look of the Fantom X and Oasys, especially with the raft of controls on the Oasys panel. But Alesis is known for some great sounding samples on their QS synths, and great filters on their analog and VA synths, along with some very good effects.

Like others have said, I sincerely doubt that they'll release anything but a bulletproof workstation, since they suffered through a bad control board on the Ion already. Alesis should sell a ton of these, and I'll probably get one myself.

I love the future

ugly????
man u definitely need to see a doctor

I agree, the appearance of the Fusion is a work of art! I don't get the complaints about it being ugly . . . .

The look of the Fusion is of course a personal thing.

But: "Like others have said, I sincerely doubt that they'll release anything but a bulletproof workstation, since they suffered through a bad control board on the Ion already. Alesis should sell a ton of these, and I'll probably get one myself."

Being the pessimist I am, I am expecting exactly the same series of events as what happened with the ION. To me the Fusioin seems priced a bit too low for the features it is delivering. Given this is an Alesis product, that means corners cut in build quality and reliability to me. Just like what happened with the ION. I would have been willing to pay $200 more for a unit that worked flawlessly out of the box. Instead, after reading the horror stories on the ION users' group on Yahoo, I own neither an ION nor a MICRON. And I really, really wanted one.

In fact, that's one reason I'm glad I own a Fantom-XR. It works perfectly (like a Roland should), and will allow me to do gigs long into the product cycle of the Fusion, while I sit back and monitor the build quality and reliability via whatever Fusion user forum shows up on the scene. Let the early adopters suffer the headaches. They seem to enjoy it anyway. But as a pro, I can't bring a keyboard on a gig and then wonder if it's going to work or not. In fact, even if and when I did adopt the Fusion for my gigs, I would always have my Fantom XR and a lightweight MIDI controller stashed in the car as a backup!

The March issue of Keyboard has an extremely interesting behind-the-scenes feature on the development of the Alesis Fusion (originally called the Xenon). It all started a couple of years ago, with the operating system processor chosen rather quickly. Alesis' chip development divison (now called Wavefront Semiconductor) had been working on a new synthesis chip since the late 90's (called Zazz). By the time the new chip was ready (the procces was slowed because they kept adding new features), it was way behind the competition in capability (as Yamada, the Project manager stated...it was really cool...in '97). They decided to investigate off-the-shelf chips by Motorola, Texas Instruments, and Analog Devices...finally choosing a Texas Instrument part. After a few months of development, they realized that they had picked the right family but the wrong chip...they needed one that was much more powerful (this was only 10 months ago!). Once the team overcame this difficulty, top management dropped a bombshell on them by requesting that the new keyboard incorporate hard disk recording. This forced a clean-sheet restart but saved the Fusion from being an undistinguised alternative to the other workstations already on the market.

At the time that the article was written, a 30MB sample took 10 seconds to load from the hard drive (they have been working to reduce the time). They have been actively working on streaming samples directly from the hard drive. The author of the article was actually left alone in a room with the prototypes (over 90% completed), and thought the keyboard feel was very nice (both the 61 and 88 key versions). He called the controls "lustworthy", beautiful and butter-smooth. Chrome and silver parts recall vintage luxury autos, WWII airplane cockpits, and Chris-Craft sppedboats. He predicts that the pitch and modulation levers are either going to be madly loved or despised (he thought they were the coolest ones ever designed). The LCD is available from multiple sources, so if one supplier falters, the assembly line rolls on. The author states that the fit and finish were superb.

Can't wait to see and play one in person! This may very well be the outstanding keyboard product of 2005!

Michael

Based on what I'm reading about the peculiarities of how Roland implemented the new 8 track recording feature in the Fantom X, the Alesis Fusion looks like it may indeed be more suitable for this particular application. I won't be getting rid of my Fantom S, but could easily port Fantom songs over to the Fusion for completion (by adding the audio tracks). The Fusion may also prove to be more suitable for live performance because it has a large hard drive for lots of storage of samples and audio tracks and they are actively working on direct streaming from the hard drive. I am definitely glad that I didn't move to the X!

Michael

I'm betting that the Virtual Analog sound of the Fusion will be outstanding. (they certainly proved that they know what they are doing in this dept. with the Andromeda, Ion and Micron)

But I'm also convinced that the ROMpler stuff will be adequate, but hardly "awesome" or "fabulous" by any reasonable standard. (Again, based upon their history with ROMplers)

The FM is a wild-card ... could be sucky, decent or great.

All of that is fine and dandy. But can they deliver an instrument that is reasonably reliable (as reliable as any workstation from any of the competing manufacturers) AND which is not loaded with OS bugs? Neither of these could they do with the ION and MICRON, so their history points to a long string of problems, especially with something so complicated as the Fusion.

I am very interested and excited about the Fusion like many others, especially if it has Alesis' VA technology from the ION/Micron, which to my ears sounds the closest to "real" analog. However I would not bring one of these on the gig unless I had my Fantom XR and a lightweight keyboard controller (the new Edirol PCR-M80 is looking really good) as a backup system.

The jury is out on whether or not Alesis can deliver a reliable and satisfactorily working product yet.

It's a shame a rack version is not planned. If it would also do streaming from hard disk I would surely buy it. Great for using live with midi clock and a click track for the drummer.

When the Alesis Quadrasynth came out I bought it immediately with the first Rom Version, it never crashed. Built quality was great an it was very simple to use. Gary Numan (songs lik cars and are 'friends' electric?) still uses his alesis Quadrasynth as a masterkeyboard on stage and in his studio for all these years now. The fusions OS must be much more complex but if the problems are minor I don't see a problem.
I just hope the fusion sounds warmer as I found the quadrasynth sounds rather thin. It also missed a reso filter at that time.

The fusions price is unbeatable and if there would have been a fusion"7" at the time I bought the fantomX7 I was probably playing an alesis right now.
I still think the fantomX is a great syth and I love it's keyboard, it's rolands best by far. I found the quadrasynths keyboard better as the XP80 I also owned.

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I love my JD800 (all those knobs...) - JD990 (with vintage card) - JD990 (with strings) Rolands best synths ever!

You seem to really like the JD-800 and JD-990. I've got a JD-990 that I'd be happy to discuss selling to you if you're interested. Otherwise I need to find out if the SR-JV11 (I think - the "Vocal" card) will work in the JD-990. As I recall not all of the SR-JV cards work with the JD-990. If anyone has any info I'd appreciate it.