This review is from: Alesis Fusion 8HD 88-Note Keyboard WorkstationI personally like the keyboard action a lot though it may be light for some people...its not as spongy-light as a Korg Karma but its not as heavily weighted as a Kurzweil SP76. Velocity, release velocity and mono aftertouch are standard.Some people have been asking how I like the Fusion's Piano and, more specifically, how it stacks up against the Korg and Yamaha offerings...Well, It kind of depends on what you like personally.Let me explain; the Piano on my Motif Rack was a brittle piece of crap to my ears. The piano on the Fusion is a lot more realistic. Personal taste varies on piano sounds quite a bit though - I've got an old Baldwin Acrosonic Spinet in the studio that I love!I needed at least one "workstation" type keybord with realistic instrument sounds like piano, clav and strings in my studio. I started with a Korg Karma but its sounds were overhyped plus it had the absolute worst keyboard I have ever felt. Later I traded it out for a Yamaha Motif rack - besides its too-bright sound it had awful MIDI timing slop...I sold it to help fund the Fusion.Through my ADAM monitors, the Fusion has a nicely flat, unhyped sound. In my opinion, the Fusion's patches sit in a mix a little nicer than Korg and Yamaha - I didn't have to compress and EQ them to get them to "play nice".I'm playing the Fusion along with a Serge Modular, Nord Modular, Yamaha VL-1, E-mu Planet Earth, Waldorf MicrowaveXT and a DSI Polyevolver Keyboard and I tell you, the Fusion can certainly hold its own, even with a disparate bunch of "weird guys". LOL! It really has a unique voice of its own thats different enough to be a very welcome addition :)The unique sound engines in the Fusion are just a blast to program and I love their sound...that's where I think it really shines, though Its obviously no slouch as a sampler either - now I can finally trash my old S2000.It seems fairly solid. I'm not planning on gigging with it - if I was, I would certainly buy a decent case, but I would do that for any synth I planned on transporting ;) I haven't had any lockups or software crashes yet...I've been digging pretty hard and deep into the beast since I got it and it seems very reliable so far. This is a much more mature OS version though...If you're looking into a Fusion, make sure the most recent OS is loaded - some of the earlier ones were very buggy....
This review is from: Alesis Fusion 8HD 88-Note Keyboard WorkstationI bought my Fusion about 4 months ago when I learned that Alesis was likely discontinuing the series. So why am I writing a review on a probably-discontinued product? Because I want to lament the premature demise of a keyboard that was definitely before it's time. And it was unfortunately a product released before investing adequate time QC'ing the thing, as the Fusion operating system was still quite buggy when it was first put on the market in early 2005. The sad part is they FINALLY fixed most of the bugs and the keyboard had the support and backing from Alesis it should have had from the start about 2+ years after it was released. By that time, unfortunately, the word-of-mouth reputation for the Fusion was already mostly bad, and trying to recover from that "bad press" appears to be a struggle Alesis is about to give up on.I'm a fairly adept synth guy though far short of "expert". I have some experience working with and programming sample-based synths, analog synths, and even PD (phase distortion) and FM (freq modulation) synths. I have a few Alesis products, a couple Moogs, and even an old Casio VZ-10 and Yamaha's FS1R and DX200. I love tinkering and plinking when time allows (that pesky full time job gets in the way) and have a decent ear for mostly getting the sounds I want. Despite using a few soft synths, I admit I prefer hardware synths.Though I ended up with a Fusion 6HD this review applies to the OS and electronics of both the 8HD and the 6HD as they're identical. I went through 2 Fusion 8HDs that both had problems with their keyboards. The black keys struck with a higher velocity than the white keys, and any highly velocity-sensitive programs (like pianos) sounded out-of-whack because the black keys were noticeably louder than the white keys. Checking out Fusion forums, I learned this isn't/wasn't an uncommon problem unfortunately.SO...with a little bit of history and background, what do I really think of the Fusion?Well, mostly I'll comment on the synthy-ness of this keyboard, which is its real strength (it's also a sequencing workstation with multitrack recording capability). The ratio of programmability versus price on this thing is/was incredible. What I paid (<$800) offers more power and programmability that my Roland Fantom X6 and literally at less than half the price. It has 4 synth engines including analog modeling (for those classic squeaky, squelchy synths sounds), sample-based playback (for more realistic instrument emulation), frequency modulation (for those DX7 klangs, rings and other metallic weirdness), and even physical modeling (mathematical emulations of wind instruments). The options for routing and modulating the sounds are incredible and the interface for programming is fairly decent (on a 1-10, I'd give it a 6 or 7). The modulation table lets you route almost anything to modulate/affect an expansive list of sound parameters, as well as letting you program modulations for the modulations. The different filters offer some impressive frequency sculpting to any of the different synth engines (FM as well), and the effects are more than adequate to help polish up the sounds.And how does it sound? Well, that's a bit subjective (ok, QUITE subjective)...the analog still sounds virtual to my ears, but smoothly so. It's a fine complement to real analog and a suitable substitute in most instances. The sample playback is fine and obviously largely dependent on the samples used....
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