look37
Joined: Nov 03, 2010 Posts: 6 Location: Germany
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Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:18 pm Post subject:
Andy and me - love at 2nd sight Subject description: A tribute to the best synth ever made - in my opinion |
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Hi guys,
let me tell you a story, hope you enjoy it.
My career in electronic music started in the 80s, when I did some arranging with the Commodore C64.
In 1987 I met my fellow who had a Sequential MultiTrak, an Oberheim Matrix-6 and later, a Roland Jupiter 6.
I was amazed right away by the powerful sounds of his analogue equipment (in that time digital stuff and sampling became "hip") and so I decided to buy my first analogue synth myself - a Kawai SX-240.
It was fun making all kinds of cool sounds with this synth. Even though it had only 1 OSC with Sub-OSC, 8 voices and one LFO it was more versatile in sound than many other analogue synths of that time, being much more expensive.
Later I enhanced my gear with a Roland D-70 (crap I noticed soon) and a D-50 (some unique stertorous character, but all in all thin in sound).
You know what is the problem with Roland stuff in my opinion? They always tried to create devices which might be "hip" for the time being, just to get a great margin, but since the 90s it never worked out any more.
In 2001 my attention focused on the Alesis Andromeda A6 for the first time.
My fellow musicians told me this might be the ticket and a good investment, and as it turned out later, they were absolutely right. The only problem for me was the price - about € 3,200 at that time.
I also still had lots of outboard equipment because my computer only acted as a MIDI sequencer, so I had 3 FX units, 2 compressors, 8-channel DI-Box, an EMU ESI 4000 Turbo, a Roland DM 80-8 digital hard disk recording system and a Soundtracs Topaz 24 channel 8 bus inline analogue mixing console.
I bought the Andy in 2003 new for € 1,180, not knowing what I would actually do with it.
So as many others, first I was fully overwhelmed by the variety of sounds this kinda monster machine can deliver, but frankly unable to program them.
Now, 7 years later, it is the only synth which is left in my gear, and I will keep it until the end of my days.
I got mine from a pretty nice batch I guess, because I don't feel much of the bugs and other negative stuff I read in this forum.
The A6 is so stunning that even experts sometimes cannot believe that certain sounds coming from it are just made with the analogue layout of this machine as-is.
I take a deep bow to Alesis, that they did this ambitious project, more considering to make a great synth than wanting to lead the market, to create a synthesizer which has its solid and eternal milestone in the history of analogue synthesizers.
If you don't own one yet and still get the chance to have one, grab it and hold it tight. You may never regret it like me, and even after years, discover new features from its awesome character.
P.S. When you compare analogue synths, please don't always refer to Moog bass sounds. Frankly speaking, almost every analogue synth (and even some digitals) can produce bass sounds coming close to a (Mini)Moog, since bass sounds are the easiest department in analogue sound programming.
Regards,
look37 _________________ In this world, we all share one and the same god. And everybody actually knows it, just one should always take it, and this world will be peaceful and the greatest thing for mankind. Last edited by look37 on Mon Nov 08, 2010 8:42 am; edited 5 times in total |
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