elmacaco on the Alesis A6 Andromeda

elmacaco posted the following on AH. I asked him if it would be alright to put this up here and he gave me the a ok. As an A6 owner myself, I have to agree with his assessment. What's interesting is the behavior of the envelopes always stood out to me as being less direct compared to my other synths. I never thought about how the range for each step might be the reason. The A6 is an incredibly deep synth. That said, here are some words from elmacaco.

"I have to say, I love my Andromeda. I didn't like it when I first tried it in the store, but unseen forces brought it to my attention and about a year and a half ago I got one. It's been my main synth since then, never really messed with the presets, always making sounds on it. The first couple of months I would get lost in playing it and not record much, same thing happened with my wurlitzer, which is a good sign. It has such flexibility that it even can fix my modular jones most of the time (and I have a modular for that).

I think what throws a lot of people is that with it, you have to think about more than with the classics. The range of the controls is huge, and that changes a lot for most people. This is particularly true with the envelopes. A pot that goes from zero to 10 seconds has a different feel than one that goes from 2 seconds to 10 minutes, and can make it less imediate. Envelopes are usually an aspect that you don't have to think too much about, but with the Andromeda it becomes more complicated, which is a double edged sword, and one aspect i don't like so much, I wish I could limit those controls to a more usable range for me. Same with the mixer levels, once you get a bit of a handle on it it becomes part of the process, but it is none the less an extended process, which won't be to the liking of many people.

As for the comparion to older polies, well, they all have something, the andromeda is much more broad, so t can be a lot of things, but it wont be breezy to get it like them, but there is more. I remember after a year of having one I would play P5's and memorymoogs at friends houses, which i love in so many ways, but I would be locked into some avenues that used to seem broad but now I see as rather narrow.

The sound of those synths can make you need a variety of synths, to get out of it, but the Andromeda has a way of taking over, other synths will sound better in some places, but head to head, unless that is something you always need, the Andromeda can cover that territory pretty well. Which makes comparisons difficult, because it can more easily cover all your bases than any other synth. I've only recently began to mess with my xpander again, since the A6 can just take over. I have synths I prefer for bass, but I can get something great out of the Andromeda so staying in front of it can be very appealing. I remember thinking the osc tone was better on the roland mono's, then I tried to match them, and I actually matched them closer than i have matched anything else simply by filtering them imperceptively, remember the moog filter on the Andromeda goes up to 40,000Hz, drop it to 20k or 18k, and the high end sheen is gone but is still sounds like a raw waveform, I was pretty astounded at what I didn't know, and that happens a lot.

Realisticly speaking, even if you have a bunch of other synths, the Andromeda can satisfy the needs of a broad range of synthesists regardless of what they are, better than any other analog poly can. Just an andromeda for music means so many more possibilities than just a JP-8, or just a Memory Moog.

Just the multitimbrality coupled with such a deep engine alone puts it into a class of its own. But it will require more thought, it's one of the synths that will make you feel like you are not the bad ass synthesist you think you are, whereas sitting in front of a Jupiter-8, Prophet 5, CS-80, or memorymoog, a good working knowledge of synthesis is enough to explore all the dimentions of it infinitely. Not everybody likes that experience, kinda like how serge and buchla can be like learning a new language and force you out of your comfort zone. The Andromeda can make you feel like a novice again, I still get the sense that I won't ever fully grasp all its features in decades, but what I do grasp gives back in spades."