Studioworkers

I first heard of the Alesis Andromeda in the German synth and studio magazine Keys. As an old analogue fan and lover of big polysynths I was immediately enthused by the machine. At last a new analogue and a machine that promised to take this synthesis much further. The surprise was that it was Alesis, a well known expert of digital technology, that had taken up the challenge to launch such an instrument.

The unusual design boasting black along with blue and silver and the very large number of controls, buttons and knobs, immediately struck the eye. Amongst others, there were controls for three very complete and loopable (!) envelopes. Unbelievable.

Fully analogue…

The signal path of the synth is fully analogue and everything is controlled by a motorola microprocessor. The parameter resolution is very large (too large at times). The machine can be tweaked through the classical analogue controls or an array of eight softbuttons and a large display in the middle of the panel. All together, there is such a large choice of controls and modulation parameters that almost certainly no wish should remain unfulfilled here. As an example, let’s just mention the very numerous parameters of an envelope which can be of linear, exponential and some other shapes with two decay, sustain and release parameters. The structure of each of the 16 voices is classic but very complete…

VCOs

Each voice has two VCOs with 4 waveforms (pulse, saw, triangle and square). All waveforms can be activated at the same time. The level of the pulsewave can be separately modulated. Moreover, there is soft and hardsync, linear and exponential FM and ring-mod! Nothing was left out. Plus, there is a suboscillator for each VCO. Everything is freely modable and there is a noise-source that can provide noise of all imaginable colours.

Filter

Same for the filter-section. There are two filters : the classic SEM and Moog-filter, which can be activated either individually or conjointly, routed in series, parallel or mix-mode. The pre-filter signal, the ring-mod signal and the sine of both oszillators can be added to the final sound without going through the filter. The SEM filter offers HP, LP and BP modes which can be all added to the sound and mixed freely. The Andromeda boasts a freely modable filterfeedback, a very important parameter which is rarely offered on any synth. It expands the palette of the basic sounds of the synth considerably. It allows to use simple sine waves to create interesting and harmonically rich sounds through distortion of the VCO signal in the filter. Needless to say that all the parameters are modable by any source imaginable.

Comments about the A6

I one so desired, the huge amount of features of the unit would allow to go on forever with a detailed description but as a musician I prefer to continue this brief essay elaborating on the practical aspects of the use of the instrument. My comments are not meant to be 100% objective but retrace the experience of several years of intensive use of the unit.

In my opinion, the Andromeda has the largest sonic repertoire of all analogue synths on the market. Nothing has been left out. In the mix-mode it is even possible to stack as many voices as desired to create very complex soundscapes. Theoretically, up to 16 different sounds can be piled up. Obviously, this limits the number of simultaneously playable notes to one. The same principle applies to the very flexible unison-mode which allows to put as many voices as you with on each note and detune them.

Sound

The filter-section allows for very subtle tonal creations and contributes widely to the variety of the sounds one can achieve with the Andromeda. Even astonishingly realistic vocal sounds are possible. Sometimes inexperienced A6-users complain about the ‘coldness’ induces by the very precise autotune section which can compensate for temperature differences and retune the instrument in the background while you play. You can switch this function off (I advise to leave it on unless you like the sound of instruments which are out of tune) or add to the sound more analogue randomness and liveliness with the voice random parameter. As we mentioned before, the feedback parameter allows to add distortions at wish, It interacts with the level of the VCOs, the filter-levels and the settings of the resonance. The distortion even allows to produce very fat and if so desired harmonically rich bass sounds on the base of one simple sine wave.

The daily bread and butter synth sounds can be achieved very easily. The basic sound of the unit is quite unique despite the enormous versatility. In my opinion it lies somewhere between elder analogue synths and the sound of virtual analogues especially if you use the on board effects.
The unfiltered sound is cleaner than the sound of my LAMM and a little harder than the one of the Xpander or Chroma for example. If you increase the filter-feedback, you add very analogue sounding sonic artefacts but you should not overdo it if you don’t want all sounds to have the same colour. On top of that, one can add even more dirt with the analog distortion circuit which is routed after the filter.

A complex, but transportable and gigable synth

Objectively, there are just two points which could provoke criticism: The complexity of the machine which comes naturally with the very large number of parameters and sonic possibilities and a conceptual error in the voice layout which essentially makes sounds with very high FM intensities unusable. At some point, the frequency ratios of both VCO start to vary sufficiently from voice to voice to give the impression that each voice plays another sound. Fortunately, this problem only arises if you use the very high intensities other synths which have FM do not offer (yes, I talk about you MKS-80). And to be fair, we have to admit that even the LAMM has this little problem. Not all synth manufacturers were able to control FM so well as Oberheim on their Xpander. If we use the same intensities as the other synths, the feature works very well even for chords. Instead of focusing exclusively on this shortcoming, we should be happy that these high modulation intensities can be used to program unique monophonic FM sounds. I can live with that.

Finally, I consider the A6 a unique AND transportable and gig-able synth which has a place of choice among the analogue classics.

Review, pictures, sounds, translation: Oliver Hesch
Demo Song A6: Javier Zubizarreta
Layout: Theo Bloderer
Programming: Lawrence Eldridge