Dave Smith Instruments SYNTHESIZERS

Joe <jmelnyk@...> writes:
> and by the way, I'm personally not very impressed with the Ion; and
> there's some pretty big aliasing issues there as well.

[I've just bought one of these, so I'm naturally a bit biased. :-]

Definitely the Ion's a VA, and has VA issues -- but it's a damn sight
better than any of the competition, especially at the price.  The filter
models especially, are simply great, and in general the Ion exhibits
much _less_ of the sort of annoying behavior we all expect from VAs.

If you look at the novation k-station or whatever, you see a nice price,
but dead-sounding oscillators, filters that sound brittle and cheap at
high resonance, generally feels `fake'.  The Ion is also nicely priced,
but has none of the novation's problems; the oscillators are warm and
nice sounding, the filters sound excellent and really manage to capture
the character of the hardware filters they're modelled after, even when
pushed.

The downsides include a cheapo keyboard, low polyphony, perhaps not the
best quality control around (though the mechanical construction is
generally very good), and crappy alesis support.

It ain't replacing the Evolver, but the Ion's the first VA I've tried
that grabs me in the same way the E does.  They both just feel _good_.

Ahem.

-Miles
-- 
Saa, shall we dance?  (from a dance-class advertisement)