Alesis Andromeda A6 analog polyphonic synthesizer
Last Update 05-26-2019
Disclaimer: I was a member of the beta test/sound
design team for the
Andromeda, but was never an Alesis employee so any comments herein are
my own and have no representation of Alesis.
Alesis really came out of left field when
they introduced the Andromeda
A6 polyphonic analog synthesizer in 2000. They were known for
their consumer level digital effects and professional multitrack
recorders, which made home studios a reality. Prior to the
Andromeda, Alesis first dove into keyboards with their QS series which
were a success. Some of the team members who worked on the QS
series happened to be fans of vintage analog synthesizers, which were
coming back with a vengeance at that time. They noted the demand
for vintage polyphonic analog synthesizers and the lack of new machines
on the market. A new music genre - EDM - emerged which made
extensive use of analog synthesis. Alesis by then had extensive
experience in fabricating custom ASIC chips for their home recording
products, which made them very affordable. That put Alesis in a
position to fill the void for a new polyphonic analog synth. No
doubt the Alesis marketing department were skeptical. While the
team members pushing for a new polyphonic synth undoubtably had a hard
sell ahead of them... they started the project to spite management.
Wisely, the Andromeda team recruited more analog synth fanatics for the
development effort. The key people at Alesis who brought the
Andromeda into existence were Mike Peake, Dave Bryce, Taiho Yamada, and
Keith Barr. If Alesis founder Keith Barr supported the project
then management could hardly say no. The market for vintage
synthesizers revealed certain
makes and models trading at high values so they focused on the best
features of those units. And focus they did... a real analog
audio path with real VCOs, real VCFs, and real VCAs, all the way to the
final output. The VCOs were patterned after the Moog 921 VCO
module from the Moog modular synthesizer, chosen for its big
sound. The VCOs could generate triangle, sine, variable pulse,
and rising/falling ramp waveforms as well as suboscillators. They
could also be cross modulated, ring modulated, and soft
or hard sync was available. Alesis borrowed a trick from the
Yamaha CS-80, offering the sine wave in the post filter mixer which can
add a strong fundamental. The VCFs chosen were the Moog ladder
filter and the Oberheim multimode SVF from the SEM heritage, both
widely
acknowledged to be the most useful filters ever designed without much
redundancy in timbre and they co-existed very well in a mix. The
VCOs and VCFs, with their
associated VCAs, were shrunk down into an
itsy bitsy teeny weeny microscopic four square millimeter substrate
("Honey I shrunk the synth"). With such a small footprint, Alesis
was capable of supplying sixteen voice
polyphony into a compact
package. With the custom ASICs at their disposal, they could
include a world of features and still meet a competitive price target
that few
manufacturers could match. The model name was a play on words
"A6" =
"ASICs". Virtual synthesizers were still in their infancy at the
time and did not yet approach the sonority of real analog circuits.
The "golden era" of analog polyphonic synth design produced a few high
density machines. In 1980 Emu made one prototype Audity that
harkened the Andromeda feature set, but its retail price of $69,000 (!)
and very large footprint made it an impossible sell. Emu saw the
Fairlight sampler at a trade show and dropped the Audity project to
change their market strategy to make affordable samplers, for which it
was very successful. The Rhodes Chroma of 1982 (originally
birthed by the maverick designers of ARP) was the first commercial
analog synthesizer to offer sixteen voices. While it had
multimode VCFs, each voice only had a single VCO but several
architectures were available other than the VCO->VCF->VCA
chain. The Oberheim Matrix-12 of 1985 was the peak of analog
polyphonic synth design from the "golden era" offering twelve voices
each with dual VCOs, single multimode VCF, and impressive modulation
capability. All of these were large machines before the
advancement of SMT. In 1994 the OBMx made by Gibson guitars - who
owned the Oberheim trademark by then but employed none of the original
design staff - offered maximum twelve voices each with dual VCOs, dual
VCFs, and a decent modulation system. But the OBMx was a
difficult birth which left behind a trail of legal battles and was
allowed to die a miserable death (a sad saga reserved for another
webpage). By 2000, Alesis really upped the ante by shoehorning
sixteen voices into a smaller lighter package, giving each voice dual
VCOs and double the filters, complete sixteen voice multitimbrality
(read: each voice could be a completely separate patch), digital
effects, and many more features. At the same time the Andromeda
was announced, Studio Electronics released an eight voice analog
polyphonic rackmount MIDI module that sounded very good, but its
feature set was nowhere near as extensive as the Andromeda.
When the Andromeda was released it was hardly a toy - it was a
professional machine. In addition to the core feature set it
included three multi-stage envelope generators that were loopable,
flexible routing of the VCFs (bypass or parallel or series, with all
four modes of the SVF), four MIDI syncable LFOs (one fixed to S&H),
three noise sources (white, pink, red, and can be modulation sources),
arpeggiator, sixteen stage step sequencer, analog distortion, digital
effects, ribbon controller, key aftertouch (mono), very comprehensive
MIDI implementation, a very extensive modulation system, multiple audio
outputs (stereo mix, auxiliary stereo mix, and separate outputs for
each voice).
These block diagrams can help you visualize the VCO and the various
modes of the VCF:
All of this with a panel full of knobs and buttons that was a sound
designer's dream. In the beginning, synthesizers had a panel full
of one-function-per-knobs that made immediate tweaking a joy. By
1985 just about every new keyboard had a user interface that was a menu
system consisting of an LCD display and either up/down data buttons or
a single data controller, which made sound design so difficult that
owners resorted to using factory presets. Menu systems are only
feasible for shallow feature sets like a simple monophonic synth, not
complex systems like polyphonics. Back then the market was very
aggressive for price competition, and eliminating the expensive knobs
was
the usual tactic to marketing less and less expensive keyboards to stay
competitive.
Analog synthesis had fallen out of favor. As musicians
re-discovered analog synths with a panel full of knobs,
they cried to bring back that interface and analog synthesis (the major
makers outside the US were VERY slow to respond). Alesis wisely
resisted a
large user interface for their extensive feature set, opting to reserve
the one-function-per-knob system for the primary functions (72 knobs,
144 buttons) while the remaining features were put in the menu system
with eight "soft" knobs that were multi-purpose. This is a very
good compromise; immediate access to often-used controls, while the
parameters that are seldom manipulated were relegated to the menu
system. The knobs made it possible to manipulate patches in real
time during a performance.
This webpage is far from a comprehensive list of the Andromeda's
features, and I'm not going to re-write the owners manual here.
The owners manual is still available at Alesis website if you want to
learn more. top
The announcement of the Andromeda raised a lot of
eyebrows. Many
skeptics found it hard to believe that Alesis could build a polyphonic
analog synthesizer. Then when the curtain was pulled back and the
names of the sound design team became known, many of the skeptics
became believers. Not every owner embraced the A6; if you're a
preset surfer this isn't your machine. With all those controls,
the A6 BEGS to be tweaked. If you know your way around analog
synthesis and love to program them, they don't get much better than the
Andromeda. Many fans label the A6 as a polyphonic modular due to
its programming power, and today it is considered "classic" and is
trading for high dollars (to date it is not considered "vintage").
top
What kind of sounds can the A6 do? It is a
very flexible
machine. I call it my "chameleon" synth because I have
successfully duplicated many sounds from my Memorymoog and old
Oberheims, so I just gig my A6 and leave the old stuff at home.
Others have duplicated Roland, ARP, Korg... There are some
factory patches that do a really good emulation of
vintage keyboards like the ARP String Ensemble which had defied
sampling. While it can do reed and pipe organs, it falls
short on Hammond organ sounds. Strings? Horns? Synth
FX? Pads? Prog? 80s Rock? Techno? Hip
Hop? EDM? Oh yeah. This demo
isn't my work but it
represents a lot of what the A6 can do. The monophonic lead
sounds just don't have the power of a vintage synth like a
Minimoog. The A6 can go beyond typical analog synth
timbres. Thanks to its zippy envelopes and flexible filtering, it
is very good at analog drums and percussion. It has a MIX mode
where you can layer/split sounds, and the factory MIX patches show off
the EDM heavily-influenced stuff - almost a complete song on the
keyboard. I even created a respectable acoustic piano - uncanny
for an analog synth - for the
factory library.
Disclaimer: yes, I was a member of the beta test/sound design team for
the Andromeda. There were about a dozen of us on the team,
including some professional musicians. I am forever grateful to
Mike Peake for extending the invitation to be involved in this historic
instrument. Alesis allowed me to keep my beta unit (serial #9) in
exchange for my work, and since 2001 it has seen steady use. Many
of my patch submissions wound up in the factory library -
"Frankensteinwhey", "MeltsInYourMouth", "TawrusBassPedal", "Stereo
Strings", "Lucky You", "Modern Day Warrior", "Deep Abyss Bass", "Old
Man Winter", "Molasses In Winter", "Shawk The Monkey", "Diamond Rain",
"Sea Bells", and many more.
Learning the tricks of the Andromeda can be a daunting task, even for
me. Fortunately for A6 owners, a user on the A6 discussion email
list collected a lot of good information and compiled it in a
"tips-n-tricks" document, and it is conveniently sorted. This
document and many shared patches can be found on
http://www.wohmart.com/a6.
Even for a seasoned programmer like
myself, I learned a bunch of tricks I did not know.
Alesis chose the Fatar
tp9 keybed that had semi-weighted keys, velocity
sensing, and an aftertouch element. Many keyboards from 1985 on -
in their race to stay competitive - had cheap featherlight keybeds that
I never liked. The Andromeda
keyboard is very pleasant to play. I wish more synths used this
keybed, and the Moog Voyager was one of the few that also used a
similar keybed. top
Sharp-eyed surfers will notice the different
knobs on my
Andromeda. When I
used to work contract engineering, I had a
contract job at a fabrication shop that built measurement
acquisition modules. These modules looked like synthesizer
modules and I
thought I had stepped out of a time machine into a synthesizer factory
of 1972! They had piles of Rogan knobs that they no longer used,
so I arranged to purchase a bunch for my A6. Rogan knobs were
used on Moog synthesizer products starting about 1975 (Minimoogs and
modulars continued to use the classy Cosmo knobs). The A6 used
large, medium, and small size knobs so I made sure the Rogans I
purchased were likewise. The Rogan knobs have a better feel
and I find it is easier to adjust the small Rogan "soft" knobs over the
stock ones with the A6.
Even sharper-eyed surfers will notice the different color
buttons. While I was working on beta test/sound design for the
Andromeda, one of the staff gave me a bunch of buttons of different
colors that did not get used for production units. I swapped
these around and I really like the different colors I put on them,
especially the gold colored buttons. top
To expand the patch memory, there is a card slot for a PCMCIA type 1
SRAM card but these cards are obsolete and hard to find. Flash
memory cards will not work. A 2MB
card gave you six additional banks of 128 patches each and four
additional banks of mixes - far more than enough. I was fortunate
enough to acquire one when they were still available and I am glad that
I did.
If there is any weak point about the Andromeda, it is the digital
effects. The effects engine is the same as the Alesis
Wedge. There is a large variety of effects - various digital
reverbs, chorus, flangers, delays, rotating speaker, pitch shifter -
with a healthy set of parameters for each. Single and multiple
effect configurations are available. The weakest are the rotating
speaker and pitch shifter. The digital reverbs aren't Lexicon
quality but aren't terrible (they're FAR better than the piece-of-sh!t
ART
Multiverb I used to own). I tend to favor ambient room
algorithms, and seldom use reverbs with long tails. Delay-based
effects are the most useful for analog
sounds. Thankfully there is a dedicated button to enable/disable
the onboard effects. I exploit MIX mode a lot for my stage work
but only one digital effect can be active in a MIX configuration - the
auxiliary outputs allow me to route
synth patches to my own effects system where the onboard effects are
not enough.
There were a few panel variations. Alex
Hartmann designed the
graphic art on the panel, with the "constellations" sections. The
standard panel almost everyone has seen is silver with blue
constellations. The prototype Andromedas had a dark blue panel
with black constellations, and only a few of those exist and they
may
not be able to accept production OS firmware due to circuit
differences. Alesis made a special
edition silver panel with
maroon constellations. They only made 250 of those. When I
started on the beta test team I really wanted the red panel unit but
there weren't any available. A third party in recent years has
made panel overlays
that were all black. But the overlays did not include the
constellations and I like the fact that the stock Andromeda stands
apart from almost every other keyboard because it is not all
black. top
And what is this Alesis "Aurora"?!?
Well, someone had a prototype
panel for their production Andromeda and commissioned a shop to build a
case where the panel was tilted up instead of laying flat. Alesis
even provided a customized OS where the power up splash screen
displayed AURORA. There was an ambition to add I/O jacks on the
top of the case but this was never carried out. Another custom
case job was similar except with the black panel overlay and a new
set
of silver/gold knobs. Have to admit that gold knobs on a black
panel looks classy.
A rackmount Andromeda was on
the drawing board, until Alesis ran into
financial trouble and was acquired by Numark the DJ supply
company. Numark continued the manufacture of Andromedas but
ceased all development work so the rackmount A6 never got off the
drawing board. Numark also ceased all OS development, so the
promised MIDI reception of polyphonic aftertouch never became
reality. By then most of the design team for the Andromeda had
left Alesis. This image of
the rackmount panel isn't the actual
unit conceived at Alesis, it was a mockup done by an internet citizen -
and what could had been. Shortly after the Numark acquisition
Keith Barr passed away, and since he was responsible for the custom
ASIC designs that was the end of Alesis studio products.
With Barr and the original design team gone, Numark/Alesis management
were clueless about promoting the Andromeda, but the buzz around the
internet was still alive. Production was steady until about 2005
when they were made in
infrequent small batches, then by 2008 Numark ceased all synthesizer
and studio processor/recorder production. But a production run
from 2001 to 2008 is very respectable and an eternity compared to most
other keyboards. Today the only Alesis products are MIDI
controllers, MIDI drum sets, powered monitors, and DJ accessories -
products that do not need custom ASICs. A far cry from the
original Alesis company... top
Seems that a lot of misinformation about the A6 gets perpetuated on the
internet. One infamous former owner sold his A6 admitting he
couldn't (or wouldn't) learn how to program it, then on every
discussion forum he bashed the A6 whenever it was mentioned. He
couldn't be bothered to learn the machine then somehow believed that
gave him license to trash it. I don't have a problem if people
don't like certain products. I do have a problem when people
dismiss products while admitting that they did not want to learn how to
operate it, yet are boisterous about spreading all kinds of outright
lies about the machine then use personal slurs against anyone who dares
to contradict them. Many former A6 owners wanted an instant
gratification machine where they could rely solely on the
presets. A poor craftsman always blames his tools... Others
spread the myth that the A6 does not sound "warm". I've been
programming analog synths since 1981 and frankly if you can't get good
warm sounds out of an Andromeda then you'll never get good sounds out
of any analog.
Some claim that the A6 is "buggy". This is
both false and
true. I can attest that after heavy editing sessions and gigging
my A6 regularly since 2001, it is far from "buggy". The beta test
team put a lot of work to uncover the bugs during development and the
OS that was released was very mature and free of bugs. As a
member of the beta test team, the subsequent releases of the OS added
new features and I know of no bugs that needed to be resolved.
The last OS version was v1.40.13.
As for claims of "buggy", there were foibles later uncovered that could
cause the A6 to malfunction but they are not related to the OS.
One is the widely reported "self edit" bug. This is not a bug;
the root cause is oxidizing contacts on the ribbon connectors for the
front panel boards. The oxidization wreaks havoc on the voltages
from the knobs, and the OS thinks that a user is manipulating a
control. THAT'S what causes the "self edit". I had similar
issues with other synths. The problem can be fixed by re-seating
the ribbon cable connectors (WARNING make SURE the connectors are NOT
offset from the header pins - I did that once and blew the FX
ASIC). But the connectors oxidize again over time; I had to
re-seat the connectors every 2-3 years.
Another foible later uncovered is a component substitution on the LCD
circuit board. There is a crystal on the board that generates the
timing clock signal. Later units substituted the crystal with a
capacitor, and this caused the clock signal to fail. This clock
signal is crucial to the operation of the A6. The OS does a
self-test on power up and if it cannot detect the LCD clock signal then
it will not operate the system. Many people encountered this in a
store and then called it "buggy" not knowing any better.
There were claims of a "bad batch" production of Andromedas but there
is no known serial number range for these units. Today Alesis has
no spare parts and service centers that can work on SMT components are
few and far between. The custom ASIC ICs are extremely hard to
find today. A website claims to have spare parts for the
Andromeda, but this is not the case and the website hasn't been updated
for years. The service manual can be found online. top
I am currently playing in a classic rock band
that is performing a lot
of 70s/80s songs that are heavy on keyboards. I have a lot of
sounds to cover, especially analog sounds. I have many MIDI
modules in rackmount format to cover traditional sounds (Kurzweil
1000xx for pianos, brass, strings, etc), percussion (Alesis DMPro),
lead synths (Moog Voyager RME), and bass pedals (Moog Minitaur) all
prewired to minimize setup and teardown. I had been bringing four
keyboards, but am now only bringing three; weighted action MIDI
controller, Hammond clonewheel, and Andromeda. That's it! I
succeeded in duplicating the patches I used on my Oberheim OBX into the
Andromeda so I can now leave the OBX at home. Handy performance
tip - set the knob mode to PASSTHRU in the GLOBAL menu. Loud PAs
can vibrate the knobs and put the A6 in "edit mode". Configuring
to PASSTHRU means that the instrument does not go to edit mode unless a
knob position "passes through" the programmed value. I exploit
the MIX
mode heavily to access sounds, splits, layers, and remote MIDI control
and the Andromeda has been performing like a champ! top
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