Alesis

Alesis is a leading manufacturer of audio devices such as synthesizers, signal processors, drum machines, amplifiers, recorders, mixers and speakers that are used primarily in the studio and for ambitious home recording.

History

The company Alesis was founded in 1984 by Keith Barr in Hollywood, California. After the rather rapid commercial successes soon a commercial building in Santa Monica was purchased, very close -known companies such as Sony and Media Ventures. Beginning of the millennium came Alesis into financial difficulties and filed for Chapter 11 proceedings. The British company Numark headed by Jack O'Donnell took over the company in 2001 and runs it in several places on, under, the Culver City is located in close proximity to Santa Monica.

Products

In the first products for the Alesis brought to market, it was digital effects to produce reverb, echo and other sound effects, and they were the first professional devices worldwide with 16 -bit processors for under $ 1,000. Known devices are, for example, XT Digital Reverb, MidiVerb and QuadraVerb produced in several consecutive and each improved versions. The effects devices became popular especially because of their exceptionally favorable price-performance ratio. Alesis built in this first phase, the company also hardware sequencer (MMT -8) as well as drum machines (HR -16), who followed the same principle: Many features for relatively little money, which was made possible in part by the manufacture of the devices in the Far East. Then counted to product catalog also rapidly mixing consoles and studio monitors.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the company was the development of the digital multi-track tape recorder Alesis Digital Audio Tape ( ADAT) (based on S -VHS) a very special international success. The machine improved the work in the recording studio over the previous analog multitrack tape machines at least in terms of the purchase price and was thus temporarily, in addition to TASCAM (DA -88), to the studio standard for digital multi-track recordings. Because of the then sensational low price also project studios and home recording studios were thus able to purchase professional recording equipment. This technologies such as ADAT Optical and ADAT Sync have been developed that even today are used as technical standards for studio electronics. The particular advantages of ADAT: cheap belt material, compact housing, a plurality ADATs can be linked together and synchronized, low wear and no maintenance. In the meantime, however, this system was replaced coverage of computer systems for audio recording, more or less.

Other well-known products are the Andromeda A6 analog synthesizer and the airFX, an effect instrument, as well as its toner convincing counterpart airSynth, the latter two received a design award. Also popular was the QS Series ( QS-6/QS-7/QS-8 ), which were very popular with studio and live musicians as " x.1 x.2 " versions and because of their variety of sounds at still reasonable prices and there still are. It all began with the synthesizer- the QuadraSynth, designed by Marcus Reyle, who has already made his company Fast Forward design in the 80s and 90s a name.

2005 brought the Alesis Synthesizer Workstation fusion in the variants 6HD and 8HD merger on the market. Due to this relatively inexpensive and particularly feature-rich synthesizer workstation with multiple tone generation method, an integrated sample player and audio recorder Alesis continued the original business idea and has been done with it a second time a name in the keyboard world. In Germany this workstation flopped due to lack of sufficient demand, a need for musicians clientele, in other countries like USA, UK, Scandinavia and many other but this workstation is extremely popular and is continuous with expansion packs (presets, sample libraries ) as standard.

For the younger range of Alesis include:

  • Recorder
  • Synthesizer
  • Drum machine (including the SR -16, the successor to the HR -16)
  • E-Drums
  • Signal processors
  • Mixers
  • Studio amplifier
  • Studio Monitors
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