OK. Just went to Sam Ash in New Jersey - one of the largest music stores. Didn't get to spend too much time there unfortunately (my wife was taking the kids to Toys 'R Us and I had only about 1 hour).
Anyway, I was very impressed with Sam Ash. LOTS OF KEYBOARDS and most of them already turned on and hooked onto amps, and ready to be tried out (LowJK, Bongman, Iansoh etc, wish you guys were here to see this!). Due to the short time, I only had time to try out the Roland RD 700SX and of course, I couldn't resist the Alesis Fusion 8HD. Didn't even get to touch the many Novation keyboards. Too bad the only Oasys they had was in New York and I don't have time to make a trip there - they don't seem to think it will sell due to the hefty price and so did not bring it in. Also to my disappointment, they didn't have the Kawai MP4 which they said they had in their website. But they got the entire family of Triton and Fantom, all displayed and turned on. I also wanted to try the Roland VR-760 but alas, no time.
Anyway, my impression of the Alesis (due to the short time I had with it, I didn't think it is fair to post this in the review section; I won't repeat what's already available at the fusion website; I didn't have time to go deeper into the shell of their sampling, FM, VA synthesis):
1. Initial impression: looks like a spaceship command post as Bongman pointed out in another thread - in fact, it feels like a spaceship command post. Took a little time to get used to manipulate it. Very cool blue light when you move the mod wheels and pitch bend.
2. Touch - I tried out the 88 fully weighted version. It is too light to be really classified as a fully weighted. Felt more like a heavy semi-weighted. There's after-touch. But since it is not built to be a digital piano, I'm not too picky about it.
3. Sounds - their standard GM sounds are...standard sounds. I'm not sure if their first patch (Holy Grail Piano) is the same as the one by Q-up Arts but it certainly didn't sound like the name. Thin as usual. I've only time to try the piano, a few strings, flute, pan flute - and they can't match others like those from Roland. But again, I'm not too picky in this case since I know the strength of the Fusion lies elsewhere. Hence I spent most of my time on their leads, pads and FX patches which really shine when you use the realtime controls. But to my dismay, I thought they would have included more leads, pads and FX sounds - at least proportionately more than their orchestral sounds (which aren't that great). They should have capitalised on their strength.
4. Realtime control. This is where the real fun is. You can get really out of the world sounds with this in realtime. The frequency and resonance knobs are the main ones that can really change the character of a sound (particularly the frequency knob). All knobs are endless pots with easy grip (large comfortable knobs) with smooth turns. The tempo control flashes according to the bpm. If you increase the bpm, the light flashes faster and vice versa - good to know roughly what bpm you are at in arppegiator sounds. I can spend hours on this alone. The possibilities are endless - I managed to get some really unusual space-scape sounds - wish I can sample those to import into my softsampler!
Problems:
1. The most obvious one is the loading of each patch. When you scroll quickly down the menu, you can see that once in a while, it takes a split second to load a patch (a loading bar appears on the screen). That's where I can't figure out their technology. As a ROMpler, patch recall should be instantaneous. The few milliseconds of loading suggest that they are loading the sounds into RAM rather than just recalling from ROM. The loading time is short but in live situations may have some problems. I asked the manager about this - he told me that the Alesis tech person acknowledged this problem. Apparently the only way to workaround it is to create a patch list of all the sounds one will need to play live and load them prior to a live gig.
2. Most sounds have a decay after one releases the key - some sounds longer than others. In most keyboards I know, the decay of first sound goes on even when I switch to another second patch/sound so the change between sounds is subtle. This is not so with the Fusion. For example, you play sound A; you release it but the sound goes on with a decay; you switch to sound B; the decay suddenly changes to the decay in sound B. This is very annoying for live situations especially when one need to change sounds often. Rolands/Yamahas etc don't have this problem. I'm not sure if this problem exist because the sounds are loaded into RAM.
Other than that, I really like the unusual sounds the Fusion can produce. Oh, by the way, Sam Ash in the US is selling it for 1999USD.
