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 used to play in a classic rock band that
was performing a lot of 70s/80s songs that are heavy on
keyboards. I had 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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