Alesis have certainly been keeping us all guessing about their new ION synthesiszer. First spotted at the Summer NAMM session in Nashville – We've all been wondering when we can expect to hear the ION for real and it looks like it’s virgin voyage will be at Winter NAMM, this coming January - don't worry, we'll be there. (See our NAMM pages)
ION is a 49-key, 8 voice, 4-part multitimbral, analog modeling synthesizer with a 500 MIPS (million instructions per second) turbo-charged sound engine.The Alesis proprietary sound engine delivers up to five times the processing power of modeling synths that cost significantly more. With three oscillators and two multi-mode filters per voice ION (apparently) can “serve up everything from warm, round bass tones to lush pads and gritty lead sounds” – We’ll make sure we grab some audio demos at the show.
Connections include four balanced analog outputs and stereo balanced analog inputs, as well as MIDI In and Out/Thru ports. A built-in switching power supply is also included. The ION will ship in March, 2003.