🚀 go-pugleaf

Mark Fassett (mark_fassett@intuit.com) wrote:
> I'm looking for opinions on the Alesis S4 plus rack synth.  It seems to 
> fit my needs pretty well for a decent general purpose, expandable, 
> affordable synth with good drum sounds.  Best of all, it's in my price 
> range.  Do you have an opinion on this unit?  Also, I know the samples 
> are 16 bit, but does anyone know the sampling rate of the sounds?  It'll 
> be used mainly for sequencing.

The S4plus (not the S4; it had OS bugs and even worse samples) is a good
rack mount unit.  It has some problems, especially among some of the
traditional acoustic instrument samples, but it has lots of versitility
for the money. 

The drum sounds are pretty decent in it.  The samples that suck?  piano, 
all the strings, most of the brass.  I wouldn't worry too much about the 
sample rate (I think that it's 48K, but who cares).  Decide by what you 
hear.  E-mu samples at 38K and has much better samples for many of these 
instruments.  Korg samples at 31K (until the latest releases) and many 
people swear by their samples.  It depends on what you want.

The synthesis engine is reasonable and the effects units are very good.

> Is there anything else out there that's better for the money?  I wish I 
> could afford the Ensoniq MR.. I just checked it out the other day, and 
> it is great.

At $1695, the MR didn't sound that great to me.  Knock it down to $899 
and I might consider it.

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Stan Sawyer
stan@projtech.com

The Zen Master asked the hot dog vendor,
                                    "Can you make me one with everything?"
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