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Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:02 pm
by GeeJee
If only the Fusion came in a rack version...

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:19 pm
by jeremy
Dr. Who wrote:I've got a Triton Extreme it's loaded w/sounds and the MOSS addition opens up plenty more sonic possiblities, but I have been thinking about making a switch to another workstation. I think I'll stick with my main workhorse, but the Fusion may lend itself as a good supporting board for pads, retro 80's FM sounds etc.
Oh my! Well don't sell the Triton Extreme for the Fusion, you'd regret it. Not that the Fusion is bad (I think it's not), but the Triton Extreme is in another league in my opinion. OK it doesn't have a multitrack audiorecorder and built-in hard drive, but it's a real high-end professional workstation.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:43 pm
by Equinoxe
jeremy wrote:
Dr. Who wrote:I've got a Triton Extreme it's loaded w/sounds and the MOSS addition opens up plenty more sonic possiblities, but I have been thinking about making a switch to another workstation. I think I'll stick with my main workhorse, but the Fusion may lend itself as a good supporting board for pads, retro 80's FM sounds etc.
Oh my! Well don't sell the Triton Extreme for the Fusion, you'd regret it. Not that the Fusion is bad (I think it's not), but the Triton Extreme is in another league in my opinion. OK it doesn't have a multitrack audiorecorder and built-in hard drive, but it's a real high-end professional workstation.
The TEX is a good W/S infact I love the Tritons,have both a Classic and the TEX,and with a Moss board gives you a wide range of sound capabilities,Infact the MOSS board would cover all the FM and VA that the Fusion would,the Audio recorder aspect is rather a plus for the Alesis but you have the ability to burn Audio with the TEX and the sampler would take care of a lot of the duties with a little creativity and prethought

I wouldn't trade the TEX for a fusion,the sequencer is a bit dated compared to other W/S,so would be interested to see how the Fusions seq stands up against it,but the TEX has a lot of key features that many other W/S were years behind,I'd merely have the Fusion alongside the TEX,I'll bet your bottom dollar the minute you ditch the TEX you'll Miss it,although I have the Oasys and Trinity,I couldn't part with the Tritons,they have a certain sound Quality I really warm to,and make up a lot of my arsenal of sounds on my tracks,I only wish they had of made a TEX rack version.

For the Price of a Fusion is it really worth ditching the TEX,they're virtually giving em away at that price,surely its more economical to keep the Triton and buy the Fusion as well,would say you'd struggle to make the Fusion price for your TEX secondhand now,which would mean your more out of pocket over what you originally bought it for.And if you did miss the TEX would have to buy another model...Part of the reason I very rarely sell anything on that I have bougth from New,Trade ins are not really worth it...Unless you never got any benefit out of the Board...

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:56 pm
by Equinoxe
Dr. Who wrote: Speaking of FM... doesn't the latest OASYS mod allow FM and you can even import DX7 patches via sys???? I guess I could always upgrade from a Triton to an OASYS??? Ok maybe I'll just get one of the free Fusions out there instead. OK... back On topic.
Yes...The FM engine is really good,Infact I have never been a Massive fan of the DX philosophy,but having the routing and options availible on a large touchscreen makes things much more user friendly,I always had a decent knowledge of FM just didn't find much of a use for it,I still don't but the Way the FM engine on the Oasys works,means that you can still get under the Hood of things without having to play rocket scientist

Yes you can load DX Sys ex which gives you access to literally tens of thousands of free downloadable Patches from the past and present,Korg made the FM engine backwards compatible which was a very welcome addition to the Oasys..So anyone who ever had any FM Yamaha synth in years gone by can load in their patches..Given the popularity of the DX series throughout the 80s and still users of today,that made a lot of Oasys owners happy!as Like myself many of them have used a DX or FM synth in the past..

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 6:30 pm
by Jon
I got the Fusion for a couple of reasons, ease of use for the sampler and h/d recording, plus the array of 80s sounds that I love. I love the 80s sttuff anyway, not to forget the price :mrgreen:

This is my 2nd workstation. My first was the 01W/fd, but I never really got into it big time, just something I messed around with.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 11:04 pm
by Dr. Who
I'm pretty sure I'd miss the TEX if I ever got ride of her. I dont' use the sequencer at all, never been a fan of it. I do dig the sound of the TEX though.

I'm leaning heavily towards getting a Fusion to expand the sound pallete a bit (I'll hold onto the TEX). Always looking for new different sounds and it appears they could be made on the Fusion pretty easily. But @^$@*!! now Equinoxe has me wanting an OASYS.... I guess we can all lust after gear can't we??? If I do get a Fusion, I'll be sure and give yet another opinion on what seems like a steal of a board. Maybe even some sound samples like the other guys have... wait no samples yet???? :nod:

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:24 am
by plate of chips
I think Alesis made a mistake marketing the Fusion as a workstation.

For sure it has workstation capabilties, but what they should have marketed it as is :

An FM, Physical Modelling, S&S, VA synth with a hard disk recorder and sampler built in
that has trememdous scope for sound manipulation and sound expansion from a variety of different sound formats
with Gigabytes of storage for arpeggio patterns, sequences, songs, sounds.




This is from the SOS User review,
giving a small indication of the sounds that can be downloaded into the Fusions 80GB hard disk.


Hollowsun Nebulae
http://www.hollowsun.com/cds/nebulae_page.html

KPR http://www.backintimerecords.de/bitr003.htm

Joeri Peeters vstream sounds http://www.vstream.be

SOS 5 star rated, eg.
Ethnic http://www.soundsonline.com/ProSamples- ... pr-PS32.ht ml
Guitar & Bass
http://www.soundsonline.com/Quantum-Lea ... GBAK1.html


All of these are Well worth the rather small outlay.



Other quality purchases that can be converted, translated into the Fusion

http://www.dv247.com/icat/Software+Samplers/2985/ Emulator NI Kontakt 3 Steinberg HALion

http://www.dv247.com/invt/36652/ Tascam Giga GVI

http://www.samplecraze.com

http://www.soundsonline.com/home.php

http://www.soundsonline.com/Clearance-Sale-c-51.html EASTWEST sale

http://www.inspirationsounds.co.uk/acat ... e-CDs.html

http://www.store.precisionsound.net/ele ... r1info.php

http://www.wizoosounds.com/cgi-bin/WebO ... sounds?c=e

http://www.dv247.com/search/3094/1569/P ... ending//1/ ZeroG samples
Usually gets 5* from Sound on Sound.




Free Sounds

Hollowsun Free Packs http://www.hollowsun.com/downloads/index.html

Free Vstream Sounds
http://fusioneer.proboards102.com/index ... usersounds
http://www.promusicproducts.com/forum/p ... php?t=4115

Also Free
http://www.projectsam.com/freesounds.html

Free from kpr, by email request info@backintimerecords.de comes as mail attachment.
18 free Instrument presets, 7 free Synth presets, 7 free Piano Presets.

Sampleheads Drumkit free from Alesis
http://www.alesis.com/index.php?id=21,74,0,0,1,0

Akai MPC60 Soundbank Free
http://www.morente.org/fusion/%5BAlesis ... -MPC60.rar

Two Free pianos from Hollowsun
http://www.hollowsun.com/downloads/free ... azioli.zip
http://www.hollowsun.com/downloads/free ... _Piano.zip

Another Piano Free from Luc Henrion
http://www.promusicproducts.com/fusionf ... ge_piano_0 1.afp

There are lots of Free soundfont download links listed by forummee BastMaus covering a whole range
From orchestral, to ethnic. They are legal ! hence displayed on the forum
http://www.promusicproducts.com/forum/p ... =19&sid=ef 14189b13822c7454220dbab987b553




The Fusions 80GB hard disk, upgradeable to 120GB, i feel is best seen similar to a computer hard disk,
which is blank until we fill it with any musical idea, piece, song, sound we want.
This includes sounds we buy, sounds we get for free : some listed above; sounds sampled from our favourite synths.
All these, once in the Fusion we can leave as they are, or manipulate using the Fusion different synth engines.

When looked at this way, the sound capabilities of the Fusion is greater than many synths and every single workstation released. This includes the Oasys.

The SOS User review has a comparison of the Fusion with other workstations in the market, as well as a comparison with the Oasys.


:D

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:24 pm
by Equinoxe
plate of chips wrote: When looked at this way, the sound capabilities of the Fusion is greater than many synths and every single workstation released. This includes the Oasys.
:D
When you look at it like that there is no other synth you could compare the Fusion to,no other synth has a hard drive and al lthe capabilities that the Oasys currently has to offer,plenty of them have samplers which gives you limitless amounts of sound data availible,Infact any device that has sample capabilities could be considered to have large sound Possibilities,your only limited by your creativity,the Oasys has all the bells and whistles the Alesis does,but its engines are expandable,which means your not reliant on sample data and third party developers or stuck with the same Engines all the time,Part of the Oasys concept is that you can tailor your instrument to suit your Needs,the EXi engines are seperate from all the other engines giving you new ways of synthesis without samples and running them through the already Obsolete synthesis methods that are usually static within a general synth engine,If Alesis were to support the same Philosophy with expansion engines rather than utilise its Hard drive for onboard storage of further sounds,then You could say it could be running the same line as the Oasys at a more reasonable price.So although the Oasys is a hardware instrument it is basically a PC in a Hard shell,rather than simply reliant on its hard drive to stock up its sound weight you have the whole ideology of an expandable W/S giving you the best of both worlds.making your instrument both third Party sample compatible and expandable internally by Korg,Something that many other workstation have never had the Luxury of other than Upgradeable OS tweaks.

One of the reasons I bought the O was for that very fact,that machines are becoming obsolete well before you've got the best out of them,I was sick and tired of buying a W/S only for it to be dumped 18 months later by Korg,in favour of a newer model which essentially was the same synth with new clothes and livery,its all about market manipulation and making you think you need the new edition,with the Oasys the price may seem shocking ,but if it means I don't have to upgrade other than by software OS uploads,then the £5K price tag is money well spent in the Long run..

Alesis seem to have followed suit with the Fusion following the trend of past manufacturers by not supporting it beyond their production run and perhaps leaving it to third party intervention,which seems a shame really when it really rivals the Oasys,had Korg made the Fusion it would have been a bigger seller,I thinkthe Price has influenced a lot of people to look at the fusion and who can blame them,again its the name which many over look,and perhaps why Korg can command such a high price for their flagship because they want to keep it within their own camp and keep full control over its direction,because the Fusion was perhaps overlooked by many because of its less than Known image,even though its pretty well endowned for a Synth Alesis have maybe took a step back with it and not given it the full support it should have had,With a sampler your free to come and go with whatever data you choose,but expanding the Synthesis engines means you have more influence on your Users.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:43 pm
by Jon
The past hour or so I have been putting together a 16 minute audio sample of the sounds from the Fusion. I should have it posted here in the next few minutes.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:05 pm
by Big time
CAN´T WAIT!!!! :D

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:40 pm
by Jon
Here you go, my DEMO: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=1XCRBUK1

Not the best of sound, but I didn't have that much time.

Excuse the start, this is me just messing about with the sampler. I took the famous 'Art Of Noise' VW Golf car engine as a sample and played it back as you hear it in the track 'Close To The Edit'. But for fun, I did a Art Of Noise plays a bit of Oxygene too. Following that is the PPG pad. Another famous sound used by the Art Of Noise. Here I play 3 pieces: Donna, Moments In Love & Close To The Edit.

The rest are my current favourites and consist of various bass, pad, leads, drums. Apart from the first few seconds with the AON car sample, the rest are Fusion presets.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 9:06 pm
by Jakob BC
otherwise you can always use supload.com but I think it always takes some time before the files on megaupload works.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:33 pm
by Jakob BC
It works now. Ignition part 4 :P

Some of those sounds are quite nice. I have always like the Fairlight ARR1 sound and the Mellotron choir. That chinese harpe is pretty nice also.

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 10:54 am
by Jon
Oh, have I got my synths mixed up?. The sound that comes in right after the car engine sample I made, the 'Arr', that's from the Fairlight and not a PPG?.

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:48 am
by Jakob BC
Actually I don't know what the PPG sounds like, those bottle blowing sounds are probably quite similar, but one of the classic Fairlightsounds is the ARR1 as you can hear on Zoolook, the new version of Magnetic Fields 2, Jan Hammer's Crocket's Theme and many other tracks from the 80's.