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Alesis | QS8

Description

The QS8 came out on the heels of the QS7 and was an even more professional quality version - it was Alesis' flagship model! It featured a full 88-note weighted keyboard with piano style hammer-action and a strong all-metal chassis with black solid oak end-pieces. Otherwise, it's identical to the QS7, with 16 MegaBytes of sample/synthesis ROM (expandable to 32 MegaBytes), 4 stereo outputs, 4 control sliders, discrete MIDI OUT and THRU ports, a third Expression Pedal input, ADAT optical digital output, 48kHz clock input, and a second PCMCIA expansion card slot.

The QS8 is undoubtedly a powerful and flexible synthesizer capable of creating rich sounds - both acoustic and electronic. There's 64 voices of polyphony and 16 parts multitimbrality and tons of memory and expand-ability! The QS8 uses digital additive/subtractive sample playback synthesis to create high quality stereo grand pianos, organs, strings, drums/percussion, brass, woodwinds, new and classic synth textures, General MIDI, and rhythmic/sonic loops. Most of them sound pretty darn great too.

As a master synth, the QS excels in it's price range, except for that tiny LCD display which makes navigating through the pages and pages of program settings pretty tedious. The QS8 implements the powerful QS Modulation Matrix, allowing users to assign virtually any controller source to any modulation parameter. There's an onboard multi-effects processor (based on the QuadraVerb 2) with four totally discrete effects busses that include reverb, delay, rotary speaker simulation, distortion, chorus and much more. With a direct Mac or PC hook-up, loading patches and editing via software is a snap! QS synths shipped with Alesis' Sound Bridge software for Mac/PC which lets you write AIFF and WAV samples, Standard MIDI Files and Program data to PCMCIA Flash or SRAM cards. It can play Standard MIDI file sequences from the expansion cards without the use of an external sequencer. For a top-quality synthesizer that isn't focused just on dance or trance, be sure to consider the QS8.

Also available are the QS6, QS7 (76 semi weighted keys) and QSR (rack-mount) versions. They also featured double the sample-ROM and many other upgrades! By 1999, all the Quadrasynths were being replaced by the QS6.1, 7.1 and 8.1 versions which are a vast improvement over this originals.

BrandAlesis
ModelQS8
DeviceSynth
TypeKeys
Engine TypeDigital
EngineSample
Voices (max)64
Multitimbral16
Oscillators1
Engine Detailed48kHz Linear samples.16MB, expandable to 32MB using 2 PCMCIA ROM and RAM cards
FX4 On-board effects, based on the Alesis QuadraVerb 2 FX processor
Memory512 preset 128 user programs, 400 preset and 100 user mixes, expandable using PCMCIA cards
ControllersSustain, 3x Expression
Keys88
Key typeHammer keys
VelocityY
AftertouchChannel
Audio4 stereo outputs, ADAT optical digital output, 48kHz clock input.
MidiI-O-T
Produced:1996 - 1996
Legend: Obvious Y: Yes, N: No, N/A: Not Applicable
VCO Voltage Controlled Oscillator DCO Digital Controlled Oscillator
LFO Low Frequency Oscillator Sub Sub Oscillator
VCF Voltage Controlled Filter VCA Voltage Controlled Amplifier
Velocity As with a piano, the harder you hit a key, the louder the sound, unlike most organs which always produce the same loudness no matter how hard you hit a key. Aftertouch Pressing a key after you activated it. Channel Aftertouch, no matter which key, it will send a Channel message. Poly Aftertouch, sends the pressure per key instead of the whole channel.
Values for OSC, LFO, Filter, Envelope are per voice unless stated otherwise.

Manuals, patches etc.

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