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Originally Posted by Diametro  However, part of my reluctance toward Andy is its jack of all trades approach to analog sound ... A bit generic, imo ... Whereas to me JP-6 has a more unique sound, very aggressive, screaming high end with great filters ... I can't imagine doing high-pitched sounds with any other synth really ... (and when you think of it, there's quite a bit of sonic territory there ... ) |
I don't really agree that the A6 is intended to be a jack of all trades, nor do I agree that it's generic. It definitely has an "American" sound, due wholly in part of decisions made at Alesis to use oscillators based on the Moog Modular design, as well as a Moog Modular and Oberheim SEM filter pairing. To people who grew up on listening to prog rock, this could be considered "generic", I guess. Even then, it really has a sound of its own. I have both an Andromeda and an Omega in the same room, and they're pretty easily discernible due to differences in character, where the Andromeda sounds very "wet" and "saturated", and the Omega sounds very crisp and well defined. Maybe it's a 70's vs. 80's thing when it comes to design philosophy? The Omega is, afterall, a polyphonic version of the SE ATC-X, which itself is based on the Moog Source.
Small bit of trivia, in the early design phase of the Andromeda, some Alesis engineers amassed all sorts of analog synths in order to see which parts they liked the best. In an alternate universe, Alesis may have released an analog poly synth based on the Jupiter 8.
Aside from using Moog and Oberheim inspired designs in the signal patch, the Andromeda takes a couple of design cues form the Yamaha CS-80, mainly in the form of the ribbon controller and the post filter oscillator mixer.