Alesis Fusion 8HD 88-Note Keyboard Workstation Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I personally like the keyboard action a lot though it may be light for some people...its not as spongy-light as a Korg Karma but its not as heavily weighted as a Kurzweil SP76. Velocity, release velocity and mono aftertouch are standard.
Some people have been asking how I like the Fusion's Piano and, more specifically, how it stacks up against the Korg and Yamaha offerings...
Well, It kind of depends on what you like personally.
Let me explain; the Piano on my Motif Rack was a brittle piece of crap to my ears. The piano on the Fusion is a lot more realistic. Personal taste varies on piano sounds quite a bit though - I've got an old Baldwin Acrosonic Spinet in the studio that I love!
I needed at least one "workstation" type keybord with realistic instrument sounds like piano, clav and strings in my studio. I started with a Korg Karma but its sounds were overhyped plus it had the absolute worst keyboard I have ever felt. Later I traded it out for a Yamaha Motif rack - besides its too-bright sound it had awful MIDI timing slop...I sold it to help fund the Fusion.
Through my ADAM monitors, the Fusion has a nicely flat, unhyped sound. In my opinion, the Fusion's patches sit in a mix a little nicer than Korg and Yamaha - I didn't have to compress and EQ them to get them to "play nice".
I'm playing the Fusion along with a Serge Modular, Nord Modular, Yamaha VL-1, E-mu Planet Earth, Waldorf MicrowaveXT and a DSI Polyevolver Keyboard and I tell you, the Fusion can certainly hold its own, even with a disparate bunch of "weird guys". LOL! It really has a unique voice of its own thats different enough to be a very welcome addition :)
The unique sound engines in the Fusion are just a blast to program and I love their sound...that's where I think it really shines, though Its obviously no slouch as a sampler either - now I can finally trash my old S2000.
It seems fairly solid. I'm not planning on gigging with it - if I was, I would certainly buy a decent case, but I would do that for any synth I planned on transporting ;) I haven't had any lockups or software crashes yet...I've been digging pretty hard and deep into the beast since I got it and it seems very reliable so far. This is a much more mature OS version though...If you're looking into a Fusion, make sure the most recent OS is loaded - some of the earlier ones were very buggy.

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The Alesis Fusion 8HD Integrated Keyboard Workstation's ease of use makes it easy to handle your most demanding production tasks - almost effortlessly. Four types of synthesis and a built-in 24-bit sampler make your music easier to manage and produce. Save and load programs from the on-board 40GB hard drive -- or from the removable Compact Flash memory card. Onboard effects processing is powerful, and easy to control with the fully assignable buttons and 360knobs. Fully programmable arpeggiator, easy importing & converting of files & internal storage make this the keyboard no studio or workstation should be without. Multi-channel input and output options in both analog and digital (S/PDIF and ADAT Lightpipe) 96 mixes (ROM and HD) 13 filter types Effects -20 Reverbs, 10 Chorus, 50 Insert Effects, 4 Band EQ 24-bit Analog and Digital Conversion (64x oversampling A/D; 128x oversampling D/A)512 samples per multisample 16-bit sampling depth; 44.1 kHz sampling frequencies Sample formats -Alesis format; Fusion Converter Software-PC/Mac (Imports. wav, aif, Akai S-1000/3000/5000 Samples/Program data and Soundfonts) Sampling sources -Analog input L/R, Stereo output (resampling) 64MB onboard memory; optional expansion to 192MB Sampling Time -11 - 53 w/onboard memory; 37 - 15 w/full expansion memory Arpeggiater with 490 presets & unlimited user expansion, plus phrase and drum machine playbackSequence format -SMF Type 1 Pitch bend & modulation wheelsAssignable trigger buttons (4), switches (2) Backlit LCD External Storage -Compact Flash Type I and Type II (Flash and Microdrives) Power Consumption -50 W Connectors -Stereo main & aux L/R out, headphone out, S/PDIF out, Coax/Optical out, ADAT out, MIDI in/out/thru, sustain pedal, footswitch, expression pedal, USB (to host), external HDD (SATA), HD recording inputs 1-8 Dimensions -51.5 x 14 x 5 (130.8 x 35.6 x 12.7 cm)

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