Although the Ion Alesis Drum kit is already well-respected for its sound good quality, its synthesis architecture is also surprisingly flexible. We show you the way to get the most effective from this small beast in your studio.
In spite of its low expense, the Ion is properly endowed with capabilities, and it’s remarkably well built: by way of example, the rubbery knobs are mounted towards the front panel with nuts, so you are able to lean on them with no fear of stressing the underlying circuit board. Plus this synth has the benefit that the filter cutoff and other controls have an analogue ‘feel’ as a result of how they divide their rotation into thousands, instead of hundreds, of methods – the encoders have about 8000 methods of resolution.
Nonetheless, what quickly strikes most musicians is the sound – it definitely impressed reviewer Paul Nagle back in SOS September 2003. Whilst few would say it’s a clone of classic analogue synths, the Ion stands on its own thanks to a full bass and brash, but not arrogant, high end – apologies if I’m sounding like I’m performing a wine-tasting! Though the factory presets do an excellent job of showing off the synth, there is a lot that’s hidden ‘under the hood’, so I’m going to show you some ways to squeeze further alternatives and sounds out of what’s already an extremely capable synthesizer.
The standard sync sound outcomes from employing the modulation matrix to feed an envelope using a moderate decay into the Osc 2 Pitch Full modulation matrix destination (and into Osc three Pitch Full if you’re using each as sync oscillators). You also need to have to turn down the Osc 1 Level parameter from the appropriate Pre Filter Mix screen. Then allow oscillator sync using the devoted Osc Sync button.
However, I should admit to getting somewhat disappointed with this sound; it didn’t right away have the smoothness I wanted. The way about this was to turn up the Ring Mod Level parameter towards the identical value as Osc 1 Level, again inside the Pre Filter Mix screens. This was the aural equivalent of ‘filling inside the cracks’, and resulted in a smooth, yet defined, challenging or soft sync sound.
All of this helps illustrate the flexibility of filter mixing inside the Ion. It is possible to send audio sources (oscillator, external input, ring modulator, and so forth) to either or each filters in any percentage, pan the filter outputs in the stereo field, include pre-filtered sound, and a lot more. It is worth spending some time in the Pre Filter Mix and Post Filter Mix screens to become acquainted using the doable routing choices.
