Alesis Micron - the best virtual analogue available for the price, and some have suggested one of the best at any price. Certainly sounds as deliciously squidgy as another silver box of some repute.
This is a placeholder page for isle of avalon until gwenhwyfaer can extract a digit and put some real content up here. I did express a hope that this wouldn't take long, but that was a couple of decades ago, so I'm not even going to say "watch this space" now. *sigh*
Update, 7 Sep 2007: I've fixed the old Wired Autism Spectrum Quotient test and have parked it here until the flood of takers eats up all my bandwidth. Mail me for the source - my name at gmail.
In the meantime, here are some pictures of my gear list:
Alesis Micron - the best virtual
analogue available for the price, and some have suggested one of the best at
any price. Certainly sounds as deliciously squidgy as another silver box of
some repute.
Alesis Fusion. A much under-rated synth - in fact, it's suffered some
truly lousy press and a lot of all too vocal detractors; but there's just
nothing else that will give you 6-operator FM, 4-oscillator sample playback,
3-oscillator virtual analogue, and a couple of physical models all at the
same time. Here are a couple of patches for it - this pair of analogue pianos was a very early attempt
of mine to learn the ropes of programming and see what Gordon Reid was
talking about when he was extolling the
JX10's Acoustic Piano patch, and not an entirely successful one; this FM piano patch, derived from converting the
V50's piano to the Fusion, is rather more successful, and
to my ears sounds pretty convincing - even more so than it did on the V50...
dunno how that happened! :D
(update, 7sep07) Sadly, the Fusion wasn't destined to be here very long; about halfway through August, it stopped working altogether. I could probably get it repaired without too much hassle, but unfortunately I can't justify doing so until I have a bit more spare money floating around... meanwhile, I'm actually enjoying reacquainting myself with all my other gear...
(update again, 12dec07) Never mind. The Fusion is back amongst the living! A friend of mine very generously provided the means for me to get it sent back to Numark-Alesis UK and fixed. It turned out the power supply had died. I've had it back a month, and aside from the screen's contrast still behaving very strangely after it's been on for a couple of hours (and at this point I have to hope that's a separate issue) it's as happy as ever it was. Here's hoping it stays around for a good long time to come. :) (Or at any rate, until I've managed to write a software synth I'm happy with...)
E-Mu XL7. It may not be anything particularly special; it doesn't do anything the Fusion won't - but I keep this little darling for four reasons. Its filters are just lovely; its sequencer is about as good a pattern-based sequencer as you'll find anywhere; it has 16 controller knobs, making it the most real-time tweakable synth I have; and it sounds amazing. :)
Boss BR864. It's an 8 track digital
recorder with guitar effects and a drum machine built in, but thus far I've
mainly used it for the effects part.
Yamaha V50. I remember lusting after
one of these back when they were first released, and I picked one up in a
junkstore a couple of years back for a ton! Worth every penny too - it may
not be a DX7, but it's been an invaluable synth on which to learn the ropes
of FM programming, and it can still do things that even the Fusion can't. Unfortunately its internal battery has now bitten the dust, which means that it can't retain programs whilst powered down; and since I don't have a computer in the same room as it at the moment, that pretty much consigns it to being only a master keyboard until I can come up with the funds or the wherewithal to fit a new one... or sort out a librarian for Linux.