New Synth Day: Pt 2: Ion Rack

Gear Junkies have a story that Alesis will be announcing the Ion-R rackmount Ion at MusicMesse, the big German trade show in April. It's a nice-looking, knob-covered synth, but it adds very little to the already ageing Ion. There are extra outputs and more presets, but still no proper onboard effects, and it doesn't seem to have the extra sequencer that's in the Micron. No price yet, but I think they're unlikely to charge much more than $500. UPDATE: Looks like this is, er, a hoax. Cleverer people than me have spotted that the box is totally the wrong shape for a rackmount...

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

FWIW, the AH'ers suspect this of being an April Fool's joke. Looks too wide for rack width.

# posted by

Anonymous : 1:12 am

already aging ion? care to elaborate?

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:30 am

Well, I have an ION and I love it. It was announced in July 2002 and launched in March 2003. In those two years, the market for DSP chips has grown, so I assume they've got cheaper and better, and Chinese manufacturing has made things like decent-quality keyboards very cheap. So, if Alesis had launched the ION at NAAM 2005, it would have been reasonable to expect, say, 16-voices, a bunch of effects and a nicer keyboard action, and perhaps even a USB interface for MIDI/Editing/digital out. All for the same price. That's what I mean by ageing. I'm not dissing the Ion.

# posted by

Tom Whitwell : 9:11 am