The Alesis Corporation (1984)

 

The Alesis Corporation was formed by the former MXR engineer Keith Barr in Hollywood, California in 1984. The company aimed to create high quality affordable instruments and audio equipment. The first products of the company were a series of digital effect units such as the XT Digital Reverb (1985), the first of the MidiVerb series the MicroVerb, the MicroEnhancer, the MicroGate and the MicroLimiter.

In 1987 Alesis produced the The MMT-8 Multitrack MIDI Recorder and HR-16 High Sample Rate Drum Machine. The HR16 was a 16 bit digital drum machine with 49 preset drum sounds, velocity-sensitive keypads, and a full MIDI implementation, housed in a grey plastic housing with rubber pads and and LCD display. The MMT-8 was an eight track midi sequencer housed in a matching casing. The HR-16 was updated to the HR16-B in 1989 and eventually the SR-16 in 1991.


The ALesis Quadrasynth

1993 saw the release of ALesis's first keyboard synthesiser the QuadraSynth, a 64 Voice 76 Key digital synthesiser wich came as a keyboard version and rack-mountable module version, the S4 64 Voice Sound
Module. The QuadraSynth had 16 MB of onboard sample ROM, and was the first synth to offer the ADAT Optical Digital interface for direct recording into ADAT.

Recent instruments include The DM5 18 Bit Drum Module, the QS6 and QS8 Voice Expandable Synthesizers and ADAT recording systems.


Further Information:

Alesis Corp Website