I played with one of these for a very brief moment at a Mars store today while
waiting for a salesdroid to dig something up. I only auditioned about two of the
presets. The control area was pretty small but generally effective. The biggest
problems with the AirFX that I could see was that it was entirely preset and had no
MIDI out. I'm sure that the technology is extremely integrated, making it difficult
to tap the outputs for CV.
The D-Beam is available on Roland products and some have MIDI outs. I played with
the Roland Handsonic drum pad a few weeks ago and was very impressed. It had two
ribbons, the D-Beam and a fairly musical pad surface. The D-Beam usage isn't very
creative on the presets though, most of them used the D-Beam to trigger a cymbal
sample or a bell tree sound. I'm waiting for the prices to drop on that one...
I guess I was really good this year because Santa brought me a Korg Kaos Pad. I've
been having fun with it for the past week. It has a MIDI out that I haven't used
yet so I don't know the granularity of the MIDI CC messages just yet. The effects
granularity isn't that great and the inputs and outpus are !@#∗^ phono jacks. It is
∗not∗ a subtle device but it is still loads of fun. I suppose if you use a Korg Z-1
as a MIDI controller, you get a similar controller surface.
Eric
---
elhardt@... wrote:
> There's a new product from Alesis which is similar to the D-Beam that Roland
> put on some of their products. I wanted a D-Beam but they went out of
> production and I couldn't even get one used. This AirFX would be great if it
> had midi out or CV outputs to control other devices, but NO. I just wanted
> to ask if anybody is planning on getting one of these (or has gotten one
> already) and if so, if some internal voltages are accessible for controlling
> synth modules? This question was brought up about the Kurzweil
> ExpressionMate ribbon controller. I don't think we ever got an answer there
> either.
>
> http://www.alesis.com/products/airfx/index.html
>
> -Elhardt
>
>
>
>
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