Alesis QS7.1 worries of a potential purchase - should have looked at the Kurz SP76???

[Blaster]

Just ordered an Alesis QS7.1 from the Sam Ash blowout sale of $599. I was looking for a 76 keyboard to use with my Ensoniq SQ-1+ for live use. I read were the QS7.1 or other QS series has the tendency to change patches and go out of tune. I was looking for a good piano and strings. Still thinking about the Kurzweil SP76 but heard that board was more of a student board

[Max Ventura]

The QS/ is a WONDERFUL sounding synth, excellent in both acoustic and electronic sounds alike. No matter what people says, it sounds MONEY and BIG BUDGET right out of the box. The analog synths waveforms sound as lifelike as the real thing.

Effects and delays are overwhelming sometimes, but that's typical of Alesis programming.

The engine is a bit complex, in fact, if you take my advice, just de-activate ALL Midi program change, cc change end the like, and do as much as possible manually or you'll be chasing Midi ghosts all over the place.

(ask Dave Bryce about the "Holy Night" ghost: he'll laugh about it)

The QS7 is not an updated machine, though. It's a very middle-nineties machine.

Buy only if the price allows no arguing.

 

The SP76 is, in fact, just a student oriented sub-piano. It's got very few sounds, can't edit them, and the OS is really limited. It's nice, but the two machines are miles apart.

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by Blaster:

Just ordered an Alesis QS7.1 from the Sam Ash blowout sale of $599. I was looking for a 76 keyboard to use with my Ensoniq SQ-1+ for live use. I read were the QS7.1 or other QS series has the tendency to change patches and go out of tune. I was looking for a good piano and strings. Still thinking about the Kurzweil SP76 but heard that board was more of a student board

I was the one talking about random patch changes. It happened because I had the high speed serial enabled with nothing plugged in in an electrically noisy environment (ok, a pizza parlor; I fess up)

 

Switching back to standard midi in caused the problem to go away.

 

The detuning issue that people were mentioning could be the same thing or it could be a noisy pitch wheel. They may also have had there pitch change range set to something bodacious. By default it is two semitones but if you set it to 2 octaves, a one bit change in the message is about a quarter tone.