Alesis Andromeda A6 Tips And Tricks Manual page 65

For pre-mix, Around 50 is mellow and warm (also good for Roland), around 60 is balls-ier
(best for Minimoog emulations). 70 and over seems to have more of that Memorymoog
Curtis feeling to it.
VCA Envelope Level Setting: Apparantly there is a " less squished" tone at around 75,
according to Colin' s findings. More dynamic. The squashed sound, however, can be useful
for certain tones. It' s another consideration to add to your pallete. 
Colin explains his version of things:
The reason why I'm stressing this is because a lot of people I know who have heard the presets
comment on the synth sounding "dry and harsh", VA like .
Guess what happens when you overdrive transitor type mixers, you get unpleasant odd harmonic
distortion :) When I back down the VCO pre-filter volumes by half on most of the presets, a sweeter
sound emerges - ie the high order odd harmonics have dropped in level :) Up to about 30 for each
VCO sounds about the most overdrive I'd wanna use - you can notice it on dual sinewave patches -
with the VCOs at 30 each, you can hear harmonic distortion in the sinewaves. This sounds good on
saw waves however, but go too high and your VCO monster actually starts to sound like a VA....
Likewise with the Post-filter mixer, 60 sounds just right with the right amount of overdrive for normal
use. Go higher for a certain effect but I wouldn't do it on every patch.
AND:
The most important key to the sound of the A6 is the VCO Pre-Filter mixer, The Post mixer can be
set where you like the sound. But the VCOs will really fizz if you go above 30 for any channel of the
Pre-Filter mixer. Logically the total combined level should be the only thing you should be
concerned about, but in my tests wether its just a single VCO or two VCOs, go above 30 on any
single channel and your in fizz squashed city. Good if you want the pinched harsh Curtis chip
sound, not if you don't - good for Oberheim and Sequential emulations I guess :) Me, I like the
smooth more discrete sounding Moog VCO sound when lower settings are used.