Making The Andromeda Sound Big - Alesis Andromeda A6 Tips And Tricks Manual

18.6 other tips posted by brian kehew:
Digital FX - I hear almost universally that people do NOT like the FX. I think it's good for sounds that
NEED it, but most do not. Programmmers were asked to put some type of effect on each sound,
even minimal. I do agree that it puts it more in the range of Tridents and so on.
I've always held that people should learn to program "darker" on the A6 - because it CAN go up to
ultrabright levels, it sounds cool to do so. But in comparision to other old analogs, the lower 25% of
the filters is the "fat" range. Same for FX - they should really have the HF attenuated either before or
after the reverb. When you don't, people have a tendency to hear the A6 as "bright" and it sounds
more in the range of Virtual synths.
So - those who haven't tried the A6 - be aware. Play with the filters in the lower range, turn off the
Effects, don't trust the presets to be "The Sound" of the A6. I'll argue that the Minimoog kicks it's butt
at THOSE sounds (it does, but it's horribly limited) but I happily sold my Jupiter 8, a longtime trusted
companion. Not missing it a bit!
Discrete components can sound more full and open at their best than a VLSI design. There are a
few tricks, however, to embiggen Andromeda's tone:

18.7 making the andromeda sound big:

(courtesy of mike peake)
Use both a sine and a sawtooth (or square) wave simultaneously (if using two oscillators, only add
the sine on one of them and watch
overdrive).Preset 2 Program 102, "Miniature", uses this method. Set the F2 Input to Notch and set
the Post Filter Mix F1High Pass Level to maximum; set keytracking on F1 to 50 (select the
parameter and then simultaneously press Inc and Dec), set Env2 Amount to min, set resonance to
maximum and tune the F1 frequency to bring out the bass of the tone (or not :)
And remember: There' s always the " fine tune" knob. The semitone tuning is easy to see,
what' s not easy to see sometimes is the cents and fine tune knobs, knobs that adjust the pitch
slowly up and down by microtonal pitches rather than by semitones. Any two oscillator
patch should have at least some detune, unless you are going for a more static sound.
your Pre Filter Mix levels as this can cause a bit of edgy