Day 1:
I love the dog that greeted me when I entered the seller's flat. It's
so small, so fluffy, and its fur feels like macaroni (I don't know if
the dog was wet, but I swear that under my fingertips its
texture felt like pasta). And it moves
and spins around like crazy (see the movie clip▼). When I brought the Ion back home and
powered it up, heard the sound, tweaked some knobs and looked at all
the lights and interface, I got excited. I was amazed with the physical
workmanship (or design) of this thing. The knobs, the gradually illuminated wheels...
it's all so... it gave me this feeling of being a happy customer who
has just bought a product from a company whose members run their
business with great dedication (too bad for the company I bought it
second-hand, lol).
Day 2:
I freaked out. Ion got
completely silent. No sound. All the outputs deaf. I've experienced some bad
luck with electricity in the past (fried vocoder, meal of the day), so I took it apart to find any signs of
damage. None. I re-set the global settings by double-click from the panel.
Everything works fine. What the F. It turned out that I messed up setup
settings - really confusing for rookies.
Day...later:
Okaaaaaayy,
fiddle around with for an hour it and it's going to sound fantastically
interesting and new. One of the main appeals of this synth is its diverse sound due to its
double filter that comes in several variations (which you can
post-mix so that you actually get 2 different sounds in one patch, as if)
plus the waveshaping features that open the door to the land of huge sound variation. Mod
matrix is a blessing,
Non-standard Arpeggiator, Tracking Input and (non-glitchy!!!) Loopable Envelopes
with adjustable slopes add their bit to the overall originality. But again -
the filters! They say it's the filter that adds specific flavor to any
synthesizer, so I guess the fact that Ion has so many filter types makes
it so versatile and varied in the sound range.
The interface has been hugely comfortable
in my experience,
although some of you can get slightly tired of clicking through the menus
and matrix like through a book. I myself love that solution and altogether
with its wide-and-large LCD I find Ion's UI much more pleasurable than the
ones of
Virus, Nova, or Waldorf Q. Also, the fact that you need to twist the knobs 3
cycles all the way around to reach from point 0 to 100 can be a hassle
during live situations, but don't forget that you still have two
programmable mod wheels. And the bright side of this is that the encoders
have great resolution and feel orgasmically sensual.
The FX
section is surely disappointing, as there are several phazers but only
one chorus and a maximum-80-ms-what-the-fuck delay, nonetheless, they are
original-sounding. The chorus / phasers are effective for strings and pads and
make them sound as if some other type of synthesis was going on under the
hood.
The largest area of dispute
will, of course, be the natural sound of this thing; Ion has many enemies
who find its sound lifeless and thin. If you don't need that
ultra-juicy-impact-of-sound, and if you search for and find inspiration in
the areas of effective ambiguity and idiosyncrasy so to speak, you can fall in love with your Ion very deeply. A
couple of years ago, when it came out, I heard some guys saying that the Ion
is a huge mistake. Most probably they did not have the appetite or the need
to embrace its novel proposition and they crawled back to their familiar
JP-8000s, or they just very urgently wanted to make some deep bass and lush strings,
or recreate their Jupiter (whatever the effing reason for recreating
a synth one already owns on another, different synth). It is absolutely true
that Ion is thinny in the rumbling basses area, or not so shiny around the
3.000 Hz & above point, and let us say that I do see the validity of the
classical point of view that a synth unable to make deep basses and lush
strings does not live up to the definition of true synthesizer, but I don't think Ion ever pretended to be a
smash-hit for the masses with "I-like-it-cause-it-sits-well-in-the-mix"
attitude, or a reincarnation of some "classic". Times change, deep bass and
lush strings may one day stop being cool, so hold on to your seats - it's
time for some delirious sounds! Or maybe it still isn't... Maybe just buy
yourself a JP-8000 for the basics and keep the Ion sitting next to it to
cover everything beyond the basics. Again, it's a trade-off.
In my case, it is the various and new sounds coming from the
Ion that get the appreciation whatever their tonal characteristic (and I'm lucky to like this
idiosyncratic characteristic). Yes, the JP-8000 can do wonderful warm pads and the Virus
can do some wonderful spacious detuned leads and what not, but they are
fucking glitchy and stale synths. Whereas with Ion I really hear
something different, and tweaking its engine produces digestible sound most
of the time, while the other buddies utter a hopeless "glitch-glitch,
fuck-off" when you push them. I'll say it differently: let's say that the
staple of synth music - basses, pads, leads, etc (the things that are easy
to label) - constitute 20% of all possible sound types in the synth world. In that 20%, Ion
fares average. But in the remaining, undiscoeverd 80% it is really
inspiring and effective. Now let me say something even more interesting:
Ion comes close to Hartmann Neuron and Roland V-Synth in its timbre and
sounds. Why is this interesting? Because the Ion is just a VA synth, whereas
the latter are much, much more than that. This should give the right clues
to the right kind of people.
All in all, Ion is a real variety gem for
the price. It replicates some classic timbres decently, but it's also capable
of a lot of yet unheard stuff that will make your ass tremble with thrill and
your throat swell with emotion. For me, Ion is the best, most creative and flexible cheap VA. Not
created by marketing heads for trance or electro or whatever consumers. It's
a synthesizer created by synthesis designers for exploring musicians. Generally for
people who like to reflect on the diversity of this world; that's how I
would put it.
Let me just add that my
favorite cheap vintage synth is the Ensoniq ESQ-1, which makes me a total
fan of the American synth school, or the American sound. Those synths (Ion
and ESQ1) are not juicy in the Japanese fashion, they're not straightforward
in the Swedish fashion, and they're not mix-friendly in the German fashion
either. But they are like a riot party in the middle of the week, or like a
theme park in the middle of a business district, or like an expedition
across
the Frontier. You may fail miserably and never settle, but the thrill and
the experience is there. There's a lot of instruments that Ion can imitate,
but there are only a few instruments that can imitate the Ion. That's my
best buy of the year, and the best and most enjoyable oscillator-FM behavior
ever.
VOLUME BALANCE ISSUES? I've
played 3 Ions and they all had this weird volume / panning setting (is this
the notorious "Alesis cheap transistor / quiet output design flaw"??). When
the main volume knob is set to 0, you can still hear the sound in one
channel. Raising the knob balances the channels. Raising the knob too far
right overdrives the overall sound. My workaround? Set the main volume knob
in the middle and system balance settings so that they're good, and then
just adjust the patch volume knob in the upper right corner if you need to
make the sound louder or quieter.
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