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It feels like «all-in-one» synthesizer, or workstation, concept - is slowly losing it's sense. Yep, computers still have bigger LCD screens and more sophisticated sequencers. But there's something special about hardware synths, something more alive. And in the name Alesis Fusion 6HD this concept is valuable in some way. So let's view it.

Though Fusion wasn't too much expensive at the time of release – Alesis is not Kurzweil kind of game. But not-so-stable-OS and user complaints made it worth waiting for a while. Today's price (not to forget eBay) makes it a good bargain. So I got interested and bought one.

Face to face

First look at the Fusion 6HD (5-octave Fusion) brings only pleasantries. Look at the housing. It has a nice lines and a metal instead of cheap plastic. The overall look is not "black-top-play-me-mr-professional" but aluminium body with "no-fingerprints" surface, grey plastic inserts are on the sides, around the controllers and LCD.

1. The pic is a little bit foggy, sorry for that .

But look at the untouched film on the LCD - I've got this beast brand new, wow!

The 61-key Fusion has usual, synth-type action. Very similar to Kurzweil KME-61 (and it seems to me, they are identical), non-weighted, but playable. Has a nice aftertouch.

Power supply from Alesis is definitely worth mentioning – three-pin socket and a modest «100—240V» caption almost makes me cry (of happiness). No wall warts, line lumps, thin cables - almost a dream for keyboadist playing live, and due to voltage synthesizer could be used in any country standard. Sure, PSU hidden inside the keyboard adds weight and needs advanced service for replacing. But no extra cables and devices to lug around - thats the catch. This is meant to be as professional feature, just recall all those old keyboards made in such way...

Scrolling through back panel – the socket placement is good, even better are the captions (plus they are duplicated on the top panel cover). Besides the power socket there are eight monophonic line-ins (regular jacks) for multitrack audio recording (yeah, there is one inside Alesis Fusion). On the left you see the external drive connector – yes, you are right, it's Serial ATA.

Our next stop is almost computer like. Compact Flash and a USB type B – the latter is used for loading new sounds from PC. Alesis Fusion 6HD is detected as a detachable drive. Throw away the square USB plug, and you get a massive flash drive :) . Heavy to lug around though.

Pedal sockets – we have three of them. Expression, assignable Switch and a separate Sustain, good. The next is the full MIDI kit — THRU, OUT, IN and digital audio connectors – ADAT è SPDIF.

For the end of our back panel tour goes the analogue sound section - auxiliary audio out, main stereo out, headphone socket and an audio in with the gain knob – we should use it for sampling, but if necessary, we could patch any external audio signal through Fusion (this acts indepently from multitrack ins).

 Now we start scrolling through the top of the synth – on the left there are two wheels, Modulation and a Pitch Bend.