Alesis QSR W/5 Expansion Boards

The QSR can be had alone for $150, the set can be had alone for $295. Included in the set are Sanctuary, Vintage Keys, Hip Hop, Classical and Jazz Piano. 

The QSR is identical to the  and , except that it is a keyboard-less rackmount version. Also lost are the real-time controllers, but the two PCMCIA expansion slots are easily accessible right from the front of the unit. It's LCD display, on the other hand, is much larger than the keyboard version which makes navigating and editing easier. A great source of Alesis' brand of high quality synthesis and sounds! It featured 16 MegaBytes of sample/synthesis ROM (and is expandable to 32 MegaBytes), 4 stereo outputs, discrete MIDI OUT and THRU ports, ADAT optical digital output and a 48kHz clock input.

The QSR is undoubtedly a powerful and flexible synthesizer capable of creating rich sounds - both acoustic and electronic. There's 64 voices of polyphony and 16 parts multitimbrality and tons of memory and expand-ability! The QSR uses digital additive/subtractive sample playback synthesis to create high quality stereo grand pianos, organs, strings, drums/percussion, brass, woodwinds, new and classic synth textures, General MIDI, and rhythmic/sonic loops. Most of them sound pretty darn great too!

The QSR implements the powerful QS Modulation Matrix, allowing users to assign virtually any controller source to any modulation parameter. There's an onboard multi-effects processor (based on the QuadraVerb 2) with four totally discrete effects busses that include reverb, delay, rotary speaker simulation, distortion, chorus and much more. With a direct Mac or PC hook-up, loading patches and editing via software is a snap! QS synths shipped with Alesis' Sound Bridge software for Mac/PC which lets you write AIFF and WAV samples, Standard MIDI Files and Program data to PCMCIA Flash or SRAM cards. It can play Standard MIDI file sequences from the expansion cards without the use of an external sequencer. For a Studio-quality synthesizer module that isn't focused just on dance or trance, be sure to consider the QSR.