Alesis Micron Software Editors

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Member Since: Jan 05, 2011

I LOVE my micron, but HATE editing programs/rythms/etc with its 1 knob and tiny screen.
I'm wondering If I purchase an editor like the Bizune one (www.bizune.com/index.html) or the midiCTRL one (www.midictrl.com/) how the hell it would work... would it sync up with the micron's programs etc. so that when you adjust paremeters in its interface you can then hit "save" or whatever and it is then available on your micron for live performance?

Would I then be able to record midi with the microns programs behind them?

I'm tired of performing live with the programs I have on my micron and then whenever I do midi recording I have to use software synth sounds that I can't perform live with. People are starting to notice.

Thanks!

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Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007


Jan 05, 2011 05:49 pm

Hey man, and welcome to the forums.

First off, if you use an editor, it should sync up with the micron so you can control they synth in realtime from the software, and vice versa. You'll still need to record the audio out from your synth though. You should be able to tweak a patch in the editor, and then send it to the synth, or send a patch from the synth to the editor so you can save it as a sysex file on your computer.

As for editors,

If you haven't checked it out already, take a look at the Ion/Micron/Miniak yahoo group over at

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/alesis-ion/

There's also quite a few user-made presets, and some other editors floating around in the files area. Micronizer was one editor I remember off the top of my head.

Also take a look at the editors that are produced by hypersynth:
www.hypersynth.com/ion-editor.html

I own the Akai Miniak which is basically just a Micron thrown into a new chassis and rebranded. From my experience so far, the editors work pretty well. Programs are sent/received via sysex over the midi stream, and the Miniak can be adjusted from the editor in realtime (at least with the Hypersynth editor) You can also load the editor as a VST. Couple things about the hypersynth editor is it doesn't seem to have a sequence editor (like bizune's groove mod) built into it, and you can only send/receive single sysex patches at a time.

If I want to retrieve or send an entire bank of patches via sysex, I use midi-ox

www.midiox.com/ which is a nice little midi-patching/routing utility.

Personally I didn't really jive with the Bizune Minizune editor layout/interface, which is why I went with hypersynth's miniak editor. Their groove-mod editor might be worth looking at though. The prices look comparable to Hypersynth's editor.

If you do go with hypersynth, when you start the program, it will generate a machine code. That code needs to be copy/pasted and e-mailed back to them so they can get you a product key to type in. You can use hypersynth editor on as many computers as you want, but each computer will generate a unique code that needs to be sent back to them so they can give you a product key. I mention this because I was a kinda confused by it at first.

Hope that helps.

Member
Since: Jan 05, 2011


Jan 05, 2011 08:46 pm

All that's lots of help, thanks!

1. You said you didn't really jive with the Bizune editor, but having a sequence editor sounds like it would be really useful to me. So if I get the Bizune one would I really have any disadvantages from hypersynth?

2. So there is no program/plug-in/editor/any concieved thing that will let me drag and drop my micron to a midi track or something like that? excuse my naivety :P but that would be SO convenient...

Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007


Jan 05, 2011 09:46 pm

1. I haven't tried bizune myself, so I can't really speak for it. I think overall it has similar functionality to hypersynth for the synth part. I just find hypersynth's layout to be more intuitive. But bizune should let you edit all the same synth engine functions. And I agree, having a sequence editor would definitely be handy.

2. Not that I know of, or I'm misunderstanding, but what you could try is loading multiple instances of the VST, and assign each instance a different patch. And that way you're treating the editor like you would a normal VST, just that you'd need to record the audio output from the micron into its own track. That might be something worth trying. I don't know if it will work though, since I'm not sure if the micron/miniak can receive multiple midi channels. I might try that on my end with my miniak and see how it turns out. (I use FL Studio and Reaper) Probably not tonight though since I just got back from Florida a few days ago, and haven't re-arranged and re-connected everything yet. Maybe tomorrow.

I could be wrong though, and that might be a good question or discussion for the yahoo group I mentioned, or it may have been discussed already in some of the older messages.

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