Alesis Photon x25 review
Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:10 am
In case anyone's interested. I got this a couple of weeks ago. My first impressions were that it was bigger than I thought it would be. So keep this in mind if size is really important, cuz it's kinda bulky. I managed to find a large Taurus XL computer backpack at BestBuy that it fits nicely into, so this is no big deal.
The plus is that the keys are full size and the action is pretty decent. Its got a few velocity curves too, which I don't think is stated in the product literature and was a nice surprise. The controller layers are cool, they give you 30 controllers and the thing is dead easy to program. I have been using it mainly to control Reason through rewire, although programming a Live program would be pretty easy to do.
On my Dell laptop I manage to get around 7ms output latency in Live, with 19ms input latency, so that's 26 ms overall latency. This makes monitoring a guitar in live a bit impractical, but luckily there is a direct monitor setting so you can use zero latency. Kind of bummed out about that. Playing soft synths is ok, though and the latest ASIO drivers are very stable, no crashes. Also it works with bus power so no need for batteries or a wall wart.
The audio recording is solid and clean. I mic'ed up my guitar amp and used my mackie 1202 mixer preamp with a behringer condenser and it sounded VERY good. Output is good and clean with good balanced cables. This unit is an awesome value.
My only main niggle is the headphone output, it seems when you push a 1/4 plug all the way the sound comes out of the left headphone too much. I found that if I pulled the plug out slightly that the sound gets centered properly. Probably a bad connector in the headphone jack, but I can live with that, as I don't think I could bear parting with it for service.
Pros: Excellent sound, Great value, Excellent recording, solid ASIO driver performance, Great design, Easy to program
Cons: Kinda big, Possible manufacturing defects like my weird headphone jack, Latency seems high, usb 1.1, No Preamp for guitar signals
Overall: This is a great unit and I recommend it highly for the money. You'll need a direct box if you want to record a guitar, though.
The plus is that the keys are full size and the action is pretty decent. Its got a few velocity curves too, which I don't think is stated in the product literature and was a nice surprise. The controller layers are cool, they give you 30 controllers and the thing is dead easy to program. I have been using it mainly to control Reason through rewire, although programming a Live program would be pretty easy to do.
On my Dell laptop I manage to get around 7ms output latency in Live, with 19ms input latency, so that's 26 ms overall latency. This makes monitoring a guitar in live a bit impractical, but luckily there is a direct monitor setting so you can use zero latency. Kind of bummed out about that. Playing soft synths is ok, though and the latest ASIO drivers are very stable, no crashes. Also it works with bus power so no need for batteries or a wall wart.
The audio recording is solid and clean. I mic'ed up my guitar amp and used my mackie 1202 mixer preamp with a behringer condenser and it sounded VERY good. Output is good and clean with good balanced cables. This unit is an awesome value.
My only main niggle is the headphone output, it seems when you push a 1/4 plug all the way the sound comes out of the left headphone too much. I found that if I pulled the plug out slightly that the sound gets centered properly. Probably a bad connector in the headphone jack, but I can live with that, as I don't think I could bear parting with it for service.
Pros: Excellent sound, Great value, Excellent recording, solid ASIO driver performance, Great design, Easy to program
Cons: Kinda big, Possible manufacturing defects like my weird headphone jack, Latency seems high, usb 1.1, No Preamp for guitar signals
Overall: This is a great unit and I recommend it highly for the money. You'll need a direct box if you want to record a guitar, though.