The first time that I saw the Andromeda, I was infatuated with the abundance of knobs, buttons, and controllers. There seemed to be an endless number of ways to affect a sound in any way imaginable. As I began to play the first couple of patches that I happened across, two things happened. The first thing that I noticed was the full, rich luscious tones that were pulsating through my eardrums. I couldn’t believe how great the sounds were that I was hearing. Then I looked down at the controls again. Wow are there a lot of different controls. Enter the owners manual.
I personally found the owners manual to be a wonderful accessory to the Andromeda. This manual is relatively large at 270+ pages. The manual is very well written for both analog pros and beginners alike. Alesis has taken the time to explain the how’s and whys of analog synthesis and how it works before they begin explaining how to utilize the power of the Andromeda itself. In turn, the manual does a great job at explaining how to use all the in depth functions within the Andromeda.
I spent a large part of my weekend creating (and destroying) many of the different patches within the Andromeda. I found myself torn between experimenting on my own, creating huge pads and thick bass lines and reading through the manual to learn the “right” way to go about things. In the end, either approach was both educational and more importantly a lot of fun. I found the beauty of the Andromeda to be the power and detail for the “tweakiest” of the “tweaky” yet the design is straight forward enough for beginners to learn as they go.
