America's Favorite Synth Family Keeps Getting Better

The QS8.1™ is one of the newest members of Alesis’ award-winning QS Series of keyboards and synth modules. It offers an excellent selection of new features including a newly-designed backlit LCD display that’s larger than that of the preceding keyboards, making it perfect for live performances. The QS8.1 also includes dedicated buttons for “Transpose” and “Sequence Select”, allowing you to immediately access these functions without paging through menus. Plus, we’ve enhanced the General MIDI sound set so that composition and playback of compatible files are even better sounding than before, and the new Alesis Synthesizers CD-ROM software pack has been improved to offer more powerful tools for serious MIDI productions.

Hundreds of Sounds, Open-Ended Expansion: Up to 32MB Simultaneously

The QS8.1 offers an immense 16MB onboard sound library, comprising 640 programs and 500 multitimbral mixes. You’ll find Alesis’ highly-acclaimed stereo grand piano sounds, as well as dozens of organs, cutting-edge and vintage synth sounds, strings, brass, winds, guitars, drums, percussion, loops and much more. In addition to its great onboard collection of sounds, the QS8.1 is compatible with Alesis’ QCard™ ROM expansions, so you can add another 16MB of brand new samples and program/ mix information in nearly every musical genre by using the two rear panel card slots. The QS8.1 is also compatible with our Sound Bridge™software that lets you import, save and playback AIFF, WAV and other sample formats, allowing you to use your own samples or sounds from other sample libraries.

Powerful, Professional Performance Tools

The QS8.1 provides four edit/control sliders and two pedal inputs that are assignable to nearly any sound or effect modulation parameter and features a 88-key fully-weighted keyboard with velocity, release velocity and aftertouch functions. Also, the QS8.1 includes a dedicated sustain pedal jack, pitch and mod wheels, and aftertouch for your most expressive performances.

Comprehensive MIDI Productions: Alesis Synthesizer CD-ROM

The Alesis Synthesizer CD-ROM which comes with each QS Series synth includes a slew of full-featured software-based MIDI production tools from innovative companies like Emagic™, Opcode™ and Alesis. Built for both Mac® and Windows® platforms, you’ll get the Sound Bridge and FreeLoader applications, plus programs for sequencing and digital audio, editor/librarians, notation, extra samples, programs and mixes, sample sequences, demos and more.

Innovative Interfaces, Onboard Multieffects and More

The QS8.1 offers a high-speed serial data port for direct computer interfacing in addition to their MIDI In, Out and Thru connections, and the ADAT Optical output for direct digital audio connection to a wide variety of recorders, mixers and other tools that use this standard multichannel transfer protocol. The built-in multieffects include great-sounding reverb, chorus, distortion, EQ, delay, rotary speaker simulation and more.

All information is preliminary and subject to change.

FEATURES

• New! Dedicated "Transpose" and "Sequence Select" buttons, large, easy-to-read display, enhanced GM sound set
• Hundreds of sounds and multitimbral mixes for your best compositions and performances
• Includes Alesis' acclaimed stereo grand piano sounds
• 64 voice polyphony
• 88-note fully-weighted keyboard
• Multiple controller features for powerful live performances
• Easy-to-understand interface for performing, programming and editing
• Expansion card slots for adding an additional 16MB of new sounds, and Sound Bridge software for adding your own custom samples
• ADAT Optical Digital Interface and Serial Data port
• Included CD-ROM gets you rolling with software for MIDI sequencing, notation, editor/librarians, sample manipulation, extra sounds for the QS Series and more
• Play back up to 100 Standard MIDI File sequences without any external sequencing device