casio cz 101vs alesis micron

[mizu]

hi people as you know I ran out of fund for donating money fr the japanese earthquke. at least i lived in tokyo.

anyways thats the reason so far of my I have a low budget and I have to survive with it.

Reading reviews of both of these synths just makes me mixed up and I need some real review.

thanks

Max Sakurai

[memory cords]

The Micron is a great synth after you learn the interface.

[madtheory]

They're quite different synths- apples and oranges- but I'll try to answer your query anyway. The Micron is able to do "bigger" more analogue type sounds. The Casio can do a bit of analogue too, but it's a digital synth. Actually it's FM with a subtractive interface. IMO the Casio would be easier to edit, and therefore more satisfying to use. The Casio is more unique, especially for bells and even more especially for bass there's nothing else like it, whereas the Micron can potentially do all the typical "analogue" type sounds.

If it was me, and I could only have one synth, I'd go for the Micron because it can cover a wide range of sounds. I've tried forcing myself to be "unique" and just using a CZ, but it's not flexible enough for me. However, as I said, it does some things that no other synth can do.

[meatballfulton]

The Micron has more real time control, velocity sensitive keys (not full size but larger than the CZ keys), much more patch memory (CZ has only 16 patch slots!), sequencer, arpeggiator, vocoder, onboard FX...

Do you have other hardware synths? If not, Micron is definitely the one to get.

[optimus prime]

The CZ-101 is a very cool synth, and a lot cheaper than the Micron. It's also a lot older (it predates the Micron by nearly 20 years), which makes it less reliable I guess. It needs to have 6 D cell batteries to maintain the patch memory (it doesn't have an internal battery it seems). It's completely untweakable on-the-fly, you can't even hold the +value button to get some cutoff action while jamming - it cuts the sound for each value it passes through, so what you program is what you'll be using. It's 4-part multitimbral, which is a cool feature (comparable to the Micron) though a bit complicated to set up. All in all it's a quirky little synth, with a lot of character. Basses are it's strong side, as Madtheory pointed out, but is also capable of some cool percussion sounds - the sound in the intro of this track is actually a factory preset from the CZ-101:


Now a question for Micron users - can its sequencer sequence other synths?

[madtheory]

Cool track! Thanks. The bass is a slightly tweaked factory preset too... but both have effects added. While it is multi timbral, none of the CZs have separate outputs, so to do a toon like this you'd have to multitrack. I think it's a safe bet that the pad is a CZ too, with lashings of phaser and chorus. Mr. Price is a fan.

Some CZ-1 demos here, no effects:
http://madtheory.com/site/?p=320
It's better than the CZ-101 because it has velocity mod, more polyphony, layering etc. as you'll see if you read the article.

[Projectile]

These two synths are completely different in every way. They are nothing alike, except for the fact that they are both tedious to program. Just the fact that you would ask this question tells me you don't really know what you want. Do you have any other synths already?

The Casio cz101 is a phase distortion synthesizer from the 80s. It's kinda supposed to emulate analog synthesis, but not really. It sounds very very digital, but has a nice fat gritty quality to it. There is nothing else that sounds quite like the casio cz series. They are fun synths, but they are also extremely limited. The presets are terrible, and you only get 16 memory slots to program your own sounds (32 with a memory expansion card). It has no velocity sensitivity and requires D-cell batteries to maintain it's memory. You get no knobs or real-time tweak-ability, and it only has one LFO hard wired to vibrato. I wouldn't get a cz101 as your first synth. I love mine. It's a fun synth with a lot of great character, but it is not a good all-rounder. It's a quirky little cheap thing from the 80s that has a few cool tricks, and that's it.

The micron is a decent modern virtual analog. It's a digital synthesizer that emulates analog synthesis. The micron is much, much more powerful than the cz101 in every way. It's very deep, and can do almost anything you could want from a VA, but programing it is a bit tedious because of the lack of knobs and the small interface. I've never owned one, so I can't vouch for it, but there are many happy users.

[madtheory]

Thanks for posting an amalgam of all the other posts...

[Projectile]

What bug crawled up your a*s? Are you this much of a dickhead in real life, or do you just post inflammatory s**t on the internet becasue it makes you feel more important?

[madtheory]