Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

Having the weirdest problem with my Alesis Ion.

Intermittently (once every few boots), some of the digital "voices" will fail to output anything. This can happen sometimes when I first boot the synth, or it can happen at any time after it's been functioning fine.

I've had this issue occur during the Test Mode too, where I can see that the keys DO in fact register up/down, yet the test tone (sine wave) doesn't always trigger. So strange.

Here's a video of it happening:


Any ideas? I'm going to try reflashing the 1.06 firmware now, but the synth wasn't doing this before

It doesn't always happen in this order either (6th and 7th key pressed triggers a voice). Sometimes it's every second voice, sometimes it's every 6th or 7th.

Reflashed the firmware. It was still doing it where one voice wouldn't trigger, intermittently depending on when it booted.

I switched the keyboard curve to Linear High and now I can't get it to do it currently. I'll keep an eye on it.

So weird.

Annnnd it's doing it again.

Any help or ideas would be much appreciated

Here's the schematic in case anyone else is looking for it:

https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ai6MpYbwai1ojbZdgXlQCZPquaP09Q

I guess it could be the DSP chips, but they way they are failing makes me think it may not be that.
I had a problem a while back with my Virus Indigo where the voices were acting funny too. It turned out to be a faulty ribbon cable, but the problem was exactly like you are describing.
I guess worst case scenario you could contact Alesis. I don't know how much help they'll actually be at this point since it's been out of production for quite some time. I just hope it's something that can be remedied. Good luck!

krzeppa wrote:I guess it could be the DSP chips, but they way they are failing makes me think it may not be that.
I had a problem a while back with my Virus Indigo where the voices were acting funny too. It turned out to be a faulty ribbon cable, but the problem was exactly like you are describing.
I guess worst case scenario you could contact Alesis. I don't know how much help they'll actually be at this point since it's been out of production for quite some time. I just hope it's something that can be remedied. Good luck!

Thanks for the reply

Here's another video of it happening, with some new symptoms that will hopefully pinpoint this

That is really odd....I wish I could give you the answer, but I just don't know.

Hey, I just ran across this and am copying/pasting my own notes that may or may not be relevant to this. In my case, voices were just not working and I couldn't figure out and for a while I thought my unit was hosed!

If a Part doesn’t sound, make sure to check “Output Balance” in each part’s settings; set output to Main instead of Aux.