From the July 1989 issue of Radio And Production

R.A.P. Test Drive

Alesis QuadraVerb

by Jerry Vigil

Where would us lowly production types be without the apparent war going on between manufacturers of digital processors. In an effort to make the best product they can for the budget minded, starving musicians of the land, these laboratories of mad microchip scientists keep churning out better processors for less money than their last one.

A few months ago we did our Test Drive on the MULTIVERB from A.R.T., and we were excited that the MULTIVERB offered THREE effects at once! This month we couldn't pass up FOUR effects at once in the QUADRAVERB from Alesis. (Do you get the feeling these 2 companies keep a close watch on one another?)

The unit fits in one rack space and comes with an input knob, an output knob, 16 buttons to play with, and an LCD display that gives you a pretty easy to understand readout of what's going on. The 24-bit processing and 16-bit digital resolution give you a clean response of 16Hz to 20kHz. Programming the QUADRAVERB is easy enough that the experienced user of digital processors can probably set the manual aside and go right to work. The unit will store up to 100 programs and comes with 90 factory programs which can be changed and stored with the changes. If you wish, any or all of the 90 factory programs can be recalled easily.

A little more on the programs in a moment. Right now, let's get to the "QUAD" part of the processor. There are 4 basic effects available. They are reverb, delay, pitch shifting, and EQ. In the "QuadMode", you can have all 4 of these at work at the same time, and you have individual controls over each effect. There are several types of reverbs, several types of delays, several types of pitch shifting, and several types of equalizers to choose from.
The reverb department offers 5 types of reverb: Room, Chamber, Hall, Plate, and Reverse. Adjustable parameters available with each reverb include Decay, Diffusion, Density, Low Frequency Decay, and High Frequency Decay. The reverb also has a gate which can be used if desired. The gate parameters include Gate Hold, Gate Release, and Gated Level which lets some of the reverb continue to decay even after the gate is closed. The reverb in the QUADRAVERB sounds good and gives you plenty of parameters for fine tuning the reverb if you desire.

The delay section of the QUADRAVERB offers 3 types of delays to choose from. They are Ping Pong Delay, Stereo Delay, and Mono Delay. Maximum delay time is 1.5 seconds in the Mono mode. In the Stereo and Ping Pong modes, each channel can have up to 750 milliseconds of delay. The Ping Pong delay bounces the output back and forth between the left and right channels. Delay time and feedback are variable for each delay. The 1.5 second delay time is a lot of delay for this little box, and it's very clean. There's a lot you can do with it.

The Pitch Change section of the QUADRAVERB should not be misunderstood. In radio production, we like to think of a pitch shifter as something that will make the receptionist up front sound like Darth Vader. However, the QUADRAVERB is designed for the musician first, as is evident by the names of many of the factory programs, and the Pitch Change section will not shift over a 2 or 3 octave range like some pitch shifters you might be familiar with. The Pitch Change function of the QUADRAVERB is used to create chorusing, flanging, phase shifting, and to detune the input. It is also used to create the common Leslie effect. Chorus, flange, and phase shifting are similar effects, but they are created differently. Unless you use the unit for music, you would most likely only use the flange effect, which is very good. The Detune parameter is the parameter that actually controls how flat or sharp the pitch will be shifted. The range of this parameter is enough for the musician looking for a 12-string guitar sound (about a half step), but it won't work if you want Darth Vader.

The EQ section is quite impressive. There are 3 EQ's to choose from: 3 Band Parametric, 5 Band Parametric, and 11 Band Graphic. In both parametric EQ's, the middle bands are fully parametric in that you can also adjust bandwidth, while the high and low bands are shelving type equalizers. If that means little to you, just know that the equalizers in this unit could stand alone as a nice little digital equalizer.

So you've got 4 basic effects that can be linked together to give you up to 4 effects at once in the QUADRAVERB. While some processors will let you actually select what effect will go where in the chain, the QUADRAVERB offers 5 "configurations" to choose from. In other words, the linking of these effects has already been done for you. All you have to do is select one of the five configurations by using the "Config" button and the "Value" buttons, and you're off and running. This simplifies operation considerably. The 5 configurations are:

1. EQ->Pitch->Delay->Reverb (this is the "QuadMode")
2. Leslie->Delay->Reverb
3. Graphic EQ->Delay
4. 5 Band EQ->Pitch->Delay
5. EQ->Reverb

To do your own programming, you would start by selecting one of these configurations by pressing the "Config" button and making your choice. On the front panel are buttons labeled "Reverb", "Delay", "Pitch", and "EQ". Once you've selected a configuration, you hit any one of these buttons to select the various types of reverbs, delays, EQ's, and pitch effects available, then vary their parameters to suit your needs. Any one of the effects in a configuration can be bypassed should you only want EQ, for instance. In effect, this actually allows for more than just 5 configurations.

Another button on the panel is labeled "Mix". There are a number of mix options available, but the options are too numerous to get into detail about. The main features of the mix section give you separate control of the output level of each effect in use. This is like having up to 4 different processors using the same input but with different level controls for each output. These 4 outputs are then sent to a master effects level parameter which can be mixed with the direct signal to your taste. After you've spent a half hour in this section, you will be glad to know that the mix settings are saved with your program when you hit the "store" button.

Two more buttons are labeled "MIDI" and "MOD". These get you into the MIDI control section of the unit. For the sake of brevity, we'll let it suffice to say that the MIDI enthusiast won't be disappointed with the unit's ability to be controlled via MIDI. Just about every major parameter is MIDI controllable as well as some parameters you might not expect to have control of, such as the bandwidth in the EQ section. The various uses of MIDI to control processors such as the QUADRAVERB is something we'll leave to Todd Albertson to cover in the "MIDI PAGE". Thank you Todd.

That pretty much covers the guts of the QUADRAVERB. For those of you who just want to know what it does when you plug it in and turn it on, we'll refer you to this month's Cassette. We've patched a mike into it and stepped through all 90 factory programs to give you a sample of what it can do right out of the box.

In a nutshell, the QUADRAVERB is a superb unit for the dollar, and that's the good part. When we got our hands on it, we were quoted a list price of $425. After using the unit for a few weeks, we had to check back with a local dealer to double check that price and make sure there wasn't a misunderstanding. What we were told was that the price had just gone up to $499. (Maybe we weren't the only ones who thought it was underpriced.) Still, at $499, the QUADRAVERB is hard to beat, at least this month it is. ◙