Alesis Micron

also, John: it has a vocoder!

It would save space, and the Micron is so fucking intuitive.

The Micron has got reverb and delay

Are the native effects easily turned off?

But I might be wrong, I only messed around with the Micron in the store for a few mintes.

Personally though, I'd forget about the Alesis crap and pick up a CZ101 and a late Roland analog. JX3Ps and Alpha Junos are incredible value these days, and will kick the shit out of the Ion/Micron in terms of sound (if not flexibility).

The list of "classic" analog polysynths that does actually kick the shit out of the Ion sonically is quite small. I've played a bunch of them in the past, and owned a few as well. Most of them I have no desire to own anymore. My "if money/space were no object" polysynth list is basically 3 items:
Oberheim 4-voice
Korg Trident 2
Yamaha CS80.

In harmony-central parlance, if my Ion were lost or stolen, I'd buy another. Like a shot.

I've had the Ion in my studio next to a several DCO Rolands (Juno 60, JX3P, MKS50) and in basic sound character it struggled to keep up with all of them. I can program a simple sync sweep with the filter fully open on a JX3P, and it immediately sounds great. If I program the same sound on an Ion, it sounds dull and weak unless I spend an hour tweaking it. It's simply easier to make real analogs sound good.

The Ion clearly wins out in terms of features and the range of sounds possible, but that isn't what I was talking about (as I stated in the original post!).

I guess maybe we're judging the Ion's sound in different ways. I'm a total oscillator snob. The filters in the Ion sound good, but the oscillators sound lacking to me. There is a kind of dullness to them which I don't like. I reckon Alesis overdid the anti-aliasing. I'd post some sounds to illustrate what I mean, but I don't have an Ion anymore.

the king of all analog oscillators

1) Automate changes in envelope filter settings? It's hard to play and twiddle knobs at the same time.

2) Set a synth sound to decay (like hitting a piano or guitar string) rather than sustaining infinitely? It seems like this should be doable, but I haven't been able to accomplish it).

I'd go for the Microkorg/MS2000 over the Micron from your description of what you want to do. The DWGS waveforms in the Korgs allow you to get dirtier than the basic analog-style oscillators in the Micron.

If you want really dark and gritty, look out for a second hand Ensoniq ESQ1 (or the SQ80, which is basically the same). It's an great sounding analog/digital hybrid synth from the late 80s, and I think it'd suit what you're doing really well. You can probably pick one up for less than the Micro or Microkorg (£100-£150 in the UK, less in the US).

press the mod matrix button to the left of the LCD, you can route various midi control ##s, footpedal, mod wheel 1 or 2 etc to any of the envelope parameters

2) Set a synth sound to decay (like hitting a piano or guitar string) rather than sustaining infinitely? It seems like this should be doable, but I haven't been able to accomplish it).

go to the envelope generator section, press the "amp" button, and turn the "sustain level" knob till it's at zero. The decay time knob then adjusts the time it takes for the sound to die away.

revive ion/micron vs ms2000/microkorg debate

which sounds more analogue

also are there others that have surpassed these? nord? novation?

imo the microkorg has higher quality, crunchier sounds but the ion is more versatile (so many of the microkorg's presets are very lol '90s). also it seems easier to mess with the parameters on the ion, but i haven't gotten too deep with that on either one.

all that said, i don't regret trading in the ion for the microkorg, which feels more fun to mess around with.

yeah i've heard that they sound good but yeesh:

http://media.createdigitalmedia.net/cdmu/images/2008/12/genreselect.jpg

honestly i stick to about four sounds (from the "hip-hop/vintage/retro" banks) and fuck around with those, a lot of the other stuff sounds corny to me.

i was thinking of asking IMM to recommend another keyboard to me that would complement the microkorg and not be too expensive...

you should look into loading the presets from the ms2000 onto it which are supposedly less cheesy

Anyone wanna buy a Korg MicroPreset?

http://www.vintagesynth.com/korg/micropreset.php

I just got one of these! Only 12+ years late to the party, haha. Still sounds v.good, imo