Pros

It has some decent piano sounds when tinkered with. Gary Numan uses one (quadrasynth +) has a couple of weird sound effect sounds. easy midi channel setting system

Cons Bad design too clunky almost tonka toy case crappy sax and organ presets - if I want voices like that I would by the real thing Bad aftersales market. really bad operating system horrid key feel

worse thing Alesis did was to upgrade to plus version without offering the upgrade to orignial owners for free, considering there was not a price hike for the plus version on the original QS price. Now they no longer provide the upgrade service which is really poor. This means some cards wont work with the original QS.

The moral of the story is.. buy a QSR you get a lot more for your money

Much of this was corrected on the Plus Piano version which included a new OS, 8mb of additional samples, giving it a respectable 24mb or sample data; including a good quality piano along with new e.p. and organ samples. Also of significant importance; the preset patches sounded better.

This synth gets maligned (to some degree deservedly) but with the QSPP Alesis got things right. The keybed is of good quality, the display is well planned out and in it's day 4 controller knobs were a unique idea. In it's day this was the only 64 voice polyphonic synth, had a well designed modulation matrix and with minimal reading a good user interface.

No resonant filter was a bad move. It was claimed putting resonant filters into the QSPP would have reduced polyphony to 32 instead of 64 voices. I don't know why, that was the response constantly given.

That said there is a clairity to samples that is appealing. This synth lets you manipulate sound fairly well and the library of samples are very good to useless. The style of the patches are Korg like but sit better in mixes. I know people that feel this synth is cold sounding but I like it because of it's detailed sound.

It is great for pads and strings. The guitars are fair, reeds are very good, organs and e.p.'s range from excellent to ok, the ability to make strange sounds is there. I like that kind of stuff, you might not. It doesn't sound analog so blow it off if that's what you want. It's not a synthesis powerhouse like a SY77 or XP80 but it sounds a way better after a couple of years distance from using it and dealing with build quality.

Seriously, I had problems with the one I purchased and eventually dealer took it back and sold me a XP50, good sound engine but what a pig! Horrible interface, terrible keys.

Check out the Quadrasynth Plus Piano if you are looking for a sample based playback unit and want 76 keys. It makes for a good controller. Taken for what it is and the low price this is a good starter synth with enough pro features to make it worth hanging on to.