Just wanted to drop you guys a few words of praise..

I was having some real serious problems with the mixing and burning of the music that I do for myself and others in my home studio. It was then I was lucky enough to have Roger Nichols (of Steely Dan) recommend to me your Masterlink 9600. I found his E-mail address thru a magazine and I told him of my issues. He wrote back saying that all I needed to solve my problems was the 9600. Figuring that HE HAD TO KNOW what he was talking about I went out and bought one that day. Boy was he right.... Things that used to drive me to drinking are now some of my favorite things to do, like mastering.. Your machine is a real pleasure to use and has only increased my love of recording music because I can now be prouder of the finished product than at anytime before. THANKS FOLKS !!!!!!

Dean Ulmer
Leaping Lizards Studio
Cincinnati, Oh

Hi all,

Last week I had a similar satisfaction feedback from a studio near Barcelona. The guy was not only satisfied with his MasterLink as a mastering tool, but he uses his MasterLink as a general-purpose trouble-shooter in his studio's day-to-day life: that is, transferring old vinyl to CD, storing long audio takes safely for working in it later as sources for sampling effects, making quick multiple CD copies of preliminary mixes for clients to take it at home and listen to it in different environments, etc. etc... I said, "OK all of this can be done with a cheap PC computer with a CD burner, so why do you need a MasterLink ?" : and he answered, "cause the computer in my studio plays a central role and is usually very busy, and I do not want to have to save sessions, reboot with different extensions, and stop all the studio every time we need to solve something with a CD... if you put your fingers in my computer I will cut it !! but MasterLink is so easy to use that I can teach anyone in five minutes and leave him alone with it ..."

Regards

Ignasi Alvarez
LETUSA

From: Kevin Bacon <eadead@dircon.co.uk>
Reply-To: Kevin Bacon <eadead@dircon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 20:18:01 +0000
To: david.marshall@soundtech.co.uk
Subject: Re: ML9600 at Abbey Road

Hello David

Many thanks for the use of the ML9600. Everybody here is very impressed with it, and it is so important for us to know that it really works ~ some things don't !

Jon and myself have been looking for a new format for a while. We HATE DAT, but we have always had to use it. We always mix to 1/2", but its not possible to put every mix down as cost and sense prohibit. Recently, on the new Finley Quaye album, we had 30 reels of 1/2" at £45 / reel. Although it sounds better than DAT sometimes we have to resort to DAT for editing.

I've mastered 2 compilation albums ( for fun !! ) and am currently mixing 48K / 24 bit on the current album project as suggested by Abbey Road. Anything higher means we cannot edit on ProTools. This is the new format for classical (ex-Abbey Road ) with DVD audio coming soon.

So, the ML9600 does almost what it says on the label, although when the back was taken off everybody thought NO WAY is this going to be any good. The BIT resolution was a solid '22', very good bearing in mind there aren't any 24 BIT convertors around yet. They were very impressed with that here.

The AD/DA convertors were very very good. Especially considering price. Here they are up against Genesis and Genex. Technically they are great, but with program there COULD be a tendency to soften at the top and not be as tight at the bottom compared to Genesis. Obviously using external AD/DA then that solves that. Tomorrow I get and even more in depth technical report from Colin here at Abbey Road.

We do simultaneous mixes onto 2 DATs, any chance of developing a link to keep 2 ML9600s in some sort of sync so that one machine controls more than one device. Using the remote can be hit and miss.

It has to be said that this is a fantastic device, especially for the money. We almost bought a Genex last month, phew. I start mixing in a couple of weeks on this album and then move on to mixing 2 more albums after that. I shall taking all of these to various mastering suites here and in the US. I think pretty soon I'll know the whole story and see if there is any catch !!!

I hope this is of some use.

Many thanks,
Kevin Bacon

Dear Mark,

You may recall (though I guess not) that a few weeks ago you followed up an enquiry I'd made about the availability of the Alesis Masterlink, telling me that it was about to be sent out to retailers.

I'm emailing now to say that I bought a Masterlink about 3 weeks ago, and to follow up with a few comments.

First, both Soundtech (as distributors) and Academy of Sound (the retailer I used in Sheffield) were extremely helpful, and made buying the machine an easy and enjoyable experience. As well as your helpful email, telling me that the thing was available, I also had a very friendly and helpful reply from Colin Haines at Soundtech, who arranged for a brochure to be sent out. Thanks very much to you all. Not all suppliers are as co-operative and pleasant to deal with.

Second, the machine is absolutely tremendous. I've now been using it for about 3 weeks, and it's both incredibly useful and extremely intuitive to deal with. I've used it almost exclusively so far for making far more carefully crafted compilation CDs than I've ever been able to work on before. I haven't yet used it for mastering any of my own recordings, but I'm filled with confidence that it will fall smoothly into place when I do so.

Third, there are small suggestions which strike one over prolonged and regular use, and I wonder whether Alesis are interested in hearing such suggestions (I suppose it is possible in the future that they would upgrade the programmes on which the machine is based, so that these are things which might eventually feed back and benefit customers). If Alesis were interested, who might one most appropriately send such comments to?

Thanks again for your help: I'd recommend the Alesis Masterlink to anyone (I'm already enthusing about it to my friends) - and it was a pleasure to deal with Soundtech too.

best wishes
Steve Makin