Alesis is an American electronics company founded in the early 1980s in Hollywood, California, built on proprietary semiconductor chip technology that enabled professional-grade gear at previously unattainable prices. The company was established by Keith Barr, a co-founder of MXR, who applied his deep knowledge of custom integrated circuit design to create studio tools accessible to working musicians rather than only major recording facilities.

Alesis made its first major mark with the MidiVerb, the world's first professional 16-bit effects processor priced under $1,000, followed by the HR-16 and SR-16 drum machines — the SR-16 became one of the best-selling drum machines of all time and remained in production for roughly 15 years. The company's most transformative product arrived in 1991 with the ADAT, a modular 8-track digital tape recorder that reduced the cost of professional multitrack digital recording from around $50,000 to $4,000, fundamentally opening up home and project studio recording to a much broader range of musicians and engineers.

Beyond studio recording, Alesis developed a significant line of keyboards and synthesizers, including the Quadrasynth sample-playback workstation, the Andromeda A6 — a 16-voice hardware analog synthesizer regarded as a benchmark for modern analog polysynths — and the Ion virtual analog modeling keyboard. The company also became a major force in affordable electronic drum kits, a category that remains central to its catalog. Alesis has been part of inMusic Brands since 2012, with operations based in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Alesis has 297 products cataloged on Equipboard, including Electronic Drum Sets, Effects Processors, and MIDI Keyboard Controllers. Their gear is featured by 593 artists, with the strongest followings in Electronic, Rock, and Pop. Notable users include Billy Corgan, Klaus Schulze, and Daft Punk. Alesis's catalog spans the full price spectrum — from entry-level options to high-end flagships.