Quote:
Originally posted by oleg7:
I spent 1.5 hours at the George Kay's store today test driving the new arranger and I am still excited and eager to go back for more...

The first impression was very positive and for the following reasons:

1. Wide, long, not shiny, good feeling keys with aftertouch. After playing with this action you will be hard pressed to find anything better.

2. Much more musical sounding fills and breaks. This was my biggest complaint with the PA80 but it looks like Korg worked hard to fix it. I was trying to use the fills on every beat within the measure and was happy 99 % of the time. Of course, I tested only a few styles, but the improvement over PA80 was obvious.

3. Easy and intuitive operation due to a clean layout, sliders and the touch screen. I was expecting the touch screen to be awkward but it turned out to be easy and fast to use.

4. Style variations sound more realistic because the differences between them are more subtle. Some people actually looked at this as a negative, but for my ear and taste this keyboard sounds more like a real band and makes the performance sound more musical while moving between the variations.

5. Improved sounds. I don't know whether the size of ROM was increased or it's just the programming but there is more variety within the groups of instruments and a lot of the patches deploy several layers of samples which makes the sounds much more playable.

6. Nice additions over the PA80 like built in hard drive, XLR mic input, music finder database, better vocal processor.


As much as I wish that the price was more affordable, I think that the vast improvements over the PA80 plus 76 keys are definitely worth the difference in price (about $1200). Bottom line , Korg has come out with a much improved version over their last arranger and now we have another new toy to consider...

As u said u have tried fill-in's no. of times can u tell me weather the fill was starting from First measure or from inbetwwen?It is starting from inbetwwen and irratically on PA-80 and is useless for me since i use almost all the available measuers for Fill as i put Music Pcs. of song in Fill.So it was embarassing on PA-80 as i was not sure when I press fill button from where the music will begin.It was useless for me.
Thanks.
Hitesh.