James has shown only how to split a Part into TWO notes. If you have say four different patches, layered up. A bari a t'bone, an alto and a trumpet.

Mono Poly - Priority Mode (Last note, Lowest note, Highest Note) only allows the Korg to split a chord played into the upper note and the lower note. Play a four note chord, and everything will go to the upper or the lower note of the chord, and ignore the notes in the middle.

Look, I'm not putting Korg's down. I've posted many times about how much I like the Kronos, and there's much I admire about the PA3X (finally! someone gets how good a Chord Sequencer is! Good job it's not on Donny's Korg, or he would have to start defending it!), and I still regularly use my Triton, and of course, I am completely aware about how more comprehensive voice editing is on these than any other arranger.

But.... despite James' post, he has failed to show how TRUE 'divisi' operation can be achieved. Merely splitting any chord played into its upper and lowest notes doesn't cut it.

Look, I used to have an Oberhein XPander. It was about the last thing I ever had that could assign voices in this manner. But the section that enabled the divisi, rotational triggering and other modes came at the Master level, not as programmed into each independent voice patch. As Ian said, with the SEM modules, you program the sounds at one level, then the voice allocation routines were programmed in a different section.

Voice allocation is a LOT different to oscillator allocation. While several modern synths allow you to do some fairly fancy tricks with the oscillator allocation WITHIN a patch (but not this trick, AFAIK), nothing that I currently know allows you to customize the final, overall voice allocation. The example that Roland offer with the ARX is quite simple really. Up to six voices, each different, triggered as each note is played either sequentially or simultaneously, with an allocation that plays them in order of height in the stack.

Personally, I think there are other allocation systems that could be useful. For instance, if the interval between top and bottom note gets over a specified interval, perhaps triggering the low note (the bari) and the high note (the trumpet) might be handy. And so on and so forth. A three note chord might be asked to do voices !&2, 3&4 and 5&6, for instance.

But behavior like this cannot be programmed in at the individual patch level of anything that I have read about (and trust me, I'm a manual junkie!), I only wish it was. Even my K2500, perhaps one of the most comprehensively programmed voice and Combi selections, you can't do this.

For James to suggest that splits and layers can achieve this only suggests that he simply has not grokked the basic thing that is going on here. The voice allocation from the Roland ARX board has NOTHING to do with WHERE on the keyboard the notes are triggered. Any WS has been able to split the keyboard up into a myriad of zones. But that sound ONLY plays in that zone. The ARX allocation makes no demands on WHERE you play the chord. Play four notes in tight, and you get bari/bone/sax/tpt. Play then WIDE apart, you STILL get bar/bone/sax/tpt. Totally independent of position.

Look, I'm not sure why feathers here are getting so ruffled. No keyboard, no matter HOW much you love it, can do everything. Here is something that, to be honest, has disappeared from synth for DECADES, that I believe could significantly improve the playing of certain types of parts, and rather than a reasoned discussion about it, we have someone that is determined to insist that it CAN be done, despite it NOT having been done (despite its usefulness) and so far, no example and nothing written that demonstrates it CAN. James' explanation only further illustrates that the basic concept of this is a bit alien to understand. Positional splits and velocity splits are so far away from this concept, why they are brought up eludes me.

James is an excellent programmer, I am in no way trying to put him down. But, as Dennis initially did, I simply think he hasn't quite understood the subtleties of what is involved here. This truly IS in the voice allocation routines of the synth, not in the oscillator routines. Or, at least, the allocation routines offered by current Korg's (or anything else for that matter other than the ARX board and some VSTi) are not adequate for the task.

I simply hope we can get past this, and simply discuss the CONCEPT and possible uses for it, rather than get defensive when what we use can't do it. After all, like I said, NOTHING that I have can do it! I am not trying to turn this into a 'mine is better than yours', which I am starting to get the impression that it is heading down that road. This is a 'mine is no better than anybody's' thread!

Peace.