in terms of sound and styles, matching fill ins, touch screen quality, effects section, new features, vocal harmony and multi pads

I spoke recently with a friend who's a moderator on the Korg forum and he said that the PA800 is an excellent keyboard, but he and many others weren't going to give up their PA1X's for it. He did mention that he knew a few who did give their PA1X's up for the PA800.
I know this doesn't help much but trying to figure all of this stuff out is a nightmare. That part is easy to figure out because of all of the swapping of keyboards going on constantly.
I still use my dinosaur Korgi30 and my fans still enjoy my music. I do play many old standards on my Tenor with the help of sequences, which gets a little extra attention.
Boo

hey brickboo, we have a lot in common..I've been using a
Korg is35 for several years and still use it, and am having a rough time trying to find a more current kb with better quality in the sounds, but nothing navigates like the i-series. ( I tried the i30 back then and it was a step up but it had a touchscreen i wasn't comfortable with, and i preferred having the lighter is35 w/speakers.) I also play
Eb sopranino sax with it, but don't use sequences, i just jump in over a pedal bass sound for a couple choruses
here and there. I got a new E60 recently but it's not for me and i'm wondering if the pa800 is..but nowhere can i demo it yet, to my knowledge.

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Miami Mo

Boo,

You said fans with an s. Are you trying to tell us you have more than one? I really thought I was the only one you had. Way to keep that fan base growing. If you played country like our tall buddy in Shreveport you'd have fans like the Beatles.

Tom

http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=22636

thanks Renig, but i've heard those demos online before, and they sure sound good. however, i was talking about getting a tryout demo the keyboard itself in terms of feel and navigation.

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Miami Mo

the real difficulty in giving an honest answer to this question is that it is very very difficult to get your hands on a PA800 unless you have placed an order to buy one. Virtually zero music shops in my area stock any and there are none on any shop floors in the second largest city in the UK. However i have been looking extensively at the Pa800 as a PA1X owner and i have upgraded my instrument to the new Version 3 for the PA1X. I have also just today downloaded onto my PA1X all the PA800 styles. So my answer to your question now that i have virtually a new keyboard is there is very little difference between the instruments . However there is potentially a big difference depending on how you use the instruments.

let me explain

the PA800 has 64mb of sampling ram which means that the PA800 can handle larger samples than its lder brother . If you are into sampling then this could be a major difference as it means that you now have a wider choice of available commercial samples. The PA1x has only 32mb and that can be quite limiting in terms of purchaseing newer samples.

The PA800 has greater polyphony (128 notes) which means that you can have much deeper layering of sounds without note drop off. If you are into sound creation then this is really important as both he PA1X (after V3 update) and the Pa800 are capable of layering up to 16 separate tones at the same time to create some of the most complex and detail sounds heard on any keyboard. Obviously the PA1X only has 62 notes polyphony and that could be eaten up quite quickly if you used 16 different tones all at once even with the Korgs clever algorithms to reduce note drop out. Obviously the PA800 wont suffer quite as quickly with its 128 note polyphony.

It is hard to tell how many styles and sounds in the PA800 actually use more than 2-4 tones per sound in reality despite its potential to use up to 16.I think the RX piano uses the most and many of those are damper samples,harmonic resonances etc

However in terms of styles, fillins etc the PA1X upgraded and the PA800 are virtually the same.

So the difference between the two instruments could be marginal or quite large depending on how you use the instrument.

From what i understand the vocal harmoniser on the PA800 is a cut down version of the PA1X, the speaker system on the PA800 is a less powered version of the PA1X and the missing sliders on the PA800 means that the instrument is inferior in a live performance situation to the PA1X.

I hope this helps

[This message has been edited by Spalding1 (edited 03-04-2007).]

I have 10 sliders on my i30 counting the master slider and I use them often with the 20 or 30 midi files I use. I don't have the knowledge or time to adjust the volumn on the midis and these slider work great.

I can't comprehend a keyboard with two volumn sliders. They must take a lot of adjusting of the midi files to get them to play the same. Sometimes I just have to tone down the drums. It takes a fraction of a second with the slider for the drums.

uh-oh, it's starting to sound like another case of restricted navigation on newer keyboards..they give you a ton more sounds and styles, but are harder to play live than the older ones..i can't believe Korg couldn't understand how great their i-series nav was and didn't leave it alone or improve on it..Drat! and here i was thinking the pa800 wouldn't give me 76 or a great keybed, but at least it would give me everything my is35 gives me plus better sounds and styles..now i have to deal with diminished nav? that's the problem i have w/the e60!

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Miami Mo

keysvocalssax i dont want to kill your interest in the machine before you start. The main thrust of what i am saying is that on paper the machine is realy not a great improvement over the PA1X for ordinary arranger playing use and in reality may be less efficient in terms of real time control in a live performance. However the PA800 is supposed to have a new sound engine that is better than the PA1X (although there is no way you can tell the difference from the demos online) Unless you can get your hands on one, there is no way to tell how the machine actually sounds or performs in a live setting