Hi spalding,

One question is just what are your needs when it comes to sampling? What do you want to sample and how do you want to use those samples? No keyboard or module will give you the results that are obtainable with computer based wave editor software. I use Sound Forge 7.0 but there are other options as well. It all depends on how deep your sampling efforts are going to be.

As for your comment that you want to hear from real Genesys owners about their opinions and not just the opinion of a GEM employee, that seems to be a reasonable request.

Just for the record though, I have played keyboards professionally for around 33 years and have worked in music stores selling most every brand/model of keyboard since I finished college in 1979. I made it my specialty to learn the in-depth functions of every model I sold so I would have an edge over other salespeople and other stores. I only say this to point out that I am knowledgeable when it comes to keyboards.

There are certainly other brands/models that are good instruments in addition to GEM. Some folks prefer the way one model operates or sounds over another model and that is normal. I am glad that there are still a good number of choices in keyboards available. It would be quite boring if everyone had the same basic sound.

Two final points I would like to make;
I would like and use the Genesys and Promega 3 whether I worked for the company or not. As I said in my earlier post, I have been a fan of these instruments for many more years than I have worked for the company.

The biggest point to make in my opinion being from the heart is the fact that it won't make a difference to me one way or the other as to what you end up buying. I work for Generalmusic USA and we have nothing to do with the UK. I would like for you to try a Genesys because I know it is a good instrument and it sounds like it will serve your needs. But that is purely coming from the musician/keyboard player part of me, nothing else.

Anyway, good luck in your search and whatever you do end up with keep making music!

Dave

Hi spalding:
I have had my Genesys pro for about 10 months but had a SK 760 for 6 years prier to getting the Genesys pro. I like Gem because a few years ago they seemed to be ahead in the technology on keyboards. But now they seem to be falling behind. One example is having USB.

I use it for live performances and for production. My personal work is in the jazz style but I have produce for other artist using the Genesys sequencer and hard disk recorder when they need a quick audio file of their music. I would then transfer the wave to a computer using sound forge and adjust the EQ, normalize and clean it up so one song flows well from the other. .

If you record vocals on the Genesys, you have to do it all at once with the music. There is no way to edit it after it is recorded. I think it is the same way on the Korg. It is basically like a tape recorder recording every thing at once.

I have not have any problems with the battery life on my Genesys pro. In fact, I had to leave my Genesys pro in the case for about 7 days and when I put it back on everything was still in ram. I have heard about that problem with the Genesys (with speakers) but I don’t know if they had fixed that.

For what you want to do with the keyboard, I think you are on the right track in looking at the Genesys and the Korg. Those are the only keyboards around today that can do all that you want.

Again sounds are very subjective.
The Korg sounds sound good but only if you use the right effects on them. The Genesys sounds are not bad; it is just my personal choice for the Korg synth sounds. Hopefully you have heard the demos for the Genesys. Also, you can quickly edit the parameter of a sound on the Genesys.

I have used the sampler to sample sounds from CDs and to load different wave files. It is not a computer sampler so it is very limited. You can get away with some very basic sound sampling but you will not be able to do any advance sampling. It all depends on what specifically you want to do. I don’t even think the Korg has much of an advantage in this area other than more sample memory.

Both the Genesys and Korg are heavy keyboards. The learning curb on the Korg I have heard is steep but the Genesys is very easy to use.

There are some bugs with the Genesys where a note would sustain for no apparent reason and there is no way to get it off other than switching off the keyboard. Also, the loop function in the sequencer would sometimes frees the keyboard and you have to restart the keyboard.

After you sequence a song, the song can stay in ram so when you take the keyboard and put it back on, the song will still be there. However, you must remember to save a song after you are finished with it because there can sometimes be a problem where songs will not play in ram the way you made them.


All in all if I had to choose between a Genesys and the Korg as a primary keyboard, I would choose the Genesys because of its ease of use, no touch screen and its completeness in having everything onboard on the keyboard.
TTG

Just a suggestion on this one; did you try using the "Panic" function to kill the stuck note? (pressing both INC and DEC at the same time).

Chris

Thanks Chris I did not know about that but I will try it next time it happens. Is that supposed to restart the keyboard?

i drove to Leicester to hear the Genesys. The shop had a a korg PA1X and the genesyss and the tyros. I was disappointed with the Genesys. It has great functionality but the sounds in comparrison to the yamaha and the korg were simply poor. I have played jkeyboards on a shop floor before and the sounds can be deceptive because of the general noise and lack of resonance etc. But i heard the Korg and Yamaha in the same environment. The Genesys is not selling for the simple reason that with all its functions ,the sound quality for that price is a very bad exchange.

My PSR8000 had better sounds in terms of piano's and electric pianos. The strings were good ,acoustic guitars were ok but the general sound underwhelmed me. The korg by far through its own speakers rocked!! the sound quality was awesome and the preprogrammed arrangements got me righting new stuff actually in the shop! It is an outstanding instrument but so is the price tag !! I am kind of stuck now. I can only hope that there is some sort of sale in the new year and i will simply stretch to the Korg and buy some of the accessories like the CDR later when i can afford it.

Thanks everyone for your kind advice and contributions.

One thing that should be taken in to consideration is that the best sounds on the Genesys you have to page down a few times to get to them.

Now that's what I call a REAL sales pitch
Mind if I use this next time?
cheers
EJ



------------------
Eddie from Rotherham
www.yamahakeyboards.info

The fact is, if sampling is one of the main uses, NO keyboard (at least in this category) is a good choice. Buy a sampler or these days it is better to use a PC.



Don’t be pissed off at GEM because you were misguided by a dealer.



This is because most of the CD’s have COPY PROTECTION. Not our fault! At least you can move the sounds to a floppy and then load them.



The Genesys can load the Oriental kit that is available NOW. The additional sounds/styles need not overwrite the original internal data.



The Genesys has excellent drums. I am guessing from your other comments that you are just not aware at how to find all of the different kits that are in the instrument.



The samplers in these instruments are not SHIT. They ARE very basic. It would be just as easy to not include them at all. But I for one, and I am aware of others that have use the sampling option as an advantage. Keep in mind, these instruments are ARRANGER Keyboards!



There is a ton of user space for your own sounds without having to delete any original data. And there are 256 User Presets, 2560 User Style Presets and 1024 Memory locations to store your own set-ups.



While I truly appreciate hearing from all GEM users, even if they are not happy, it would be helpful to have those comments be based on accurate information. I am not trying to be sarcastic or put you down in any way. It just appears from your comments that you had a bad experience with a dealer, and that has soured you a bit on the Genesys to the point where you haven’t wanted to put much time into learning the instrument and what it can do.

Please don’t be offended by anything I said. That was not my intention.

Best Regards,

Dave McMahan
Product Manager
Generalmusic USA


[This message has been edited by WDMcM (edited 11-24-2004).]

Sound is very subjective. No two people hear sound the same way. No two sound designers program sounds the same way. Some people like the sound of one brand/model over another. That's the way it is.

Some manufacturers tend to wash their sounds in heavy effects to make them sound better than they really are when heard dry. True, but not necessarily important. It doesn’t matter how it's accomplished, just as long as it sounds good to you, the player.

One thing that is important is the versatility in sound editing and the number of starting points the user has to work with. To explain, The Genesys has MUCH better sound editing capabilities than any of the other arranger keyboards to my knowledge. For those who want to do in-depth editing, the sound options are limitless. If you just desire to alter the timbre, attack/decay, vibrato speed/depth, etc. there is a Quick Sound Edit mode that is very handy.

The Genesys has many more piano sounds (samples) to work with than what is found in the Piano Preset Family group of sounds. There are quite a few piano sounds of different source material (multi-samples) found in the Single Sound mode. And if you really want to be creative, there are a good number of choices in the raw waveform data when creating sounds from scratch while in Pro Sound Edit mode.

Versatility is one of the biggest advantages offered by the Genesys. If you don't like a sound, it can be altered as deeply as can be done on any high-end professional synthesizer/workstation. Entirely new sounds/waves/samples can be loaded into the Genesys and used in addition to the original sound data.

In some cases, it is fair to make the comment "I don't like the sound of...." since some keyboards don't allow for much if any sound editing. In the case of the Genesys, that comment really isn't valid. Yes, it is easier to go with an instrument that seems to fulfill your needs sonically right off the bat. But what happens when you get tired of hearing the same sounds over and over again and are stuck because there is no way of doing much about it?

Another thing to consider. What makes a sound ‘sound’ good? Consider this, and this is not BS or hype. A recording studio engineer makes adjustments in EQ on the individual channels that have been recorded until all of the tracks blend well together. The goal is to have the final recording sound smooth and even but for the individual tracks to still maintain their own character. If you were to listen to the individual tracks after the final mix has taken place, you would be amazed at how bad some of the tracks sound on their own without the other tracks mixed in.

Since we are talking about arranger keyboards, which inherently have multi tracks playing simultaneously, the basic idea of the above explanation is somewhat valid. Meaning, it is not just how a sound ‘sounds’ on its own, but how does it mesh or blend with other sounds in a multi-track environment?

FYI- the Genesys has the ability when playing SMF’s to automatically replace the normal GM sounds with the better more complex sounds contained in the instrument. This is a cool feature and can make a normal SMF sound much better. Then again, there are times when I will turn this function off because a certain MIDI file may sound better using the more basic (thin sounding) GM sounds due to the way the person doing the recording arranged the instruments, volumes, etc.

Best Regards,

Dave


[This message has been edited by WDMcM (edited 11-24-2004).]

Hi Dave,
First of all, I want to say to you, that you are really a positive man for Gem, and I want to thank you for all your fast and precise help.
I want to say somthing about your last post.
About sampling:
I know that arranger keyboards are not really SAMPLERS, and it's just for help us a little.
For example, I said to Ketron a big bug in the SD1 samplers, and the developper said to me that the chip can only read ROM sounds, and they had crack it to read RAM sounds too... just to help us a little to have another sounds...
I know all that, and I bought the last Kurzweil K2661 with 128 Mb of RAM.
I have also KONTAKT sample player on my PC with 1.5 Gb of RAM...
But, what we really needs? If we take an pro arranger keyboard, it's because we want a keyboard that can make our work easy... My dream is to just to plug the keyboard, to the HP, without any mixer, without any external CD player, to plug mics with good effects (reverb, eq), and to have the better sound possible in just one plug! :::> The Keyboard who can make all (not the coffee ok )
Today samplers have not arranger part, and the genesys one is one of better.
Take another keyboard with you, just to have 10/15 of your personal sounds, not make me happy.
You know, If i was able to add an extra computer SDRAM (128Mb) to my arranger keyboard, to load fast samples, I will pay extra money for that keyboard...
The thing I don't understand, is that before the Genesys, GEM had sampler with more ram in the WK8, so why downgrade?
Why i prefer the sampler inside the arranger keyboard? BECAUSE i want to use my sampled percs and drums (from hi quality samples CD) in the styles inside the arranger section. You understand me?
About the copy protection of AKAI CD, I think you are wrong! If my PC computer, and my Kurz sampler can read them, The genesys can read them directly if it wants...

About the oriental kit avaible now:
Is it the 3MB oriental kit that george kaye sent to me? Or there is another one?
If you have better things, can you send them to me?
This 3MB kit, is good for starting, but I think that we can do better.

About the flash memory free, I don't want to put user presets, or user styles that don't take a lot of memory, but USER WAV SAMPLES...
is the 64 Flash is already full with the standard sounds? (Ketron for example added some sounds in the flash memory left in the os upgrade 4.0, but ketron was only 8mb in flash and most of sounds in ROM. The power of genesys is that ALL the things are in 64Mb flash!!! and the Genesys XP 128 MB!! ok but if the flash sounds are not modified or added, it's better to put the samples in low cost ROM...)
I think i will finish to work for a keyboard compagny, to give them all my ideas...
So, try to know please if there is for example 8/16Mb left in the Flash to put our samples inside via OS upgrade, or just pc software?

If I am not very accurate, it's because it's difficult for me to speak in english, and I think it's difficult for you to read me too

Many thanks for a positive guy as you !

PS: see this post: http://www.abdallahsafar.com/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5025

Best Regards,

Dan