This morning, I received several XD9's and a few Vega keyboards. I would like to share my first day with the XD9 and my first impressions.
The morning started with me unpacking an XD9HD and realizing there was no owners manual in the box! A quick call to my frind AJ, tech support for Ketron and with my phone in hand, I got a 2 hour rundown on the features on this new model.
I want to first thank AJ so much for spending so much time with me today. With his help, I've learned so much as to the improvements on this new, less expensive keyboard.
As we have all read before, there are fewer outputs, no built in 16 track sequencer, non-weighted keys, no sampling, no flash Ram slot as is on the X1 model, but let me tell you what's exciting about this XD9.
First, the sounds.......In my opinion, indestinguishable from the SD1. Excellent re-sampling with only 24 MB to work with. Next, the styles are great, and the Latin loops that are new, are wonderful. Most all of the styles I love from the SD1 and X1 are here. There are a few less than the X1, but I don't think anyone will be upset with the 172 internal and the hundreds more on the Hard Drive if you get the hard drive model. One thing I've noticed is that some voices, such as rhodes piano, DX piano which some have mentioned have some hiss (sample noise or effects noise) is gone. This keyboard is very clean and quiet when playing using the internal speakers as well as conecting to external speakers.
I don't have time to report everything, but I would like to highlight some of the special features I think you should know about.
There is a new feature called bassist, which is turned on and off from a new button called Play Control. "
If you check this it automatically activates the manual bass on the left keyboard section and the Pianist mode on the right keyboard section and has the Manual Bass acting also on the acknowledgement of the chord played in the right hand part. Every time you take off your hand from the right keyboard section, the chord played last on the right section remains in memory (if the Hold push button is activated) whereas the Bass can be played freely without affecting the chord. This is a cool feature used to reduce the redundancy that can be associated with a style and allows the musician to freely produce natural, human bass line in real life."
There is now a new series of arranger mode buttons where instead of turning on the jump feature which in the X1 and SD1 make you have to shut off the jump feature to play an ending, on the XD9 you can select jump fill mode or jump intro mode. So now, if you select jump fill, every time you hit a fill, you will automatically advance up through the variations, but if you hit ending, you will have an ending. This is a big improvment!
Also in the arranger mode you now have lower 1 hold and lower 2 hold functions and a really good one called OFF STOP which allows you to start an intro which might use a lower sound and mutes it while you play an intro which does not want to hear the lower sound play. In the X1 and SD1 this was accomplished by selecting a function called off on stop, but now you can leave the lower mode on normal all the time instead of off on stop. There is also a Lower Mute function which quickly mutes the left sound if not desired.
A great new feature is the Drum Remix mode. Remix allows you to stop playing the drum track from a standard midi file and substitute any style in the keyboard or a user pattern. When doing this, you can use the intro, endings, fills and variations to have fun with playback in real time. One of the coolest features is that by toggling between style and song using the Drum Remix button, you can not only choose which style you want to substitute the drums with, but you can select the style that you will be playing as soon as you stop the midifile. By doing this, you can now be prepared to start playing using the arranger mode and not have to go looking for the style you need when the song is finished.
The morphing feature is new and allows you to choose between any two sounds using the modulation wheel having one sound at the top of the wheel and the other at the buttom, with any mix between. There are morphing sounds already in the keyboard and you can program any you might like. This is done in the edit program mode.
Another new feature is in the pattern edit mode there is a function called Pattern Remap which allows you to change the order all your patterns might have been loading into memory into any other order you might rather have them be. A very handy feature.
I love that when you load patterns, because you now have preset catagories to find your styles, you now have catagory icons to see and choose the patterns you have loaded in. In the X1, you had to hit pattern edit, select list, see the patterns where you put them, then exit this and select the number. Now, it is so easy to see them and select them right from the screen. Speaking of the screen, it is a little smaller, but AJ explained to me that this is a very reliable new screen development which shouldn't have any problems at all.
I could go on and on, but I would rather you ask me questions because I'm going to forget what I've typed!
I will be reviewing the Vega on the Oriental Forum later.
All I can say.........I'm very impressed.
By the way, the full XD9 owners manual is available on line from the Ketron website. Thank God I had it available tonight here at home so that I could review what AJ and I spoke about today. Again, my thanks to AJ. He really was my hero today.
Supply of these keyboards is very small on the first shippment to the US. I've been told that there will be XD3 modules on the next shippment from Italy, but I don't think there will be enough product for a while to keep up with the demand.

George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566

Thanks to George for your review, i'm very interested at the new features (in particular the morphing of two sounds with the modulation wheel): anyone know if Ketron will implement this features on SD1 with successive upgrade?

Bye

Someone said it has aftertouch but the technical information on Ketrons homepage doesn't say anything about that.
Does it have aftertouch?

The keyboard does not have aftertouch. It is not implemented however the keyboard does feel like an aftertouch keyboard. I remarked to AJ if it did because it has that same feel that when you push the key all the way down and then push a little harder, you feel that little extra bit when it goes down a little more and provides aftertouch. Maybe they will be able to implement this later. Although I don't know if software will do it because I'm not sure if the hardware is there! I only know it feels like it!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

The access to playing midi files and searching is that of the X1 from what I've seen so far. There is still the juke box mode which is where you search for the next song while playing the current song. If you are asking me if you can search for a song while playing the arranger, I am pretty sure it does that but I would have to check this out at my store today.
I have not installed the vocal harmonizer yet, but it is the same one as in the SD1 and X1.
The internal speakers sound great and there is a feature where you can boost or cut the bass and select the frequency you wish to boost or cut. There are 22 watts per side and what they did differently on the XD9 was to not use any wood within the speaker box so this helps to reduce the weight of this keyboard.
I would also like to mention that besides the stereo outputs, there is also a microphone output which takes the mic output to a pa without the effects.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

Hi George,

thanks for the update.

Will the XD3 also come with the hard drive option?

Thanks

Eric

I think I can answer this one: YES. And with the vocalizer option too.

-- José.

Hi Jose

thanks for your answer

Eric

If you have an SD1 go to edit program....
Go to page 3/3
Use the F5 button until it says "morph"
Use the modulation wheel to morph between the sounds. If you start off with a program like "chrystalpad" (pad bank F1) you can really hear how beautiful the morphing feature works.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California