Guys I came across some interesting theories on korgforums.com about the wave rom size of these arrangers. I hope u enjoy reading it as much as i did.
Naturally its all speculation but interesting nonetheless

POST 1
This really has nothing to do with making music and may be of little interest to most of the members on this forum

I have wondered how big the sound ROM is on the Pa800. It is not something that Korg normally publishes for its arranger keyboards. There can be numerous reasons for this - one of them probably that the sound ROM size does not say that much about the sound quality. Things like sample interpolation and loop crossfading also has a big influence on how much ROM is needed to get a good sound.

The size of the sound ROM can actually be deduced from the cdrom that comes with the Pa800. It contains two different versions of the OS - one with and one without the sound ROM:

Pa800_os_res_v100.pkg - size 126 mb
Pa800_os_v100.pkg - size 5 mb

The difference between these two is the size of the sound ROM, i.e. around 120 mb. However we also need to take into account that the big sound manufactureres - Korg, Roland, and Yamaha - often compress the sound data. Not all synth engines use compression - the Korg Triton is a notatable example - but I think it is fair to assume the sound data in the Pa800 is compressed because:

1) The sound engine on the Pa800 is based on the same sound engine as the new Korg M3 workstation and the M3 uses compression as can be read from the specifications: "256 Mbyte (when converted to 16-bit linear format)".

2) I have tried to load the Pa800_os_res_v100.pkg file into an audio editor (Wavelab) as raw 16-bit data. A few samples could be heard - mostly drum sounds that probably have been left uncompressed becuase they compress poorly - but most of it was high pitched sounds with a lot of random noise. This I take as an indication that the samples are compressed.

The compression method usually used in synths is "lossless compression" which means that the actual sound is not changed by the compression/decompression. The algorihtms used are secrets of the various synth manufactureres and the compression ratio varies a lot depending on the actual sound, but on average you can expect a 2:1 compression ratio. With 120 mb sound ROM we should expect around 240 mb uncompressed samples. This compares well with the current high end arrangers:

Yamaha Tyros 2: 300 mb*
Roland G70: 192 mb*
Roland E80: 256 mb*
Korg Pa800: 240 mb

*These numbers are from various sources on the internet - mostly promotional material from third parties. The official specifications never talk about the sound ROM size. All numbers are the uncompressed sound ROM size, i.e. "when converted to 16-bit linear format".

Let me reiterate that this is pure specualtion from my side - and I may have got it all wrong. If anyone can contribute with some real facts I would appreciate it very much

POST 2
Korg does not release that information anymore. They say "Listen and Believe". I personally don't care if the ROM size is 1MB as long as the samples sound amazing, which for my taste they do.


POST 3
Agreed, but some people will think that Korg has something to hide when they don't publish the ROM size - and this is clearly not the case if my "analysis" is correct. Also note that Korg has always published the ROM size of their workstations - by example the new M3 has 256 mb.

A reason why Korg has chosen not to publish the ROM size might be that the Pa800 probably has a lot bigger sound ROM than the Pa1X Pro which is still Korgs top-of-the-line arranger keyboard - at least in their marketing department


What is the wave rom size in PA800,I want reliable information please!


According to my manual:


Internal SSD Flash memory 256 MB for O.S, PCM and all Resources (20 MB reserved to the SSD-User area)

POST 4
That would leave about 236MB for the OS, PCM and resources. Then without the OS and such, there should be 220-230 MB for wave rom. But then again, this is just my own calculations.

The v1.01 OS file is aprox 5 MB and the v1.01 Resource BKP file is aprox 7.6 MB.

The complete Pa800 v1.0 "restore everything to basic settings" file is aprox 130 MB.

Hope this gives something good atleast

POST 5
Quote:
That would leave about 236MB for the OS, PCM and resources.


Yes and no. Don’t forget that most manufactures also use 2:1 compression on the PCM.

For example on the M3 KORG say…

Quote:
256 Mbyte (when converted to 16-bit linear format)


In other words they are more than likely using a 128Mb Chip with 2:1 compression. So it’s quite possible that the amount of PCM is way bigger than you think, or smaller

POST 6
The 256 mb SSD is allocated the following way:

SSD user area: 20 mb
Factory PCM data: 120 mb
User PCM data: 64 mb
Musical Resources: 52 mb

As Sharp points out the PCM data is probably compressed since the Pa800 uses the same sound engine as the M3. If Korg still uses the same 2:1 compression as on the Trinity this leaves us with 240 mb factory PCM data which compares very favorably with the current generation of synth workstations and arrangers.

Very interesting.
thanks for sharing.
Bebop

But, as you state, the AMOUNT of wave ROM has very little to do with the quality of sounds in them. It's kind of like looking at cars and judging them SOLELY on weight, never-mind how big the engine is......

What we REALLY need to do, rather than worry too much about ROM size, is really start to put the pressure on the arranger manufacturers to improve sample RAM load times. If that could be brought down to a few seconds, rather than a few minutes, many more would actually use the feature, and an arranger's internal ROM would be a moot point.

One thing that used to concern people a lot more 10 or 15 years ago was the 'latency' of a keyboard, especially when firing multiple stacked voices. Nobody talks about it much any more, except VSTi users, but there are STILL many keyboards out there that you can't stack two or three stereo patches together (especially when they are all spikey, percussive type sounds like clavs and mallets), play 4 or 5 note chords and not hear a fair bit of zippering, or flam-ing.

Try it with your arranger - stack as many tones together as your arranger will allow, and try to play repeated chords as fast as you can. Does it still sound tight, or do you hear a little 'smear'? You would be surprised, and yet this is something no-one talks about, manufacturers NEVER tout it as a plus, yet it affects how well the keyboard responds to your playing, something that we should care about the MOST!