Hi Mike
Mediastation like Wersi OAS instruments use a standard computer inside, so the USB 2 sockets are identical to what you get on a computer. (Depending on the type of Motherboard there is normally between 4 and 6 sockets)
BTW Wersi changed to P4 boards in 2003 and AMD in 2006, so from 2003 on they have always had USB 2.
Hope this clears up the confusion

Bill

I honestly don't think it matters whether it has USB 1 or USB 2 unless the interface works at the full (or close to it!) speed potential of each protocol. AFAIK, the only function the PA800 has that even requires the improved speed of USB 2 would be sample loading (who would need 50MB of style data in a few seconds?), but as of yet, no-one has posted any real world sample load up times with a USB 2 HD.

As I have stated many times in the past, sampling in an arranger demands WAY more speed of loading than a regular workstation, simply because of the demands of going from ANY song to ANY song at the drop of a hat. If these styles use sampled sounds, the necessity that they load up close to instantaneously is imperative.

Imagine if your arranger took two minutes to load a style.... you probably would never use that style in a live setting...!

If my 10 year old (plus!) K2500 can load at 1MB/sec, if you read USB 1's specs, theoretically it should be able to get very close to the K2500's load times, yet there is not a single sampler out there that uses USB 1 that even approaches 1/10th of that speed. And just including USB 2 in the PA800 will not be of any significantly useful increase unless the sample RAM load times get exponentially faster, which so far no-one has indicated.

One of the main reasons that Mediastation and other computer/hardware arrangers are showing the way is the phenomenally faster sample load times, and even sample streaming (although the thought of a HD doing a read or write while it encased in a keyboard that you are pounding on at the same time gives me pause!) at contemporary computer speeds. If your arranger needs to go dead for AT LEAST a minute, to load up 64MB of samples (less than a 1/10th of the T2's total RAM capacity), and probably more like 3-4 mins, you just aren't going to use it much, and thus the 'feature' becomes more of a marketing hype tool than a practical, ARRANGER based function.

We need to place as much pressure as possible on arranger manufacturers to add a 21st century data transfer protocol to 21st century arrangers, otherwise they are just dangling a carrot in front of us that we will never reach......

I just took a look at the front and the back of the PA800 and I just realized they really did mess up on their wording. Right on the front, the USB jack that is clearly a "device" USB jack says "host(F)" and the USB jack in the rear says "host(R)". The other jack in the rear says "device" and as we all know, the square USB is the "Host" and the rectangle is the "device".
It seems pretty clear to me that someone in Italy got confused with the wording. If you look at a Yamaha PSR3000 or Tyros2 you see the same plugs marked correctly. Now I understand why their wording on their website and the ownersmanual is wrong. In fact, here's what it says in the owners manual:
"Host(F)
This is a USB Type A (Master/Host)connector, USB2.0 compliant (High Speed). It duplicates the USB connector located in the rear panel. Use it to connect to the PA800 a USB Flash Memory stick, an external CD-ROM drive, an USB hard disk. To acess the connected device, go to the Media edit mode."
So, they know what the connector is for, but the word for it should have said "Device(F)"


------------------
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

Diki,

Korg has actually tried their best to solve the problem you describe. When you load a sample from a flash drive or a hard disk a copy is saved in a hidden flash area inside the Pa800. The samples in this area are automatically loaded into sample ram when you turn on the keyboard (this function is called "PCM Autoload"). It takes a little longer to turn on the Pa800 when PCM Autload is activated depending on the amount of samples. I have not made excact measurements but it is around 10-20 seconds.

This means that there is absolutely no load time when using your own samples and sound programs. They work exactly as the factory sounds. And of course you can use the samples in your styles and these styles will also load without any delay.

The only downside is that you must be able to fit all your samples into 64 mb.

Kind regards,
Tommy

[This message has been edited by TommyF (edited 12-10-2006).]

Unfortunately, you don't get a lot of really good sounds out of 64MB - that's about how much you need just for a good piano. To use a sampler effectively (think sliced drum loops or a really decent sax or a hiphop drum kit) you are going to need to reload the memory pretty often - the factory ROM is pretty good in comparison to most REALLY memory-efficient sample sets (and most modern sample sets try more for realism than memory efficiency).

The T2's 512MB is what I'd call adequate if you couldn't reload too fast, but it still takes more than 30 minutes to load...... not very practical on tight gigs!

No...... what we REALLY need is 512MB or more of RAM..... PLUS genuine USB 2 load times. Then sampler use on arrangers will really take off.....

Yes, I do agree that 64 mb is somewhat limiting. I would love to have 512 mb or more. However 64 mb is better than nothing and this was a deciding factor for me when I had to choose between E80 and Pa800. The E80 has no sampler and very limited sound editing in comparison to the Korg which gives access to all the synth parameters - it is really a synth workstation with arranger functionality.

Kind regards,
Tommy

I sent an email off to Korg Italy yesterday regarding two things:
First, the time it takes to load a set from a jump drive via the 2.0 USB port and the wording they've choosen to use to label these USB ports.
I received two replys today from my good friend at Korg and here are his exact replys:

"The first time you load samples, data has to go
through several steps (USB to µprocessor, to DSP,
to data controller chips) and be processed.
Furthermore, samples are written at the same time
in RAM and in the internal Flash-RAM memory. This
demands for some computation-intensive time.

When you turn the Pa800 on next time, data are
already in the right format and at the right
place. In addition to this, loading from the
internal Flash-RAM to RAM is much faster than
loading from USB to RAM, since there are less
circuits and processes involved.

The above is true any time you load massive .SET data - not only samples.

However, we are working on improving the
first-time loading, so next OS versions might
show a shorter loading time (not sure of how much
at the moment).
"HOST ports, on the Pa800, are port where you connect Devices; they
work as Hosts (or Master, o A-type connectors), accepting Devices (or
Slaves, or B-type connectors).
- The DEVICE port, on the Pa800, is the one you use to connect Pa800
to a Host (computer); it acts as a Device (Slave, B-type) port, to
connect Hosts (Masters, A-type).

An alternative way of labelling them could have been TO HOST for the
current DEVICE, and TO DEVICE for the current HOST ports. In fact, at
the old times of serial ports, the port to connect a keyboard to a PC
was often labeled TO HOST.

Hope this makes it clear."



------------------
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com

But still no real timing data on exactly how long it takes to load 64MB from a HD into RAM. THAT is what you are normally going to do unless you arbitrarily restrict yourself to just loading the internal RAM at the beginning of the gig and leaving it at that......

So, George, will you fully load the PA800's RAM from a USB 2 HD, NOT from the pre-stored FLASH-RAM, and post how long it takes for us here (I AM interested in one of these if the load-up times are fast enough)....

Hi,



hey George, I think there is a misunderstanding regarding USB ports (strange this happened after years of USB connections around):

- USB type A connectors (rectangular) are "Host" or "To Device",
- USB type B connectors (square) are "Device" or "To Host".

Name them as you want, but there is nothing wrong in the Pa800 silkscreen, no question.

Yamaha has decided to name them one way, Korg in another one, but they are definitely, and fortunately, both right.

Hope this help.

Regards.

Yes George, me too interested that how much time it takes a 64mb sample to load into the ram.

By the way, congrats that people on SZ have stared talking on samplers.Day by day pa800
is luring me to buy it.