Hi all. I really had a love/hate relationship going with this board last night.

The instrument sounds are great and some songs really kicked ass because of it, but I've got lots of glitches too. *sigh*. I knew it wouldn't be easy. :-)

Most important question. The vocalizer is my biggest enemy. First of all, it seems to be doing something my old one did as well unless you changed a function on it which I did long ago. It seems to guess what octave to sing the accompanying harmony notes. This I definitely don't want. It was all over the place. I didn't think this was an issue since most of the songs I was doing were midi files, and I had it set to midi mode in the vocalizer. How do I disable this function so that it ONLY goes where the midi track says. I don't want it doing it when I'm using the third above voice either for that matter.

One thing about it though, I find it very difficult to use properly. First of all the whole keyboard has a much louder hiss than the Korg did, and when using the vocalizer in any way it's even worse. Also my voice was not consistent and sound when the vocalizer was turned on and off or switched around to other configurations. One big aggravation was when trying to change from midi mode to 3th up, or what have you, even though it was off during this, it still "came on" at times while I was running though the different (and completely unnecessary in my opinion) Modes like keyboard harmony, fixed interval, etc. The falsetto vocal effect ALWAYS came on so this isn't very good when I'm in the middle of singing a song and trying to locate the proper harmony mode.

Also I don't understand why it has to be shifted in pitch in some cases. Some songs I have globally dropped 2 keys as an example, and I would have to go to the vocalizer track and shift it -2 for the voices to match. Weird.

But other times it wouldn't work at ALL. I went crazy trying to find the right one for "drift away". The song is in C originally, and I globally transposed it to Bb. So I'm playing in C on the board and trying to use one of the full harmonies. I don't have a vocalizer midi track on that song. so anyway, That didn't work at all. I thought it followed the chords I was hitting? Does it not automatically transpose? If not, then the function is useless if you aren't actually playing in the original key.

Ok, other weird glitch. When I add the second voice (strings) to my piano for a layered sound, the strings kept going off on some chords. I was doing two songs one was transposed up two, and the other down one. No backing tracks you understand, just freehand piano and the second voice added. I noticed almost specifically on the dm I was hitting, that it always went off. The piano played right, but the strings shifted a couple semitones away from what I was hitting. Needless to say this didn't impress me very much or the people that were looking at me like I had three heads.

There were other things too, but they must be midi file related and they are rather vague. I noticed the bass line of a lot of my midi files seems to vanish in parts for no reason. Friends in low places, almost every time it came back to the chorus the first chord (A) would miss the bass. I know it's there, it plays it fine on my Korg. It does seem like sometimes what I hit on the piano affects playback from the midi file as well, because I've had some blips and funky things happen when I've played along with songs and especially when a dynamic part happens. Instruments seem to either not play, or fade a bit, etc. Now I know this machine has double the polyphony my old Korg did, so this can't be the reason. These are the things that concern my because they are vague, and therefore possibly unfixable.

Anyhow I'm sure there's more, but this could go on forever. hehe. All in all I love the sound, but I really think it does pale in comparison to the user friendliness and also consistency of sound and performance I have been used to with the Korg. And that HISS. Can't understand why it has that as a new keyboard. Would have thought that kind of thing would improve as we get newer. Oh well. If anyone has answers to some of the problems I'd appreciate hearing them.

Thanks all.

Congratulations on your first gig!
The first equal problem we have is the one with transposing the control of the vocalizer from the keyboard while the midi file is playing. Although the keyboard follows the global transponse, the vocalizer sings in the original key. We have to ask Ketron to fix that.
The second thing, when you have to shift the vocal midi track to fix the pitch, is kind of weird, but it then works correctly.
As for the other problems with controlling the vocalizer from the midi track I could only suggest, that you check the controllers in the file that could cause the vocalizer to act when it shouldn't. It works fine on my SD1.
Luka

Thanks Luka. I've figured out some of the vocalizer problems by trial and error. But I still dislike the way it's set up. I find it very complicated.

Question though. If I have no track set as vocalizer and I am playing with the keyboard transpose, not the song, will it only give me harmony in the actual chords I'm hitting as opposed to the key it's transposed to?

Also what about this weird second voice screw up thing? It sounds like it's an internal fault. reiterate: Playing a piano solo and add the second voice. On some chords the second voice (strings in the cases I've used it), will not play the same notes. It's as if on that chord the strings changed transposition.

Would the new OS that's coming out erase problems like this or is this something I would have to get serviced?

Kendall ,

I just forwarded this email to Italy . I am sure someone will respond . Take Care .

Dan