A bigger question: once you select the instrument bank, it appears that to make the individual tone selection you MUST USE THE TOUCHSCREEN. This is BAAAAD. I think most of us live players will see this as a non-starter.

However, for live playing one might set up performance memories. Hence, I am curious to find out from the present PA 80/60 users how they select performances. Do you have to select the bank (upper/lower, similarly to the way you have to select tones from upper or lower setting with the EXB button). I am also assuming anything presetly requiring a push of a button around the screen will force you to use the touchscreen on the PA1X.

I don't mean to put down PA1x before it is even released, but IMHO, Korg's I30 was a great instrument from the point of view of user friendliness. The PA-series is a giant step back, and simply adding sliders and replacing the buttons with the touchscreen does not bring it close to the i30.

Having said that, I think if I was forced to have a PA-series Korg, I would probably rely on the Single Touch setting buttons under the screen to select voices for styles. I wish Korg had not made these buttons look so cheesy (custom shape, all blending together).

Any guesses as to what the PAD group does? Could it be they are going to be similar to the multi-pads on the Yamaha and Technics? If not, why the STOP button?

What about the assignable switches? are there similar buttons on the PA-80/60?

Now we know where Terry "trtjazz" is spending the vast majority of his online time at.

Frankie, if the Pa1X/Pro has a lightening fast Touch Screen, that will 'help' in making it easier for Live Play but it won't solve ALL of the problem. Button pushing is still the cats meow for accessing Styles, Registrations, Voices, etc., for the "vast" majority of Arranger Keyboard players IMO. And if those Voices, Styles, Registrations, and what not are buried beneath layers of button pushing whether it be on the Board itself or within the TS, you can bet most Gigging Musicians will pass on the Pa1X/Pro in favor of a more user friendly, optimally configured Keyboard that has simplistic and effective feature accessibility for Live Playing. Unless there are some of those Gigging Musicians that don't mind the hassle and inconvenience of a difficult to use OS, etc. But they are probably few and far between. I know I wouldn't want or buy a Board that is User "UN"-friendly 'especially' for Live Playing purposes.

A home hobbyist will most likely not care as much although even in the Studio you want to have a User Friendly, easy to access OS and functions so as to have a hassle free (as much as possible) playing and recording experience.

One of the bigger cons of Pa series keyboard is styles / performances / program selection.

You have to press:
one button to choose operating mode (styles, programs, performances)
one button to select upper or lower banks group
one button to select the group
Pa60/80 shows its resources bank in groups of eight items, so you have to press another button once if your choice is from #9 to #16, twice if it is from #17 to #24 and so on.. Is Pa1X different in this?
one last button (or the touch screen) to finally select your choice.

Moreover, all ten style bank buttons and all ten programs/performances bank button have no light on them, and after a couple of screen changes for editing or whatever, you will soon forget your original selection.

I haven't played with a Pa1X, so things can be changed, and maybe Pa1X display will keep track of this "path of choices"...

Anyway, more buttons is (very often) better.

Another consideration about live usage.
Of course, you cannot completely foresee how your live show will go and where will it take you, because of people reactions, your mood etc etc.
So it is almost impossible to have everything you need or may need inside your board.

So, what KORG, YAMAHA etc etc should do, is give us a piece of software able to:
1) virtually configure your keyboard on the computer
2) download those configurations to the board, so that you can have a completely different instrument with a couple of mouse clicks.

Don't know how things are with Pa1X. As long as I know (please, Korg, correct me!) KORG choosed not to implement SYSEX in Pa60 and Pa80, so that software is a very complicated task.

Ciao

[This message has been edited by RicFreak (edited 08-05-2003).]

That is an excellent idea Riccardo! To have the ability to "Pre" configure your Keyboard before a performance (beyond what mere Registrations can do) would be a godsend from any of the Arranger Manufacturers IMO. It could be accomplished with a PC or MAC, the necessary Editing Software and transfered through either Midi In/Outputs or USB connection.

Now to get the Manufacturers to implement it is another story.

Best regards,
MIke

Mike, don't want to self promote myself, but I have developed an application for Pa60 and Pa80 able to store styles in a database, so that you can build banks picking the style you choose, write them to floppy disk and load them inside your board.

The application is called PRM and is freely available at www.irishacts.com

Moreover, I am developing a better version, able to manage styles, performances and programs. Without boring you with all the details, the final result is that you can "build" the Pa configuration inside your PC, save the configuration to the database and write it to floppy disks (or directly to hard disk if you have the USB interface).

I still have some problem to fix, so I don't know when (and if) I will publish this "new" version.

But, because of KORG proprietary compressed format, this software will never be able to edit resources (I can change a style name, but I cannot add midi events, nor change volume setting or whatever). This is the reason of the wishes in my previous message.

This reminds me of the Ecko keyboard announced at winter NAMM. What happened to all the hype surround this board? Is it shipping? Did anyone get one?

hmmmmm, very curious.

Al

The last I checked on their website (www.openlabs.com), their online "store" was down. For the last couple of months the page says they will be back on line in a few days. There did not seem to be any announcements from them at the Summer NAMM, and none of the people who visited there had mentioned seeing them.

I wonder if any of the people who went to Nashville NAMM had seen them there. Dan? anybody?

I hope that OpenLabs has not gone down the tube, While I doubt that I could afford buying one of their instruments (based on my recollections of prices in their store when it did work, back in April or so). However, their product could go long ways in keeping the mainstream manufacturers, e.g. Yamahas, Korgs and Rolands (and others) honest.

Regards

Is it me , or does it seem there insn't much excitement about the new Korg arranger...unlike when the Tyros was unvieled? The whole all around Arranger KB atmospher seems very subdued ....Hmmmmmm?

troublemaker...

Donny,

I agree with your observation. Here is my take on this:

When Tyros was unveiled, it looked like a new instrument, which had gotten most things right. While some people, including myself, were complaining about the fact that some of the features of the 9000Pro were not in the Tyros, it appeared (at least from the printed specs) that Yamaha had addressed all of the basic requirements of the players (user-friendliness, number of sounds, styles, polyphony, etc.) Yamaha had been very consistnt in their product line before that (PSR 7000, 8000, 9000 all worked rather similarly, and rather well). We could see from the specs that Tyros was an improvement on a good thing, which accounts for all the welcome buzz.

Korg's PA1X, on the other hand, is same old same old. Korg has a pretty poor history in arranger keyboard design. They abandoned a good design of i30 and went to a dismally bad design of PA80. I, and surely many others, were expecting the revival of the i30 user interface with the better features of the PA series, such as sounds and styles, plus the new sound engine to handle more polyphony, in keeping with the leading edge of today's technology. Instead we are seeing the combination of bad interface of the PA80 with the touch screen (much decried for live use), along with the antiquated sound engine which is short on polyphony. Its sample RAM is only expandable to 32MB - my three-year old PDA has more memory than that. While I don't use sampling, this is another example of Korg intentionally handicapping the arranger keyboard.

In other words, we are expressing our disappointment with Korg. The specs of the PA1X may be adequate for a mid-range instrument, like PA80, but not for the "flagship", retailing for over $3000.

Regards,
Alex