Ahmed,
may be the project that your friends are working on is like a new expantion board for Roland.

who knows may be It's the new SR-JV80-20

P.S clif did you get my email?

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vic

I’ve had my x1 for few months now, I originally thought that the oriental version is different from the regular x1 but I found out that it’s exactly the same but with couple of minor differences:
- First one is an updated OS witch’s 3.2a that any body can download and install on his own.
- Secondly the guy that programmed the oriental styles and drum kits witch’s eddy kanaan some how modified and made a new plate that holds the pitch and modulation wheels to allow the wheels to go left and right instead of up and down because musicians in the Arabic countries hate the 2 wheels and favor the xy joy stick the reason why korg and Roland products are famous there and not the kurzweil for example.
- Third is the quarter note box that could be purchased for about $60, it has 13 switches on it 12 for the complete scale and one for cancel, by the way it could be used exactly like the 13 switch pedal board.
- Finally the oriental program witch includes a few Arabic sounds that in my opinion are poorly sampled where you can hear the sample loop points but what is really amazingly good are the drum samples and the styles that in my opinion are the best I’ve ever heard.
- Conclusion: the oriental x1 is a regular x1 but if you buy it over seas and more particularly in Lebanon or Dubai the oriental kit will be loaded internally inside the 8 mbsims, but if you buy it here in the us you will need to purchase the oriental kit witch’s a 8 mb flash rom card that has the samples on it plus a set of floppies that has the styles and programs, I personally was able to get a hold of a set of disks that allowed me to load the program internally without the need of a flash rom card, also being a very handy person I was able to replace my modulation and pitch bender wheels with a xy joy stick the one used by Roland EM2000,if any body would be interested here’s a picture at this address: ftp://members.aol.com/eddydy/x1.jpg where you can take a glimpse at my x1 ,sorry if the picture is a little dark.
- By the way any upgrade to the oriental kit will not include any Chinese nor Japanese or any thing beside basically Arabic.
Thanks
Eddy

The Ketron X1 oriental in my opinion and the opinion of all the musicians that I know is the best keyboard for oriental music. the real time functions are very easy to access and the oriental styles are the best styles ever made. The person behind all that is eddy kanaan and a group of very talented persons working with him. I bought the x1 from his shop and they gave me the oriental scale box for free.

My friend Tarek told me some new infos regarding the new oriental program but I am not sure if they are all correct. A guy that works with eddy told Tarek these infos, he said that the new project will have more than fifty oriental styles and the new styles are far better than the acutal ones. There will be new drum sets and a new tabla sound made from about thirty samples (WAW). Also there will be new improved oriental instruments like oud, kanon, nai etc... and the program will be using the whole 16 megabytes sim of the x1.

Thanks Vic, I received the files and uploaded them to the MIDI-Style-Atlas files section, credited to you. Clif

Hello Ahmad
I have the impression that you probably misunderstood me, the x1 is the greatest oriental arranger out there now but not the best synthesizer and that's mainly due to the fact that there is someone out there who is a good programmer but I also believe after reading the reviews and specifications of the new korg pa80 it’s going to beat the x1 by far it will only require someone who is a good style programmer.
I wonder if you got your keyboard in Lebanon why they gave you the flash card, I met couple of friends that bought it from eddy kenaan and the sounds were being loaded internally they didn't need the card, I personally as I stated before don't need the card because I got every thing to load inside the internal 8 mb Sims, in the other hand you mentioned that they're working on a new program that will need 16 mb, I’m assuming that they will need to use all the memory in the x1 what will prevent us from using the sampler because as you probably know 8 mb of the 16 mb memory is dedicated to the sampler, in that case a lot of people would be disappointed and I’m one of them since I rely a lot on my own sampled sounds, so far I sampled about 15 different excellent sounds
To answer naziz's question regarding the quality of the box, it’s a very basic and simple box that will do a perfect job it looks nothing like the GEM SW1 it's so simple I could make one by my self.
Thanks
Eddy

Hi eddy, I have read the specs of the pa80 and I see no way for it to beat the x1 for several reasons:

1. the pa80 doesn't have a sampler so you won't be able to put your favorite samples in it.

2. the pa80 doesn't have the oriental easy access functions that the x1 have.

3. the pa80 will have only fixed oriental drumset and you can't add on it other ones while on the x1 you can always change your oriental sounds and drumsets because it can read sound banks, for instance if you get board from the oriental program you have you can have the new oriental program loaded with
new sounds and drumsets.

4.The pa80 have only 48 user styles while the x1 have 200 user styles and you can uppgrade the memory pattern (very util for oriental music).

5.For the scale tuning on the pa80 you do it by a quarter tone pedal function same as the i30 which is very complicated for live performance while on the x1 you have a 13 button box where you can access the oriental scales directly and you have the 13 arabic sets where you can store 13 oreintal scale and access them in live performance directly by one button push.

Regarding the new oriental program, I am not sure about anything I am only reporting some rumors from people, but as far as I know you can always have the old oriental program in your hard disk plus the new one and if you find the new oriental program is worth to load and loose you samples you do it otherwise you can load your old oriental program.

I have the flash card because I don't need to load the sounds everytime I turn on the keyboard.

It sounds like the X1 is better than the PA80 for "Oriental" sounds. However, I think you might be underestimating the PA80. While the PA-80 does not sample, this is not necessary to expand the available waveforms. All you need is sample playback abiity. The PA80 apparently can store and playback samples from its PC-Card slot without loading. The PC-Card might also be able to store additional styles; in any event, styles can be played directly from a hard disk without loading. Finally, even the factory samples can be replaced (from what I understand of the manual), to make room for 200 custom styles.

Again, I am not sure of these things because I have not tried them. However, this is what I understand from the manual.

Clif

I don't underestimate the pa80 at all but for oriental music the pa80 can't beat the x1 for the simple reason that ketron has written a special oriental operating system for the x1 in which it has put all the functions we where dreaming of (arabic musicians).


The ketron x1 is very simple to operate in live performance and at the same time very powerful. For me I don't buy a high end arranger keyboard if it isn't user friendly and easy to operate. I have checked the va-7, I liked the sounds (not the oriental one of course) but it was very difficult to operate in live performance compared to the x1. Gem keyboards WK oriental series are easy to access in LV(live performance) but its sounds and styles are poor compared to the x1. In the past I was a Gem user but when the x1 came out everything has changed.

Any of you that are making judgements by
"only reading" the manuals are crazy. No one can fully appreciate the value of an instrument until you touch it and play with it. The X1 was not an easy sell for alot of people - only after digging into it can you get the most from it. Let's stop evaluating new products until you actually have some hands on time with the unit. Speculation is just idle gossip, and the manuals are often terrible - not a good way to judge ANYTHING.
C'mon, let's use some common sense when giving advice about these products.Back up your opinions with FACTS, please.

Uncle Dave

I do not know why you are so disrespectful of people who approach synthesizers (and the rest of life) differently than you do. There is a lot of information that you cannot get by demoing a product, that you can get from a manual. For example, you (UD)are not going to know whether a product supports polyphonic aftertouch unless you read the manual.

I look forward to your hand-on reviews of products, but I do not consider them definitive any more than I consider a manual definitive. I try to get information from diverse sources, as many other people do. It seems to me you want information to come from just one source or only from sources very similar to yourself. Maybe you will get what you want, but I think that would be a loss for those that are interested in a range of perspectives.

Clif