Diki,
Korg PA2/PA800 has exactly what you said... touch screen function for the sliders AND physical sliders... so you use what you want.
The sliders on the ouch screen work fine and are big enough to use.

However the physical sliders work in JUMP mode (for individual tracks). I have made an official request (others too) to change that to work in PICKUP mode. I beleive it will be done in a future OS update.

Lee

Pickup mode is OK, a bit better for you to avoid jumps, but it still has a significant problem. You have to look carefully at the screen display to see whether you need to move the fader up or down from it's physical position to get to the null point, so you are concentrating on at least double the the places for a simple fader move, when you are trying to play at the same time!

And yes, motorized faders are EXTREMELY prone to failure. It's not even a cost issue. The best flying faders in the world (on SSL and other six figure mixing boards) still have regular maintenance issues, and it only gets worse as it gets less expensive.

Do you REALLY want to make your arranger's operational ability hinge on the most delicate piece of gear, when a fully functional alternative (maybe not as tactile, but equally functional) already exists? Players are rough on their controls. It is next to impossible to dial back your touch from pounding the keyboard to being soft and delicate as you make a fader move in the heat of performance. Motorized faders on keyboards need to be BETTER than mixer ones (that don't get slammed around like ours do!), not cheaper (which is all we will be willing to pay for - ever looked at the price of a top flight fader pack? ).

We have gotten used to using touch screens for all kinds of functions that USED to be on nice tactile buttons. I think that we could get used to doing fader moves on a screen with practice. It is the only 'practical' solution to the problem, if you ask me....

I too had a Yamaha electone with motorized sliders. It was a model FS-70 which was the top of the FS series range (one down from the FX series).

These sliders were notoriously unreliable. Conventional wisdom at the time said that the main cause was usually lack of use over the full travel causing them to stick. Knowing of this, I programmed a pair of panel presets - one with all the sliders fully down, the other with them all the way up. When I switched the instrument on for a session, I would then 'excercise' the sliders a few times, by alternating between these two presets. However my FS70 had a complete fader set replaced under warranty twice, as they still gave problems despite this precaution.

Possible cost effective solutions could be:

1: the later Yamaha HX & HS system, where the traditional sliders were replaced by a vertical strip of closely spaced buttons.

These were shaped so you could either run your finger up the strip, simulating a moving fader, or could punch a setting straight in at any point on the strip. The button strip was flanked by a ladder of LEDs which indicated current setting, so you always had a visual indication available. This system worked well and was very reliable. The tactile feel of the button row was a bit akin to running your finger over a small roller bearing track.

Downside was that there were only so many buttons in each fader strip, each one representing a small step in volume (you could also do in-between settings). This was a bit like the idea of the stepped drawbar settings on a Hammond, rather than the continuous nature of an analogue fader, but the gradations were fine enough to be practical. In a modern instrument, this concept could be supplemented with a 'fine-tune' feature via software, using the data wheel for very precise in-between increments. Whilst such a fine-tune refinement would not be any use for on-the-fly tweaks, it would be OK when dialing up final refinements for preset patches.

2 - second possible solution would be to use bog standard analogue sliders as at present, but deploy them in pick-up mode with an LED ladder close alongside each one to indicate current position.

Advantages of this include:
- low cost off-the-shelf hardware
- accurate fader adjustment is easy
- good visual clue as to current position
- pick-up mode gives reasonably seamless
operation with no nasty jumps
.... can't think of too many disadvantages



[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 05-29-2008).]