Nick, you need to ask me first if I HAVEN'T played one before you jump to that conclusion (mind you, you are not alone!)...

Yes, I've played a PA1Xpro, heard it there occasionally, and users of PA2Xpro's have remarked than nothing has changed. Good enough for you? (probably not )

But, rather than pile on MY back, why not interrogate those owners like leeboy who actually OWN one and report the problem, or AJ, who used one to make the examples? Perhaps it would just be harder to play the same game with someone that owns one?

Look, we all miss a lot of things while we are playing. Sometimes just concentrating hard enough to get the chords and melody correct takes a large part of our thoughts. Why not record yourself play, and see if you can hear the glitches afterwards..? To be honest, trying to dismiss AJ's examples as a corrupt OS strikes me as desperation, or at least fishing furiously for ANYTHING to deny the proven...

Please, guys, why not stick to beating up on fellow owners that hear the problem as well as I can... At least you have less assumptions to get wrong...

And yes, Tommy, I still believe you are on the right track...

I still personally think that the issue is FAR more a style programming and lack of fills issue than anything in the OS. Simply the fact that it is not noticed on many styles on the newer Korg's points to Korg making more of an effort to ensure their style makers don't try to make the fills so different from the variations, but the lack of fills (although there are three, the vast majority of styles use one as a break/fill, so you really only have two) is the primary culprit...

There is just NO WAY you can get two fills to be smooth on four Variations, especially as varied as Korg often make the variations. I've already said that I think that, were Roland or Yamaha to still only have two on their current line-up, you would have the same problems (and can hear it on translated styles from Korg).

But Roland have seven, Yamaha six (real fills, that is). You REALLY need twelve for there to be a one to one on possible routes, but six or seven mitigates the problem to the point of unnoticeability (for the most part). This, I feel, is all Korg need to do to fix the problem. As long as the BEGINNING of a fill matches fairly closely the variation it comes from, you don't hear 'jumps' or 'glitches'. But when it struggles in this area, you can't help but notice it.

Nick G, Tommy F,
I sure don't understnd why you don't hear it. Did you use the same styles AJ used? Has anyone gone into the style and changed any of the CUE MODE's for fill 1 or 2? If they are set for immediate, then they are factory stock.

One more thing to try...just play variation A (not that it matters much) an just hit fill 1 or 2 AT RANDOM...Do you hear the sudden sound that does not fit? Just try any of these...Latin Bolero, PophitBallad, Real16Beat, Standard8Beat.

Lee

Leeboy ... I think this is part of why some hear this problem and some, like myself do not. I do not hit the fill "Randomly"!!!
Maybe it's just me but I (use the EC5) hit the fill, most times, at the top of the bar (on the 1st beat) sometimes on the last beat. (4/4 of course)I certainly do not think of myself has having "Exceptional" timing but I never have a problem with this on the Pa2x. Previous Korg arrangers I have had, in particular, the first PA1x ... yes this was a major pain in the A--!!!

the other day, my wife and i were watching a movie on tv. after a while, due to the bad digital sync between video and audio, the voice of the characters was coming in with a lag. i said "look, it's going unsync" and my wife's reply was "what do you mean? i see nothing wrong"
it took another 15 minutes, while the unsync lag was increasing, until she finally noticed what i meant.

could be that for some of us, these little glitches (because they are just small unsyncs, few miliseconds of delays in timing, little bit too abrupt coming-in) are just passing unnoticed?

to me, i KNOW i had this problem (the relative volume of fills is indeed another issue, a different one) with smoothness of fills with my PA50. i noticed it when trying PA800 and PA2X. i notice it whenever, where ever occurs.

but maybe to some of us, again, it just passes unnoticed, somehow.

if that's the case, i can understand very well why there are some very defensive aproaches here. and that only increses the efforts from the other side to prove the obvious.

i think korg could solve this simply by fixing it! hehe

Another thing to consider is that the Pa800 and Pa2X often has different versions of the same style. The Pa2X came out a year after the Pa800 and a lot of improvements/changes have been made to the styles, by example the Pa2X has many more styles using guitar mode. When I listen to AJ's Pa2X recordings of Standard 8 Beat and Real 16 Beat they do sound slightly different than what I hear on my Pa800. This could be the reason why I have difficulty reproducing the problem on my Pa800 - or maybe Adimatis is right: My rythmic sense could be less developed than others here on the forum (however, I do hear the glitches very clearly when comparing the good and bad recordings by AJ).

Right now the best solution might be to wait for OS 2.0. It should be right around the corner (this week?) and according to Korg like "a whole new keyboard".

Kind regards,
Tommy

Basically, if you hit on the 'one' (but NEVER fractionally late) or on the 'four' (or later) on a Korg, you don't actually get any glitches, because you are doing the ONE thing that the Korg wants to see...

On the 'four' it waits till the 'one' to bring in the fill, and as long as you don't hit the 'one' late, that triggers the fill with no overlap with the previous bar (which is what everyone is hearing).

But many use fills either less precisely, or more often, partially. In other words, fills can be used for MUCH more than simply triggering the entire fill. Hit the fill on the 'two' or the 'three', or even the 'four' (but not late into it) and you get what is called a 'pickup' rather than a fill, a 'lift' in feel without the drama of an entire bar's fill.

This is a VERY common drummer technique.

Now, I know some of the Korg fans are going to chime in here about the Korg's extra long variations, that have pickups at four bar boundaries, and this is all well and good. BUT... some songs don't have regular 8 bar repeated sections, and sometimes you need a pickup on other bars.

THIS is what the Korg has a problem with, depending on the style. You simply can't do your own pickups without things getting unpredictable.

Bend what YOU want to do to what the Korg will let you, and all is fine, but personally, I'd rather the arranger do what I want than the other way around...

Here is what Rob Sherratt has just posted over at Korg forums. Rob is probably the man with the most knowledge about Korg arrangers - and he is the man behind the great Korg instructional dvds:

*** CITATION BEGIN ***

Hello Lee and Rikki,

Here is a theory:

a) The style trigger problem is not evident at all on the Pa1x.

b) The problem is only evident on the Pa800/ Pa2x with styles that use guitar mode for one or more of the tracks. The problem was introduced at the time the first guitar mode styles were launched.

c) The problem is caused because the "guitar mode" control signals are not parsed correctly by the style play software "back in time" by software when you trigger the fill or variation change.

Let me know if your testing of different styles supports this theory?

Though God knows why we are doing the test and diagnosis of Korg software bugs for them. They should just acknowledge the problem report, give it a trouble ticket number, and say it will be attended to in the next software release.

Best regards,
Rob

*** CITATION END ***

This could be good news since it should be possible for Korg to fix the guitar mode algorithms relatively easily - maybe they have done it already in OS 2.0?

This can also explain why it is so difficult to reproduce the problem on the Pa800 since the Pa800 has very few guitar mode styles. Of the four styles AJ used only "Real 16 Beat" uses guitar mode on the Pa800.

Kind regards,
Tommy

look, there might be more problems with korg styles than we realize. rob is speaking about an issue first occured after introduction of guitar mode. ok, but the styles glitches i experienced were with PA50, LONG BEFORE guitar mode.

i believe it's simply a matter of how the OS knows to commute from variation pattern to fill pattern and back. it seems there are situations when this change between different patterns simply does not happen smoothly, probably because of some "markers" that work inaccurately.

the problem i hear first happen with pa series. and it seems to be permanent, thru all of the updates and new models ever since.

Yes, now that we know that the glitches in AJ's recordings are probably due to a bug in the Guitar Mode algorithm (and therefore can expected to be fixed by Korg sooner or later), we can return to the normal discussion about why Korg styles seem to have less seamless transitions than the competition:

Like most arrangers these days Korg also have 4 main variations. In many of the factory styles each variation is 8 measures in length. This gives you 32 different patterns that must all be matched by only 3 different fills. And this is before we begin to talk about the six chord variations (CV1-CV6) which allow the arranger to play different patternes depending on the chord type.

3 fills is simply too few when combined with the very advanced arranger structure of the Korgs. One extra fill would be a great addition but it wont solve the problem completely. I guess that in the current situation we have to choose between the very rich and realistic styles of the Korgs and the more simple and repetitive styles of the Yamahas. If seamless transitions is the higher priority we should choose Yamaha. If realism is the higher priorty we should choose Korg. I only mention Korg and Yamaha since in my opinion they represent the two extremes. Roland and Ketron are placed somewhere in between which could be a good compromise, but unfortunately no one know when - or if - we will see a new high end arranger from thse two.

That said Korg has actually done a lot to improve on the fill transitions in Pa800/Pa2X but it is still not 100% perfect and can't be unless they completely change the arranger structure. However, as Adimatis points out the problem was much worse in Pa80/Pa60/P50 (I owned a Pa60 before I got the Pa800).

Kind regards,
Tommy


[This message has been edited by TommyF (edited 11-13-2008).]