All I can say is: You shoulda been here!
What a great session we had. DNJ and Joe Ayala can sound downright country when they try. Both great pickers and singers, and SHOWMEN, they blew everybody away.
Hammer had the Tyros 3 shining. There were several other Yammie players, using S900s, PSR 3000, and 2000. Vince Ramos put the SD1 through it's paces. Janet sounded great on the S900, as did Mike. Semilive Bill P. had his antique PSR2000 and his guitar and sounded outstanding on both.
Joe Lee was so busy video-taping everything, we never got around to letting him play, but we will tomorrow. Jay R brought great sandwiches, but he didn't play either--said he wanted to listen and learn, as did Don Patterson.
There were seven keyboards and a guitar all routed to the Bose L1 through two mixers, and everybody sounded great. I used a Peavey 12-channel mixer as the main mixer and 12-channel Behringer as a sub mixer.
There were wires everywhere, but it WORKED.
AJ arrived with the Audya about 5:30. He did a short demo that quickly turned into two hours. He will also have it there for us tomorrow at noon before having to catch a plane.
I think most everyone was impressed by the Audya. What interested me most was the wonderful real-time control the player has. Many assignable sliders and buttons, several inter-active features, three intros and endings plus fills and three BREAKS per style. The list of real-time features is really long and I've only touched on a few, but one was that the bass and style parts seem to "learn" what you are playing and add variety to what they did, based upon your playing pattern. Hard to explain, but great to hear.
The sound was next to incredible. You would think a live band was performing for you.
For Dikki, I had AJ play every type of chord he knew and the arranger played them flawlessly. He also told me that the audio styles were user programmable, but it takes a lot of work because they are quite complex.
There are 360 factory styles, and I think he said 85 percent of them use audio. The ones that didn't still sounded really good. It's hard to explain, but they seem to have really done the homework on this thing.
Of course it took about three years, so it SHOULD be right
The vocal harmonizer sounded great, and there are real-time sliders for both the lead vocal and harmony parts. I'm sure he will get deeper into the harmonizer features tomorrow. There are two XLR inputs, each with input level controls.
There are four audio outs PLUS two stereo outs, plus Aux outs and aux ins.
I haven't heard another arranger piano sound as good as this one.
I wasn't crazy about the location of the style controls--in the middle--but AJ said they had to put them there in order to not compromise the size and length of the sliders, which are on the left, where I wish the style controls were. The pb and mod wheels are above the left hand, as they were on SD1 I think. Workable, but not ideal to me.
Halfway through the demo, I got up and put a for sale sign on my E50. But it's not for sale as I think it's the best low-price arranger on the market as far as my needs go.
Even after I get the Audya, I will keep it as back up, probably.
If there are specific questions you have for AJ, I'll try to get them answered tomorrow.
As for me, I'll most likely have to have one pretty soon.
DonM
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