I find it interesting that NOW Dom is willing to acknowledge issues with OS3, whereas, at the time, not a word...

Kind of makes you wonder what is going on NOW, that won't be acknowledged until further down the line...

As always, with this thing, the first question is, why is anyone astounded at how good the sounds can be? We've had VSTi's, GIGAsampler and large sample libraries for YEARS now, and most of us could have run them on quite modest home PC's for ourselves. And, if we did, we might have a better idea of the technical expertize you need to be able to set up and keep running a complex virtual instrument rig. Upon which, probably 99% of the people here would decide that what they already have is quite good enough, thank you very much, and if they need that degree of sound accuracy at home for recording, do it on the computer they already have..!

James has still not even scratched the surface of how to turn this thing into an arranger, the workload we would all face to do that, and tweak the styles to a level noticeably better than a decent TOTL arranger. And, in all fairness, this being an ARRANGER forum, not a virtual instrument one (plenty of those with VERY knowledgeable members if anyone cares to look), I am still rather more concerned with the MS's application as an arranger than a VSTi playback machine.

I am still wondering just what percentage of members here, once they finally understand the degree of knowledge you need (James makes it look easy, but he has YEARS of experience with VSTi's and computer rigs to call upon) to make all this stuff happen, are anything more than just academically interested in this thing?

Especially in the knowledge that, should you actually LIKE some of these sounds, you already have a computer quite capable of playing them...

This is an amazing keyboard, but don't fool yourselves. It only will sound its' best in the hands of someone intimately familiar with computer music production, like James (definitely NOT like anyone Dom has ever hired to demo it!), and just how many of us really think we fit that bill? I doubt there's ONE of us willing to hoe this road just for a great set of Uillean Pipes

BTW, if those winds are out for Akai S1000, those samples easily fit the much larger RAM sizes of a T3 or PA2Xpro (or quite possibly the Audya, too)... Don't forget, quite a few of you already HAVE the technology to play many of these kinds of sounds in what you have NOW. If you haven't availed yourself of the opportunity to use the technology in what you currently own, what makes you think that you are likely to want to do even MORE work to make an even MORE complex keyboard like this do them?

Surely the Audya ought to have made apparent to much of us here that gear lust, without a VERY skeptical attitude towards whether we actually have the smarts to make something that complex run well, can be a very dangerous and expensive thing?

Here in is the problem.

If some people say that having VSTi's, GIGAsampler and large sample
Libraries on a computer and having the same sounds on a keyboard is comparable, then trying to convince them on the advantages of open keyboards is pointless. That is like saying having an Akai sampler is the same as having an arranger that can play back Akai samplels.

You only have to read James’ first post on this topic and Abacus last post to understand.

did you see the inside of audya?
did you ever see inside a PC?

about heat inside MS, first the new Mainboard inside MS/Groove is K10N78-1394 and Supports AMD’s Cool ‘n’ Quiet Technology ,so, the maiboard has 2 fan conectors, 1 CPU fan and one chasses fan. becouse of this new modern manboard and air follow inside MS/groove you do need the chasses fan

[This message has been edited by AFG Music (edited 03-22-2010).]

Well..hardware difference is not so big...
Here the groove inside: http://www.lionstracs.com/store/images/2010/raid/Raidgroove.JPG

Here the Audya inside: http://www.lionstracs.com/demo/Audyainside.jpg

Hi Diki.

For years you have been saying how bad it sounds and complaining how nobody can upload a quality demo and that there must be a reason why, blaming the keyboard. Now I get one and you say ......”why is anyone astounded at how good the sounds can be?”...... all of a sudden.

Regarding PC's, yes you could run Gigasampler and VSTi's on your PC for years, but that does not in anyway compare to an OPEN Keyboard. A PC does not come with a Custom OS, dedicated buttons for controlling every single application on it and so on, let alone the form factor of a musical instrument and the clean workspace environment you get from such a system.



While I have not yet looked at this system, I can say that there is automatically a certain amount of instant compatibility here. Any style you load is going to have a certain level of GM/GS compatibility by default and they will be automatically connected to the GS/GM Giga Library that comes with the keyboard. So I don't expect this to be complicated at all when I get to it.

I would imagine it's a simple matter of just adjusting volumes of the tracks and changing a sound or two to better Giga sound I feel might work better. Sounds pretty simply when you say it, so we will see how things go when I get around to it which will be VERY soon.



There's no requirement to use VSTi's to make it sound better than a closed keyboard from day one. Out of the box the core sounds are provided by Giga files so there's no setup to use these. You press a single button and an entire GM/GS library of sounds is displayed on the screen to select just like you select a sound on a closed keyboard. So users can very much so live off Giga files for a long time and learn how to use the other parts of the keyboard at their own pace.

Some people might never even feel the need go past Giga files because you can get some pretty mind blowing sounds for very little money if you look at AKAI disks.



I would hope from the Video's and their very simply nature and approach that people can see that it was very easy for me to assign sounds to slots the screen.
1: Press EIDT
2: Navigate to the file you want the same way you naviage on a PC.
3: Press enter to load a sound.
4: If you like it and you want to use it, touch the slot where you want to put it and press insert.

Exit...... that's all.



That's not entirely true.

Yamaha arrangers does not support any know sample format that contains mulstisample data. Ketron are also the same, plus the Audya only has 64MB of RAM (lol...what a joke). KORG on the other hand, fair enough, they will even read raw AKAI data straight off a CD but you still have to load everything to RAM and a Pa2X maxed out will give you 256MB. The piano sound I was using was over 500MB

Regards
James

[This message has been edited by Irishacts (edited 03-22-2010).]

In response to the complicated setup,
I think that no keyboard on the market sounds great out of the box. Any keyboard requires setting up and tweaking, especially if you don't play western music. If anything, the MS makes it look much easier and more attractive than compared to other arrangers. Since we all spend so much time handeling files and using a computer, wouldn't it make more sense that a system modeled after a PC has a smaller learning curve?

If I could afford the MS right now, I would forget about Korg, Roland, Yamaha and their highly overpriced pyle of plastic, metal and 3rd grade sounds. Heck, who needs over 100 drum kits, 50 guitars, 40 bases etc. In most cases these sounds are just variations with slightly changed effects and filters. Instead, why not provide a few high quality realistic sounds with editing and modeling options. I guess they just have to milk the profits from sounds created 10 years ago.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by hitman:
In response to the complicated setup,
I think that no keyboard on the market sounds great out of the box. Any keyboard requires setting up and tweaking, especially if you don't play western music. If anything, the MS makes it look much easier and more attractive than compared to other arrangers. Since we all spend so much time handeling files and using a computer, wouldn't it make more sense that a system modeled after a PC has a smaller learning curve?

If I could afford the MS right now, I would forget about Korg, Roland, Yamaha and their highly overpriced pyle of plastic, metal and 3rd grade sounds. Heck, who needs over 100 drum kits, 50 guitars, 40 bases etc. In most cases these sounds are just variations with slightly changed effects and filters. Instead, why not provide a few high quality realistic sounds with editing and modeling options. I guess they just have to milk the profits from sounds created 10 years ago.

[/QUOTE
Hitman,

You hit them, thats another angle and perhaps you are right, give us some more.

Tony

I find this tread very interesting, in fact the most interesting in a long time.

Myself I'm looking forward to the "MS as an Arranger" part, since styles/accomp are essential for
the way I use the keyboard.

Keep'em coming James, and thank's for nice videos and reports done in a way that we don't have to be
sivil engineers to understand it.

Cheers
GJ

Sorry but it's not working right for me at all.

Changing to another sound and back again makes no difference. A full system shutdown and reboot doesn't even help.

It will only start working if I select the sound and press Enter to save it. Or if I jump to VSTi Mode and back to Giga Mode.

This does not fix the problem though and it does not work all the time. If I change to another sound, the problem is back again.

Any suggestions ?

Regards
James

Do you have also select with the F1= ENGINE the desidered sounds engine+enter first?

Create some different COMBI patch, then open the folder: Presets/combi/
copy the file that have saved: presets_1 and send me by email that I will test here what for a configuration you made.
Then I send you back fixed and also with one combi file with about 50 combi patch created from Magic Alfa.
here the shoot if you dont believe..



[This message has been edited by LIONSTRACS (edited 03-22-2010).]