Dennis,
No problems M8...I appreciate all perspectives.

I guess when I watch and listen to the performances by Telmo a few times I hear some pretty darn beautiful music and it sure seems he has no issues performing it all live. I seem to hear the various voices blend together very nicely...maybe it's just me but I never quite felt that way abot the PA2, even thugh I think the Korg is super. But, a lot of it very well may be his performance setups too, so I'm no saying the Korg could not sound a good. Maybe it's just that the orchestral voices are better on the Yamaha??

My reason for this post in the first place was to find out from all of the gang here that do a lot of live play what I was missing on the feeling (comments of others)that the T4 was not so good in that mode.

I was confused because I have watched many, many performances on You-Tube of Yamaha T3/T4 in a live performance mode and I dd not see any issues.

Actually for all I love about the Korg OS...I did always think the arranger functions were smoother on the Yamaha, now on the PA3 I think that goes away with more fills and autofill.
I do believe that most that do not like the Korg OS have not spent the time to totally learn it as it is very capable.

I think I can live with either OS..neither being perfect to any one person....BUT it's the sound I am after.

Lee S.

Yep, ultimately thats the most important. I can only agree!!

And perhaps, in truth, that's the thing a lot of us forget about from time to time. And I include myself in that camp too!!

Dennis

This is a serious deficiency that should not be glossed over. I don't believe the Yamaha system is proprietary (or at least they have licensed it to other brands.) Korg, Roland, and Orla all have Yamaha-style simplified chord recognition as an option. Technics also used the Yamaha system in the past. However, if someone is used to the Korg / Roland / Ketron system for minor and 7th chords, when they switch to Yamaha they might as well be learning a different instrument!!

I agree with the original poster. If Yamaha is not willing or able to duplicate Roland's "Chord Intelligence" exactly, then at least in the "AI Fingered" mode a single note should be recognized as a major chord. Also, I agree that the "On Bass" functionality should have its own button on the panel. It could also be a function based on the MOMENTARY state of a control pedal. The Tyros series are well-integrated, and they can actually do MOST of the ten things in the list. But their simplified chord fingering is different, and a major barrier to someone switching from other brands.

Duly noted and agree. Since I never use one finger chords it has never been an issue for me, but I believe that if they use a simple system, it should at least be on a musically-correct basis, not "add a black note to the left" to get such-and-such.
The "other guys" use a C for a C chord, add a flatted third, Eb, for a minor and a Bb for a seventh. At least you could progress musically with this as a start.
DonM

I completely agree with this. Any simplified fingering system should allow the user to progress to a fuller system without relearning everything. To be honest, Yamaha's system confuses the heck out of me! By the time you have learned all the weird shortcuts, you could have learned most of the chords properly, anyway...

To be honest, I know some people like the rootless chord jazz feature, but once again it sort of bypasses a lot of options. What if you WANT the real chord you fingered, but the machine is determined to see it as a rootless jazz voicing? Is there a footpedal or button you can assign to jazz voicing on/off easily? That's about the only thing that could make it work for me.

On to the point of arranger shortcomings. They ALL have them. Anyone who says otherwise isn't working it hard enough! I also agree with the sound being the primary decision maker. Not even styles. A bit of work on a well designed arranger, and the styles are suddenly MUCH better, but few arrangers really offer the option to replace all the naff sounds with better ones. Not much you can do to change the overall SOUND of your arranger.

I often think that arranger selection is more an exercise in damage control than sheer love. What features can I do WITHOUT? They've ALL got something you could really use missing...

Diki,
Absolutely true IMHO.
A good example is when I was into buying/playing home organs..I went to the stores...spent many hours trying them, listening to demos..and found a HUGE difference in sound quality.
Some of the more well known brands really did not have the sound I liked. Wound up buying Thomas for many years..then Yamaha.
All because of sound...not features. I felt like it was my job o play it , and it was th MFG job to make the sounds.

Today we are super spoiled...my God, compared to a 1977 Yamaha organ we have tons of neat features in all arrangers.

So back to basics..If I play the new PA3 and it has the same sound problems as th PA2 had..no deal. It's got a lot to do with the music I enjoy...all instrumental no singing...so the sounds have to be top notch.
Then not sure if I will get T4 or wait for somehing new.
I will have to at that point really check te T4 for sounds quality.

Lee S.

I remember buying a Yamaha FS500 organ in the early 80's, thinking it would SURELY be the last instrument I ever needed or wanted. It did sound good and had many outstanding features. Only weighed 330 pounds, without the bench or leslie or dollie.
I think it listed for $16,000 BACK THEN.
All today's arrangers are tremendous bargains!
DonM

I feel that nowadays, pretty much everything that is sample based, whether it's arranger OR workstations, if you didn't like the SOUND of the previous incarnation of whatever you are looking at, you aren't going to like whatever is new. Probably at MOST, any new keyboard only has about 10-20% new samples, the rest is just rolled over from the previous model.

Synths are a somewhat different kettle of fish, as the voice architecture is what determines the overall sound, but once it is samples, especially of acoustic instruments, there's not a lot you can do to radically change them into something noticeably different AND better...

So if you disliked the previous Korg, Yamaha, Ketron, Roland, whatever, it is pretty much a given that you are going to feel probably the same about any new model. Maybe over a period of 10-15 years, you might see enough of a difference to change your mind about them, but from one model to the next?

Not going to happen, IMO...

Actually not quite true Diki.. You can replace any sound within any style on the PA2x using your own unique samples and sound patches if you want.

For example if I created a guitar sample that was a killer sound, I could use that in every factory style, and store it in one of the factory guitar patch locations. Then every factory style that accesses that slot would then use that patch.

Of course how good it would sound would depend on what the style had programmed as far as notes went, but I think you get the idea.

So it IS possible on the Korg OS.

In addition a user, if they so wish can over-write permanently EVERY factory sound patch and style... A bit ridiculous to actually do, but the Korg OS allows this.

The ONLY limitation is the amount of space Korg allow for user sound patches. You would certainly be limited to how many, but if they were really killer sounds a user possibly would not need that many.

Still, I do agree generally with your comment that they ALL have limitations, in this case it's the space allowed to add your own patches.

Dennis

And speaking of which, it was VERY disappointing to see the Sample RAM on the new PA3X, is still a max of 256MB...

128 Factory and 128 with the RIDICULOUSLY expensive EXB-M256!!!

Dennis