There are 47 brand new styles and 32 re-vamped styles from Ketrons XD series.

The brand new styles have been really tweaked especially the balancing of the drums. I really like the sound of them. It almost feels like your playing a whole different keyboard.

What ever Ketron did to create the sound and feel of these new styles is dead on! It would have been awesome if they would have redone all the styles with this balancing and used more of the new drum tracks.

The 32 XD styles are located in the unplugged section. These are pretty good, however no comparison with the brand new styles.

Robert Messier was heavily involved with the creation of 10 new styles for Ketron. Unfortunately, all of them were not included in the upgrade. Robert is a musicians musician when it comes to utilizing the Audya's full capabilities. Big mistake on Ketron's part not taking full advantage of Robert's talent!

The Organ Bebop style located in the swing section is my favorite. In variation 4 the drummer really shows his stuff. I increased the volume of the drum track to make the drummer stand out even more. If you like swing/boogie, you'll all enjoy this style! Fun stuff!

All in all, the upgrade was worth the wait. The new styles and the additional super solo voices alone are worth the upgrade. I noticed a few improvements in the OS also. I don't use midi files, so I can't comment in that area.

Now we'll wait and see what AJ's upgrade has to offer. With Ketron's and AJ's together, we'll Blast OFF on another Musical trip to the stars.

And the beat goes on.....and the beat goes on!

Jim

Well done Jim, thanks for the review
Don P

Sounds like a great improvement Nitelife... thanks for the input. I just received my "stick" and haven't done anything with it yet except glance at the installation instructions which at first glance look a little complicated. Any input on or tips on doing this that you would comment on?

Gary

I have my Pen at home waiting to be installed
No gig this weekend
Irene couldn't have picked a better weekend.

Hi Gary,

I did the Update 4 weeks ago, it´s not complicated.

You just have to READ THE ADDED MANUAL what to do.

If you do EXACTLY THAT you´ll have success ( after 2hrs 20 mins

@Jim :

I fully agree with you, especially regarding the "Organ-Bebop"

i'm stuck at home with Hurricane Irene
i am afraid to upgrade my AUDYA because of possible power outages
since update takes over 2 hrs.
i don't want a sudden power outage, and have my AUDYA shut down during update, as it then may never boot

i wish i had a UPS

HI leezone,

so you better wait until power-supply seems to be reliable.

BTW: It´s fantastic to see how dependent we are on electricity.

6 weeks ago we had a power cut from thursday 05:00 PM till 05:30 PM ( a car crashed into the power-distribution-box in our street ). They fixed it provisorily. On friday morning they fixed it between 09:00 AM and 12:00 AM.
Horrible 3 hrs between breakfast and noon for my wife ( I was on duty ). No electricity, that means : no washing machine, no dishwasher, no cooking, no pohone, no internet and so on.

"Normally" we don´t know power-cuts here in our region. As a average value they speak about 1 minute per YEAR ! Since a few years we don´t have any low voltage transmission lines over earth-surface ( for 230 Volts home power ), everything is subsurface. Only a few high-voltage-lines are above surface

I must admitt that I don´t understand why in the US there are still so many ( low power ) over-surface-lines. If they would change to sub-surface they wouldn´t have that many problems ( and costs ! ) at all.

Uuups, sorry for that long posting, but I´m electrician

installing now me Pen

i thought it was done after 4 minutes but that was just to go from OS 4.1b to 4.2b

the next step, the "00KTNinstall-Style00" file is the lengthy process (as this installs audiofiles)

hope the power stays on

i think after this is bedtime,
will test it all tomorrow and post my impressions

Is it still updating Leezone, it's daylight here, you could allways go to sleep with one eye open. Heeeeeeee In the name of love before you break my heart!

installation went well, no power issues, took about 2hr.35min
i see a bunch of new styles with that big "dot" in front

for those yet to install, just follow it STEP BY STEP

if you have 4.2b already installed then skip to that section, if not install 4.2b first, just READ the instructions, sit back and relax, and follow instructions on AUDYA also.

but you MUST have previous sound (pen) upgrade to install this,
liek it says, you must have "Concert Grand" as your first sound
BEFORE installing this 2011 pen,

this 2011 pen does NOT have that "old" pen update.

will try it all out later tonight