I posted the info below on another thread, but I thought it best to start a new topic so that it gets more airplay.

I'm convinced, with all the good things I hear about the PA3x, that I'm not hearing it at it's best. I think I'm doing it a "dis-service" with these remarks I made. But......that was my impression not really knowing how to play it. I HAVE heard some good Youtube demo's.......especially the ones done in Germany.

I'd appreciate comments that I can think about before I go to play it again.

The post (from the other thread) is as follows:

Jose,

I hear what you're saying. Since I wrote last, about days ago, something good happened for me. I discovered my LOCAL music store put a PA3x on the floor for demo. I've been playing it every night now for a total of about 8-10 hours.

The first issue I had was the same as yours. The drums do sound too much like synth drums and were not crispy, clear. I never heard a bad "synthesized" cowbell until I heard this one. In all fairness, I remember what someone here said about "EQ-ing" in "global" mode. We emphasized around 6K and the drums cleared up somewhat.

I didn't care much for the "fills"......no drama in them! I didn't work with the intro's or endings at all. Piano...I didn't get to listen to, saxes.......I heard they were awful, so I didn't bother listening to them.

I DID particularly like the Dixie trumpet and musette accordion and (very lush) strings.

All in all, I thought the "whole" sound was somewhat muffled and all parts sound crunched together.

Now, check this out. While I was playing it in the store, I had at least 1/2 dozen people come over and compliment me. Two of them went as far as to say that with my playing ability, I should buy the PA3. I didn't understand what they were talking about. I honestly thought I sounded like rubbish. But, I had recorded 2 hours of my playing on it. As I listened to the recording, the whole thing sounded "different." Suddenly I'm hearing it from 10 feet away (where the recorder was recording). For some strange reason, it sounded much better now. If I didn't know better, I'd think I was playing a real accordion. And the "strings" sounded superb when I played the string orchestra part of Save the Last Dance For Me. Even the drum patterns seemed to have more "bite" to them!

So I think I like it more now. The only thing holding me back is those dance styles. They are some of the worst I ever heard. A few of them had completely "off-tempo's" (too fast), so I have to wonder how much effort the programmers put into them.

Now there might be 300-400 styles, but I find most of them.....useless..."forced"....very child-like....repetitive. Is anyone really going to know that you're using "Rock 1" instead of "Rock 2?"

They focused too much on contemporary sounds and skimped on the "traditional" dances. Not a lot of "big band" stuff, various cha-cha's, waltzes, marches, etc. I mean.....relative to how arranger manufacturers used to stuff their keyboards in the past.

I think the Tyros has a good mix of colorful well-thought out styles, as I remember, and, in my book at least, Ketron remains #1, Numero Uno for the best quality styles and the best assortment of them.

On the plus side, the PA3 is incredibly versatile. Just being able to "mix" those parts in real time, and the programmable joy stick, the EQ, editable styles, the vocoder, etc makes it a very tempting package.

As I say, the only thing holding be back is being able to get my hands on some decent dance patterns. I'm going to spend an afternoon this week at the library listening to all PA3x demos.

And....I'll see what the new "update" brings and then make a decision.

Mark

The thing is the Korg arranger is a completely diffrent animal to he tyros or audya or any other arranger. If you are only looking at the keyboard from the stance that it comes pre loaded with 400 styles and the styles rae all you are into then buy a tyros. Leve the Korg Pa products alone . The korg keyboard provides you with al the tools of your standard arranger and then gives you all the tools to accomodate any other type of keyboard !! If you are not buying the whole concept of an all i one synth, arranger, workstation production tool then you have missed the unique attributes of the Korg Pa range over its competitors.

Nothing wrong with yammies or the Audya as they are fine arrangers . If you love the yamaha styles (and they are excellent ) and styles are all you are into , then you cant go wrong with a yamaha. But if you actually want to play pre programmed styles and want to create your own styles and music and sounds thn look again at the Korg

There are some very realistic saxes in the PA3X. Try the ones in the Program area, especially SuperSax.
DonM

Hi Mark,
one thing I have noticed with the PA3X, is that they have left out a number of the European styles, like the Schlagers, they've left out some of the Latin ( or should it be Ballroom ) ie Chacha styles that were on the PA800. In short, some of the type styles you're reffering to.
Whether or not they'd suit you any better than the one's on the PA3X , I don't know, but there are more that could be added to PA3X from PA800.

I've finally got all the missing PA800 styles together that don't exist on PA3X. (Hopefully got rid of duplicates). Bit of a chore working out what was new & what just had the same name.

So any PA3X owners who want them, let me know.

I'm sorting thru PA500 currently. Even worse, some of them are in German . haahaa.

Hi Rikki! I'd love to audition those old 800 styles if you would be so kind!
Thanx,
Dave

Here's a PM that Stephen M52 wrote to me regarding the Tyros 4 vs the Korg PA3X.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First not sure you know but since about 2007 I have owned PSR 3000, Tyros2, Roland G70, Korg Pa800, Korg Pa2xPro ( at the same time I also owned an s900). I later sold the s900 for the s910, then moved to Tyros4 and 2 weeks ago the Pa3x. So I have 2 great arrangers. Fortunately, I'm in a position because I sold off some old equipment to afford both. Of course buying from Frankieve at his great prices makes it more affordable too.
When I first started playing a few gigs here and there I thought if I had the best arranger I could increase the amount of gigs I could play I know that's not true but it sounded good. The way I figure it now, I'm 60 years old have no kids to worry about and have lost too many close friends and family who died much younger than the should have. Life is too short so I'm treating myself and have a good wife who thinks it's great what I do with music.


Without a question Tyros 4 is the best of the Yammie offering. I loved the g70 but it was like wrestling a bear and was too much for the part time 1 hour gigs I play and the OS of the g70 was too 1990ish. Nevertheless it sounded good. For me the Pa800/pa2x were good too, but I really missed the Yamaha styles. For the kind of gigs I do at senior centers, wedding ceremonies and cocktail hours Yamaha styles seem to work best. I had absolutely no interest in the Pa3x, all the on line demos were not enough to get me to try one. Then at SZ there was suddenly a lot of hype about Korg and Don Mason, Rikki and once in a while poster JCKeys bought them. JC keys and I talked on the phone a few years back. I read a recent post of his at the Korg forum and he said hands down PA3x was the best arranger he ever owned. We wound up talking by phone again and he sold me on going to demo one. So it was a good excuse to see my SZ friend Frankieve and demo the board. I told my wife I just want to try it I doubt I'l buy it. WRONG! I loved what I heard then for about a week I went back and forth in my head should I buy or should I forget about it.


If someone told me today, you can only have one keyboard not 2, I think I would sell the Tyros 4 and keep the Korg, but that could change in a week. ha ha Good thing no one is telling me to sell!!

Here's what i like about Tyros 4:
Outstanding style variety and SA2 voices.
SA2 voices are the best I love the trumpet, clarinet and sax SA2 voices. There's nothing like playing a trumpet voice or clarinet and playing a split octave and hearing the slide as you play from C3 up to C4. Everytime I hear it I think what a machine this T4 is
What I do like is the free styles because they allow me to play just about any affair from wedding ceremony to an all Christmas song background type music gigs I do play in December. I also sing some broadway show tunes for example things like Bring Him Home, Soon It's Gonna Rain also some Italian ethnic Santa Lucia and Come Prima. The free styles allow me lots of opportunity to sing expressively like I have a symphony minus drums behind me and that's a good thing.
I like the Jazz styles on the T4, Latin styles are Ok, There's some very decent new Country styles too. The cocktail piano on the T4 is fantastic.
I like the beautiful display on the Tyros 4, very good on the eyes.
The mp3 player is a bonus but not as flexible as the dual one on the pa3x. The Tyros 4 records in .wav format easy to play back on the Tyros 4, but otherwise if you record I think it's best to convert to Mp3 for playback.
The MFD file system is good too since unlike the older Yamaha arrangers you couldn't pull many 3rd party styles and place them in the database. You were limited by the amount of built in memory in the board and it wasn't very much. Now you can store those styles on the hard drive or USB stick.
The harmonizer I don't use much but on the T4 it will pass.

Korg Pa3x:

As someone who did most of his early lessons and playing on piano, the keys of teh Pa3x have it all over the Tryos4.
It's so live sounding the drums are very real sounding, there are sometimes when I play ( this held true for the Pa800/2xPro) that sometimes when the ending played and the cymbal crashed I thought a live drummer was in the room with me.
I like the touch screen! Always did, it's not as nice looking as the t4 screen. When I play the T4 now I find myself tapping the screen thinking I'm going to change a setting .
The layout for live play is perfect, everything is a very short distance from the keys, so it's very easy to hold done a note or chord and be able to reach out to change a variation. It's not impossible on T4 just easier on pa3x
The Songbook database hands down is the best for orgainizing your song and gig lists. It remembers everything you set it to including changes in key.
Korg has reworked some styles and added new ones from the old Pa series. I love some of the new jazz styles and what makes them really easy to change around is the sliders on the top left of the board. For instance I can easily lower the accompanient with the slider so that I have drums, bass and piano to sound like a piano trio. Very easy to do.
On the subject of volume Korg needs plenty of tweaking because some of the STS (one touch ) settings are mis-matched for instance you play a jazz guitar, then hit trumpet and the trumpet is turned up so loud that it over-powers the rest of the sounds. It's a balance issue, but with some work it can be adjusted
If you use a mic the pa3x has phantom power for mics that need phantom power. T4 can't do that.
Harmonizer is so much better than on the T4. I haven't used it that much because of the style music I sing, harmonizer doesn't always make for a good fit. There is some skill needed to get it right setting up the harmonizer.
A simple thing but it works well, all the connections are labeled at the top of the board, so if you're hooking up wires you can easily read where to plug your stuff into ( the Pa800 and 2xpro had this feature as well).
There are some very very good what they call DNC voices, that's Korgs version of Yamaha SA and SA2 voices
The organs are killer organs on the Korg and on some of the organ voices the harder you hold down the key you get the leslie rotary effect!! Very very cool.
The joystick is much better than the 2 controls on the t4. You can even get the rotrary effect moving the joystick forward and then back to turn it off

Hope this helps, Paul. Those are the most dramatic things.

One other thing. I played a gig a week ago Sunday with the Tyros 4 because I wasn't ready to take out the Pa2x yet. When I returned home I left the T4 in the case. This past weekend when I took out and set the T4 back up then did an A/B comparison I was surpised to think to myself wow, The Tyros 4 doesn't sound as good as it did before I got the pa3x.

Hi Uncle Dave,
no problem, I sent them to email you have listed under your profile. Hope that's ok.
They're in PA3X format.
Please if anyone finds duplicates that I thought might have been missing on PA3X, please let me know so I can update my list.

montunoman.......Thanks very much for posting Stephen’s comments and experiences here. It’s definitely given me a new and better perspective on the PA3x. I might even buy one now and "bill" Steve for it!

Mark

Sure bill it to me, that won't mean it will get paid though. I can hide easily enough.