It's true that you lose your objectiveness when getting used to the sounds you always play, and you have to readjust your own perception once in a while by pausing and then comparing with other manufacturers again, and maybe with a real symphonic orchestra for judging strings for example.
Sometimes I still think - are the Seattle strings of my MODX really better than the old SRX 04 Roland strings? Doubts remain...

You cannot use more than 12 inserts for the arranger engine. One insert for each of the 8 style parts + one insert for each of the 4 left/right hand parts. Multi pads, with the builtin firmware, incredibly can NOT be effected.

The remaining 16 inserts are usable on the second midi port (the one for midi file playback, which generally speaking anyway do NOT use those 16 Yamaha specific inserts that can be exploited through convoluted sysexes only).

12 inserts are still a good number (probably more than any HW competition) and more than enough (most builtin styles do not use all the 12 possible inserts!). But nonetheless nowhere close to the 28 listed on the spec.

Slice it any way you want, when Korg only gives you ONE insert for all four keyboard Parts and four for the style engine, you got to cut corners...

When you audition keyboard sounds, they come up with their associated insert on the main keyboard part, but use the same sound on the lower, or the other uppers, totally different sound.

Ideally, you want one for every part, at the very least two or three for the keyboard parts. This is IMHO the main weakness in Korg’s, the hoops you have to go through when deciding what sounds you want to play, and figuring out which ones you can do without the insert.

And I am utterly convinced that if Korg couldn’t get the hardware to do it by now, it can’t be done... Not with this generation of hardware.

I haven’t really gone on much about some of the other Genos next gen stuff, but things like the round robin drum kits, the Ensemble thingy where it will split chords out into their component parts so a brass section sound divides itself when going from tutti to divisi, and whatever that sorcery it’s doing to get the pedal steel to bend notes INSIDE the chord (amazing!), those are things players of our age can really use.

I admit the NEXT stuff on the PA4X is also quite new for arranger players, but honestly, if you’re not really into EDM and hardcore dance styles, it’s of limited value... Here’s hoping Korg take a look at who actually play arrangers rather than who they would LIKE to play arrangers (no offense to the few who do dig EDM, LOL), and maybe take a crack at some of Yamaha’s new features. I’d kill for the eight part Chord Sequencer alone!

But stuck back here on my poor abandoned Roland, I can only look on at these innovations with sadness and envy! How close Roland came, only to stumble at the finish line... 🍌😂

This is an interesting dilemma.

As a matter of fact the majority of current arrangers buyers are senior people (look for example on YouTube at who are attending Yamaha arranger demo events). Even worse (see later), they are the ONLY buyers of top of the line arrangers (those with the highest profit margins).

So to please them you should deliver content that was popular when they were young (you keep your imprinting for the whole life).

On the other hand this profitable source of income (you can easily harvest serving the old and tested product --> no R&D costs) will not last for much longer (limits of human life).

So, understandably, the manufacturers try to please the younger generations in order to carry their business into the (distant) future. Here explained the EDM content (new generations are unlikely to enjoy Jazz and Big Band & Oldies genres that are so overly represented in arrangers).

But in doing so you risk to alienate your current buyers and major source of income (those that today shell out a respectable 3/4 K€ for a keyboard that admittedly does NOT use cutting edge tech and is not decisively different from the previous model).
After all they could simply keep "forever" their current gear, given that features-wise it is probably heavily underused and the limiting factor is by far the player.

Thing is, the weapon of choice to do most contemporary music is the synth workstation, the Fantom’s, the Montage’s and the MODX’s, along with loop software like Ableton Live and controller boxes.

I know Korg must have sunk a fortune in R&D into NEXT OS, but I honestly think that their money might have been better spent on things like Yamaha’s Ensemble mode and things like that. Now there ARE a couple of things buried in NEXT that are quite useful to the older player, there’s the touch screen sort of ‘breakdown’ thing that allows you to lower or mute parts within a style very quickly, and the thing that can add swing to simple 8-beat styles, but they aren’t really presented or promoted in a way easily grasped by older players.

It’s a shame that musically useful things like this don’t really get their own section or get a UI that presents them in more familiar ways... Most of us remember the days when arrangers and drum machines had a ‘swing’ knob! And several arrangers in the past (G1000 comes to mind) had buttons for gradually stripping a style down from full to drum and bass only, and that’s some stuff us old farts can REALLY use without having to jump through the weird NEXT interface.

I honestly have a feeling the younger generation is never going to embrace arrangers, they just aren’t really optimized for the ‘clip’ triggering and looping thing they tend to do, and they certainly aren’t when they come out of the box loaded with music categories like Ballroom and Oldies!

I’ve long held that an arranger loaded with ONLY hi tech contemporary styles and sounds might sell quite well, but there hasn’t really been one of those since the old Casio Rapman thing back in the early 90’s. Korg’s problem is that they won’t commit. In the back of their minds, they probably know what an uphill battle that would be, and how they might alienate the existing base.

Come on, Korg! Just give us older players stuff we can use! What percentage of your base plays EDM..?!

Was looking forward to the Karma feature in the 1000. All I can say, it is tough to figure out and pretty much useless to me at this time. Maybe I'll find the tricks for use.

Karma? It's only existed in software form for some time now. You can get supplemental software for any of the Korg or Yamaha workstations, up to the Motif XF. When Yamaha introduced the Montage they changed the architecture enough that Stephen Kay has so far not released a compatible version for that board. Supposedly the Yamaha versions of Karma software have more features than the Korg versions. Mr. Kay was part of the arranger development team at Korg; I've been curious since it's debut about how close Karma gets to arranger functionality. Maybe someday I'll take the plunge with a compatible keyboard, and find out!

The pa1000 was released 2 years after the pa4x...
There is no reason why korg would change this approach..

The pa1000 is now 3 years old. Yamaha released s970,s975 and sx900 since

And, bottom line, there’s always this burning desire for whatever is next and whatever is latest, mostly from people that don’t utilize 25% of the arranger they currently have. 🤔

The truth is, what most of us actually want is new CONTENT! New styles, new sounds. That usually gets the job done LOL

It seems an awfully expensive way to get them, buying an entire arranger…