Hi Folks
There are much commotion this days in the new KN7000. I had the pleasure to be on the Frankfurt Messe for three days and take some of my time to listen to the demos. (Sorry Alec, that I didn´t know your face, maybe we was standing behind each other?).

Alec Pagida has made an extensive report earlier on this site, however thou I´m an gigging musician, maybe someone of you have interest in my thoughts?

Let me first say that, to get out maximum from a demo, you have to be in same kind of music style, like the demoplayer. Not all he played, was for my ears, but he was a very good musician. Phil .... something, it was?

In those places, you have to use a monitor P.A., and so they did. This don´t bother me, because I always use P.A. for myself.

So what´s my opinion of the KN7000? Well, I´m sorry to say that not so much has happened from 1999, when I bought my two KN6000:s (I have one for gigging and one at home)

The sound was good yes, but not so different from the 6000. This fill up and tilt back operation board is filling me with some distrust. I can say for sure that this kind of design don´t speed up anything for us "livegiggers", more on the contrary. Don´t know how the stability is. Nothing more in the playing sector seems to have been changed. No more tracks and no more fills and such things.

I talk with the staff about some technical things. The polyphonic was still 64 notes and the inbuilt speakers was the same, but were moved. The sounds were over 1000 (vs KN6000 = 1008), but not so much new sounds exept organs. There were also a new accordion register memory, but maybe only one or two new sounds. A new jazzdrum kit insida too, but seldom I use those kind of drums.

There is a sub out and USB connection, but this features we already have in the HDSX6. But at long last we got that video out. KN7000 support the Pansasonic SD memory sticks, but in the same way the floppy diskdrive is gone! It is a pity that Technics give up this cheap and safe way for manege files.

There are now possibilities of recording a vocal or another electric musical instrument, directly into the SD stick. But I´m very hesitant in this kind of recording, and the result will still be in the demo kind. You can easily made MP3 files in the KN7000 too.

There were no possibility to examine the new EQ-system, but it looks like we could get different DSP in four parts, and that´s a good thing, however I never found out if there was more than one reverb channel, on board.

To sum up, I will say that the KN7000 don´t made me so impressed. I had more expectations on it after nearly 3 year of waiting. Of course this one in Germany was a prototype and many things could happen until the launch in August. But the big reason for me to buy, will be the sounds. Tehnics must come up with a lot of new soloist sounds, else I stay with my 6000:s and wait for the 8000.

Finally, we will see other brands on the market, come up with many new innovations. Within six months, we have new keyboards from Yamaha, Korg and Roland. I had a hope that Technics would keep the lead position with the KN7000, but I wonder...

Regards from Sweden

Lindoz


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Lindoz

Lindoz, my friend, good to hear from you. You seem to be on the go these days. I guess I'm going to have to wait, like most of us, until the new kn7k is in the dealer showroom so we can do a hands-on look-see thing. I can see where certain things are important to different users, and as a live performer, stability, ease-of-use, sounds, etc., are quite important. For myself, the composer would be my first concern, data storage second, and sounds third. But, it's like you and Alec say, there is still time for changes to be made, and we can only hope the Technics people will listen to the users that will be spending cold cash on their product, and maybe give us what we want. Thanks for the heads-up because any information is helpful. Hope all is well with you and your family, and I trust the tulips are blooming in Sweden.

[This message has been edited by Bud Whipple (edited 04-03-2002).]

Hey Lindoz.
Welcome back to the Technic's Forum and
thanks for getting back on this forum again. We need your expertise and experience here also. It is good to see you here finally. I was wondering if you would ever make it back.
Lindoz, that is an excellent report and thank you for posting it. I wonder about one thing. You say there is no floppy drive. Are you sure of that? That doesn't even seem reasonable.
Welcome to any other people that have logged in while I was on Easter Break. I see Aud Turner finally made it in and happy to see her here also.
Thanks to Win for all the programs he is sending our way. These are good utilities.
I am working on the next Technics Forum Newsletter so anyone that isn't getting it be sure to send me your email address if you want to receive it. I can also use some help on this as I requested in the last edition. I hope to mail on the 13th or 14th.


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BEBOP
Moderator SynthZone TECHNICS FORUM
http://www.synthzone.com/cgi-bin/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number=25
Bill Forrest in SAN JOSE, CALIF. USA
bforrest@ix.netcom.com ICQ # 562519
Homepage http://members.fortunecity.com/bebop1

Thanks, Lindoz.

I am shocked to hear that the keyboard still has only 64 note polyphony. Almost every other competitor has gone to 128 (or 126) note. I hope the people you talked to were mistaken. I have 64 note on my old KN5000 and if I use complex voicing and try to use technichord as well as composer rhythms it is easy to run out of notes. I hate it when notes drop out. . .

If, and when I get a chance to review the 7000 up close, I hope I can remain objective and not be swept-away by cometics, flash, or minimal changes; but rather, try to determine if the sounds, styles, and editing features are major improvements on the 6500. In my present uses (which might change in time), I have no need for USB, video outs, etc. If major or radical improvements are made, it will be interesting to see which aspects of the new board have received the most attention.
Larry

Hello,

You say we already have usb with the hdsx6 but the usb port doesn't work or does it.
I only have a connection throug the parallel port.
Thanks,
Alain

Hej Lindoz
Godt og se deg igjen, det er allt for lenge
mellom hver gang du titter innom.

Thanks for your report, I'm just hoping that
the Technics people monitoring and see all the
comments already written.
GJ

Hi Lindoz, long time no see, good to see you back. How's the motif?
Were you there on the public days?

We shall see about the 7000 when we get our hands on it. However there are a few things you must have misunderstood, or you talked to the wrong people.

The 7000 is 128 note poly, and does retain the disk drive.

The sx6 gives you various combinations of bass, accomp and drums output for external mixing/dsp etc. The sub out on the 7000, as I understood it, is the output of the sub-woofer only. So on stage you can get away with smaller left and right speakers and only one bass box, for the same quality/loudness, or keep the existing setup and have the option of bass enhancement too.

As I understood it there is quite a difference in the usb. The sx6 usb is meant to only mimic the parallel functionality and transfer/edit data to the pc.

The 7000 usb, will obviously also do this but goes much further, as I understand it by transfering digital wave audio to the pc, among other things. Assuming that the 7000 has independant dsp for microphone and line in, that means you could balance a vocalist and electric guitar with the voices of the 7000, play the wave file directly into your laptop and pc, and make an audio cd straight away (or an MP3 or WMA with the technics software).

It seems to me that with no analogue stage needed in the process, the big advantage of this is that the quality of the audio cd is totally independant of the quality of the analogue to digital converters in your pc soundcard. It does not matter if you have a $10 soundcard or a $1000 soundcard since only wave audio data is being transfered.

Once in the pc you can equalise/compress/dsp the file easily with Sound Forge or Goldwave, again with no degradation in the audio. To me, this is a very useful step forward.

I agree about the soloists, naturally everyone will make their own mind up if a particular set of voices, styles or features justifies changing, as I said before, we shall have to see.

Hnmm, I feared this.

I really need better sounds, especially since I've recently added a hardware and software sampler to my little studio. The sound quality of those two instruments is astounding. A chello, a violin, or stacato trumpets really sound like the real thing, not at all like most crappy thin soloist sound found on the KN6500. I was hoping Technics would at least double the sample ram to increase quality, seems they didn't. And without the ability to add new samples yourself (which Yamaha and GEM have had for quite some time now) I'm not sure I'll be buying.

Yes, I agree with you JvG.

The use of my KN6000 is complete changed in the last few months. I now only use it to create midifiles to give myself an idea of a new song. After completing this midifile I edit the song in the studio of a friend of mine, where I use his samples, and not this (in comparison to his samples) thin sounds in the KN6000. After that, I only use the KN6000 again life on stage. The quality of the sounds is good enough for the stage, but not for studio-use. I was hoping that we at least could add new samples to the KN7000. Maybe my keyboard-favour will change after all, and will I use a Korg or something like it in a year from now..... At least I hope that Technics will monitor this Forum and others closely. Maybe a lot of changes can be made to the new KN7000, so we can really see this radical changes one could expect after three years development!