Hi Dirk! Thanks for your excellent review report on the PA1xPro. Your evaluation confirms my thoughts as well following my brief time auditioning and playing it in my local music store. The PA1Xpro definitely has a LOT of powerful features (just too bad (for me) it has no rootless chord recognition ). I especially like the optional high bit rate MP3 support. I also like the ability to easily select pad 'play once' or 'loop play'. I wish Yamaha supported that for all internal pad sequences. I'm particularly interested in hearing more from you regarding the PA1XPro's vocalizer as I somehow recall (perhaps wrongly?) that the PA80's vocalizer was more or less a vocoder, and limited in the advanced chordal harmony dept. Is the PA1Xpro's vocal harmonizer a big step up from the PA80's and does it include triggering auto accompaninent (and vocal harmonies) with either right or left of split of keyboard too? This provides an important feature to allow you to run manual bass lines in the left hand and playing piano comping chords in the right hand, allowing for auto accompaniment drums & other instrument (other than bass) auto accompanimnent playback.

Dirk, 'How many' fills are included with each style, and how are they triggered? Is each fill linked to a dedicated button on the keyboard, or do you need to go into a sub menu to access them all? Though Yamaha only includes 4 fills, what I particualarly like is that they are integrated with & conveniently triggered (with auto fill turned on) by merely pressing the associated (A,B,C,D) variation button. Since I like to trigger spontaneous live fills at different intervals in my songs, I'm curious to find out exactly the way fills, intros & endings work on the PA1Xpro.

Dirk: I can only say that if you (or anyone else here) can CONVINCE Korg to PLEASE add 'rootless chord' recognition to the PA1Xpro chord recognition palette, I would be ever grateful, and most likely then purchase a Korg PA1Xpro myself.


Scott