A brief review

If I were to compare it to the PA80, I'd probably talk negatively about most things in the PA80, so I'll try to refrain from doing so, but for those of you who has described/understood this keyboard as being a PA80 on testosterone, ....boy you are so wrong.

To you arranger-guys out there, who have had the pleasure to own or try the PA80, I'll agree that some of the styles are similar, even identical to the PA80, but there is so much more to the PA1X-Pro.
The voices are so much sweeter, and the styles sound as if they spent several months just to prepare and tweak these.
The "songbook-concept" is fantastic, at least for those of us who like to sit at home with a glass of nice red-wine, and just play around with the keyboard. The names in the song-book are "bogus" but easy to edit into one’s own liking. Beware that all entries in the song-book are defined as the C-key, but can also be edited easily. The live-performance of this keyboard in a solo- duo- or even trio-performance is beyond my dreams.
The screen could have been better as it could very well have been more tilted, giving the operator a better, crisper view instead of having to "mount" the keyboard, or climb on top of it; however when you spend a few days fooling around with it, you will soon discover that the layout of the screen, with all of the menus, sub-menus and tweaks is so simple that navigating around in it’s depths is easy.
The choir-simulator is (to me) outstanding. At the touch of a button you can sing alone or along, with or without effects and voice-expansion, and you can add up to 4 voices-choir, which all can be tweaked to fit pitch, volume and vibrato...one by one. The PA1X-Pro is also equipped with pre-defined choir-settings, some good and some bad, but fun.

And the sheer sleek design of it portrays nothing less than elegance; well if I ever was to get a lover, this would be it!

Gaining access to the compartment hiding the RAM-chips, the ROM-chips and the hard-drive (15Mb) is easy. You need to unscrew 7 philips-head screws, and the lid is (like the rest of this baby’s body) made of aluminum, and it is hinged so it's very easy to upgrade this board.

AND THE SWITCHES LIGHT UP IN SHARP BLUE!!!

A few drawbacks

Since I am concentrating to give an impartial review, I have to mention the drawbacks that I have found so far.

The Audio-In diode, that supplies information about the input-gain of the microphone (or other inputs) keeps flashing from time to time, even though nothing is connected to the keyboard. Even when the keyboard is idle, this little thing keeps flashing, as to remind me that once I plug in the microphone, I have more grand surprises in store.

The manual increase/decrease buttons next to the tempo-dial are not functioning properly. That is the +button. I will have to use more than normal pressure to get a response from this one. However this I trust to be a “monday-switch” in my keyboard alone, ad therefore not an actual drawback in the PA1X-Pro-.

The RAM-chip used for sampling-features is reported to be 977.250 bytes, which is about 15Mb less than it's supposed to. This problem is not addressed in the manual, but I do believe that this is one of the few bugs from within the OS, and I expect this to be corrected at the release of a newer version.



When playing real-time with full arranger, I've discovered that the drums and the accompaniment decreased in volume abruptly, and when I hit the fill-in, it restores to normal. This has only happened twice, so I'll wait and see if this is going to be a problem. The base-track has happened to decrease the volume for no reason, and I have yet to find an explanation as to why. Both these incidents have been reported to Korg – Italy and I trust them to be a thing of the past at the release of the new OS.

I was looking forward to the semi-weighed keys, however I don't think I've tried these types before, so I didn't know what to expect. What I got was all-plastic-keys with one extra spring mounted in the bearing, giving the sense of just having a bit tighter keys. Well, like I said, I did not know what to expect so....maybe it's just me.

If you think the start-up time of the PA80 grew long, wait until you try the PA1X-Pro. It takes forever to start, and if you were to edit e.g. a wave-file, the time from when you hit the record-button to the point where it's actually ready to record is looong. I would think that a keyboard this size, price and class would have a processor that could handle a bundle of data a bit faster...?

Well, all in all I won't complain...yet!
This is (and I'll say it in clear, clean words) the most amazing piece of machinery I've ever had the pleasure of operating...


If I were to "throw the dice" and rate this keyboard, this would be the result:

Looks 6
User friendly 5
Ease to operate 5
Voices 6+
Reliability 5

Over all 5.4


Wings.

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If you act, create or compose - you live.