Originally posted by mc:
I drove up to Franks shop at Audioworks, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Frank and his Audya for about 4 hours. He showed me the entire board and we also had a Yamaha s910 and the Korg Pa2x to compare.
Layout: Good layout, everything seems to be in it right location, easy to find everything, fills, sounds, styles, mic, menu, etc. The 5 buttons on left and right of the screen are placed a little odd, but one can get use to it. Pages are easy to navigate, but pressing the each voice catg. it will scroll through each page, as the same with the styles. The left and right arrows also controls scrolling.
Voices: The voices are very good, but there are similar to what Ketron voicing style in the past. The guitars are a big improvement from the SD1/X1. Saxes, brass, strings, etc are also good. If you’re a past ketron user these are great bread and butter sounds. The pianos and electric pianos are great. If you’re a accordion player you won’t find better accordion/mussette than ketron.
Styles: The styles are just simply amazing! Hands down, KO punch! The realism is unbelievable. The lain, ballads, folk, country, ballroom & dance sound fantastic. Funk, R& B, Disco, Club are ok. The drums with the audio guitars and bass, etc just give it a raw band feel. Like to have 5 piece stage band just jamming away. Latin is the best I heard to date, super high quality, like a professional salsa or merengue band. Hard to describe unless you sit down and play it. It has that intelligent arranger feature, that the style does not become repetitive and it changes up every so often.
Additional features: Midjay package is a huge plus, mix midi, wav, mp3 with mp3. It’s a great feature. I did not try the Voicetron, but Ketron’s vocalizer was never bad to begin with.
Stability: First in foremost, to think that the Audya 3.0 is unstable is a crock of sh*t. Audya is just as stable as any other keyboard. I pressed every button to see if would lock up and nothing! Not once did it lock up! (sorry Frank for all the button pushing). For it to crash as some state/say its because 9 times out of 10 it is user error. Frank also explained that all of time that he used it on gigs there was also no lock ups or crashes. As far as bugs, there are some, it does make the keyboard unplayable. From what I understand, creating styles on the audya, it is not available yet, coming in 4.0. But I doubt I would be able to create anything was well programmed as they do, so it does not matter to me. But you have editing capabilities on user and factory styles.
Comparisons: Like I said above, we had the PA2x and S910 on hand. Korg & Yamaha are very polished sounding keyboards, but jumping back in forth, between the three of them. Korg & Yamaha started to sound boring. I found that the club, dance, funk, R&B styles have more of an edge than the Audya. The ballads in Korg & Yamaha sound great but very similar, very CD like. I have to say that Yamaha single SA guitars are still a winner.
Size: The audya looked about 2 inches more on each side sitting below the Yamaha, the PA2X just about the same but not as deep. Audya is a little heavy, 38-39lbs +/-.
Conclusion: If I had the choice and if my wife would have let me purchase a keyboard before Christmas, I would have been the Audya. The overall live sounding styles just outshine the other two. As far as cost comparisons it is a fairly expensive board but when you add vocalizer, mp3 and wav DJ player/mixer. The cost are not that far off if you were to purchase each piece separately.
Additions: If read in the past, that some do not like voices of Ketron understandably. If your looking for different voices I would suggest a synth of your choice along with the audya. It will be a great combo.
Once Again, thank you Frank for your time.
PS. Leezone if your waiting for Audya 2 there won't be for a long while, Ketron has big plans for the this Audya and I don't see it becoming obsolete anytime soon. So give it up, start saving some Euros and meet me at Franks!
edited: darn spelling errors, I'm sure I missed a few!
[This message has been edited by mc (edited 12-05-2009).]
MC,
User actions are the things that cause the Audya to lock up, yes you are correct on that one, stop there, I mean by pressing buttons or button in a manner along with others cause the lock up, if a human didn't press the button then it would not lock up, if a human didn't press the buttons you would be playing the Audya with the default style and voice(boring) if a human had programmed the KB correctly it would not lock up, and the fact that the Audya did not lock up on you or Frank is you did not get the right button sequence, just like I didn't get the right 6 number lottery sequence last night! I play a Wurlitzer now and then it has 20 ranks of pipes, it has around 400 tabs, now you work out the permutations of those tabs and if play the organ for the next 20 years I will not get the same set up twice, any good at math’s, MC. And I can tell you 4 hrs in Franks is not as good as taking it home. I never said OS3.0A was unstable, it’s still got bugs from OS1.0 that never got fixed, there is much more to do that I have already paid for and I sit in waiting for Ketron, they are full of s***t and talk, talk is cheap and KB is expensive. MC you wait until it’s fixed properly like me and others and it has all the bells and whistles. The dollar Euro might swing. I’m not holding my breath, MC did Frank tell you when OS4.0 is out. Glad you liked it, I have put my PA2x back on the stand, I’m sick of waiting for OS4.0.
BTW the last Audya I saw lock up I wasn’t playing it so don’t blame me, the dealer said that OS3.0 had not been loaded on correctly, apparently the guy had held the side of his mouth wrong as it was loading, so his wife loaded the second time, apparently singing 14 verses of “Is this the way to hammer Audya”Doh!!! This appeared to work, since it hasn’t locked up since, albeit he sold the KB on so he wouldn’t know anyway, does this help!
Cheers
[This message has been edited by Tony Hughes (edited 12-05-2009).]
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