I have never been much interested in learning all the down and dirty details of any arranger I have owned but I hope to do just that with the little Korg. For me it is just another way to fill my days when I am not gigging.

The built-in speakers are very poor at best. Sound quality is bad and volume is poor. Even for playing around the house it requires a bit better speaker setup. l am using my Bose L1 Compacts with it and it sounds pretty good. A good pair of headphones would work fine too.

By the way, the SD card slot is in the back of the unit - poor placement in my opinion. Also, the card goes in the slot up-side-down compared to all other SD card slots I have ever used. I am finding the screen usable and not to bad at all but I do miss the lights on the buttons to tell me what is on or off. The keyboard labels would be hard to read in a dark gig environment and will require some sort of lighting. And unlike the PA1X and PA2X pro I owned when you change variations or sounds there is no glitch or pause - it is seemless.

I thought not being able to lock a sound into a variation and have the sound change with variation changes would be a bummer - but I am finding it rather easy to change both when needed. The OS is fast - things load rapidly and there is no waiting for your selections to be playable.

I have a ton of Korg styles and have managed to learn how to load them from the SD card - but I still have not figured out how to load performances from the SD card. I have done a factory restore and that was easy and fast.

To be useful on gigs there has to be a way to create a "playlist" on the SD card and access that. I don't know how to do that yet - but the night is not over. All in all for the money it is a winner - and I have no real complaints. It certainly will be fun to work with and perhaps I will learn how to tweak sounds and even create styles..

Deane