Word over at the Korgforums site seems to indicate a considerable improvement in D/A converters and a big revamp of the effects section, and indeed, other than the seemingly endless issues with missing features and poor importing of legacy data, overall impressions of the raw sound seem very positive…

Sadly, it seems that the feature I think is the most groundbreaking, the ability to play two styles at the same time and either have both of them play fully, or mix and match different parts using mutes and faders seems rather buggy and incomplete. But hopefully it can get fully sorted and incorporated into the Songbook (which afaik isn’t possible yet).

To be honest, this feature solves one of the things that made hooking two arrangers together in the first place so attractive, the ability to quickly combine say the drums of one style with the bassline of another, etc.. Korg have the nuts and bolts of this (and enough CPU horsepower to pull it off), and I deeply hope that everyone else takes a look at this and copies (and improves!) it. You want nearly infinite style variety? Even two different styles offers the possibility of many different sounding combinations. Expand that to hundreds of individual styles, you can see that style fatigue may well be a thing of the past.

You are indeed a lucky lady, Rikki. Can’t wait until I can get my hands on a PA5x and see what all the fuss is about (both good and bad!)… 🎹