Abacus..... ensnareyou said he had a Abacus Duo pro, fully loaded.... On Wersi's US site, they quote $19,900 for this, so maybe $16K+ with a discount?

So a T2 and a car doesn't seem that outrageous as a shopping comparison.....

A few organ manufacturers left over from the old days still haven't decided to join the 21st century, and are willing to build boutique organs at the inflated prices these things used to go for before modern keyboards decimated their sales. Back in the heyday of Hammonds, and Lowries and Wurlitzers, buyers knew, if they wanted a quality instrument, they would have to pony up $10k+ and break their backs trying to move it. But times and technology have changed.

Only a few holdouts remain with the business model of 40 years ago. Perhaps they can get a few buyers to invest capital amounts of money for something that is only incrementally better than other instruments an order of magnitude cheaper. Perhaps not.

The generation that is retiring now grew up on keyboards and synths from the seventies and eighties, with top prices being in the $3-4k range, not the$10-20k monsters their parents bought. And they have personal computers to compete with their discretionary spending, something their parents didn't. These personal computers are capable of doing most of what Wersi want to ask $16k+ for. So it's a tough sell.

Lionstracs are going to eat Wersi for lunch if they don't revise their business model. Mom and Pop are gone to greener pastures, and they are going to have to sell these things to US......

Diki,

A basic Wersi Abacus is all most people would ever need to do what they want. I wanted 76 keys and foot pedals so I opted for the Duo Pro version. The Abacus is around $7,500.00 USD. The Ikarus is also available and it has 76 keys and costs around $5,500.00 USD. One could hardly buy a Tyros 2 and a nice car for that kind of money.

I think you are seriously missing the point when it comes to the Wersi and why they charge so much for their products. The build quality and features rival any arranger made (all metal construction with wood sides, high quality TFT touch screen, lots of real time buttons and sliders). In addition the user interface is so well laid out you won't find another arranger that has so many features that is as easy to use. Until you've used one you won't be able to understand this (Wersi owners know what I am talking about).

Even if you bought the fanciest computer made, loaded it with GB's of RAM, VST's, audio software, and more, it would still not operate like the Wersi. Wersi has their software setup to operate all the features with such ease a small child could run it. To do this required Wersi to write extensive code and integrate VST's into their GUI, all that takes time and costs money. I would hardly call the Wersi incrementally better than a computer running VST's as there is simply no comparison in how the two operate. Wersi = Easy. Computer + VST's = Pain in the ass! Sure a computer system can work great but intuitive it's not.

Lionstracs can and will cost Wersi sales in the near future but not until Lionstracs GUI is as easy to use and factory sounds are on par. Right now Lionstracs offers nearly everything the Wersi has to offer at about half the price of a basic Wersi Abacus. Once Domenik improves the Mediastation sounds and fine tunes the GUI, Wersi will have a much harder time selling instruments. Still the Wersi does have some hardware features like dedicated drawbars but the Mediastation has programmable sliders that can act as drawbars.

It seems that Open Ended Instruments aren't for all people and that's fine. As I aid before, not everyone can afford them, nor do some people need the extensive features. For those of us that do the Wersi and Lionstracs are a great option to the basic arrangers offered by Yamaha, Korg, and Roland.

Ensnareyou,

I'd love to come over your house and see your collection of instruments. You sound like you have quite a collection to keep me busy the whole weekend!

Al

Me too...!

As I said, ensnareyou, I am perfectly happy to be proven wrong about these high priced beasts. I would LOVE to try them out. But, fact is, they are as hard to find and try out (I'm in the panhandle of Florida if anyone close by has one I could try.....) as a test drive in a Bugatti.......!

Videos, good quality MP3s, good hi-res panel shots and downloadable manuals (in English!) would go a long way to spreading the word. If Wersi want to make inroads in the US, all the above need to be addressed.

BTW, I downloaded and listened to the Wersi OAS Yamaha style translation mp3s..... it would be fascinating to hear a side-by-side comparison of the same style on a Tyros2 with no tweaks. Proof of the pudding, and all that......

I have enough keyboards to keep you busy for at least a year! I live on the West Coast though.

I believe there are several Wersi OAS owners in Florida and a few in PA. I think two Louvre's and a Scala. Contact Ralph at Wersi USA and I'm sure he will ask the owners if they'd be willing to show you the instrument. I think you'd be quite amazed when you saw it in person.

i thought that the Wersi/Tyros 2 Conversion demo was really quite good. It had captured the nuances of the instruments just like the T2 but the sound quality was not as high but i suspect thats more to do with the way it was recorded. If Wersi can pull this off with all makes of keyboards then they have moved up to a whole new level in terms of an "open system" . Can anyone tell me if they had to tweak the style after the conversion ?

Well done Wersi.

Hello Spalding 4
As far as I am aware, you just load in the styles and play, with no tweaking required, in fact from the current info available it does NOT convert them to a Wersi Style, but plays them as if they had been loaded into a Yamaha Keyboard.
Hopefully we will have more info when it is released. (Talking to Wersi at the Pakefield Festival, I got the impression that they were also in discussion with other manufactures)
We will just have to wait and see

Bill

Hi Abacus
For my engineer know how, can be impossible load a yamaha styles in another keyboard brand with OUT any conversion.
For load and play direct one Yamaha T2 styles, your system MUST have this features:

1) same pattern number, Intro, Fill, var, ending, stops..
2) same Sound palette Soundbank of the T2, with the same sound program change and sound Variation
3) all the sound palette MUST be programmed and edited with the same Volume setting of the T2
4) must have the same chords algotithms of the T2 or the styles will not have the same chords effects.

So..If Wersi is working to Clone 1 to 1 the T2 sounds with the same programs and variation, then this can be possible, BUT if they will continue holding the actual Wersi soundbank, need a Convertion styles or never can working.

Maybe this will be possible with the Mediastation and the mew GIGA Sampler GM/GS 4.0, because we can programming different GIG soundbank palette and recall it in realtime.
The big work will be find/develope/records the same T2 sounds under GIGA format and then link this all new GIG sounds in the Qsampler Database Soundbank manager, then the MS is able to play direct the T2 styles too.

We get a lot of styles request and a lot people seem that they CANT use well the EMC style converter.

In the next weeks we will delivery the new Windows tool T2 to MS Styles converter too.
This tool will Load a Yamaha style and convert it automatically to Mediastation format. Then we have only to remap the sounds with the MS editor, but the big work to convert styles will done in 2 seconds.

I really think that I must offer this feature too for make happy a lot of MS users.

I thing that will be great advantage of MEDIASTATION users.


Best regards.

OZ

Hi Domenick,
unfortunately I think it's not because people can't use it, its because EMC doesn't really do that great a job of the conversion.

I'm currently going thru the process of converting some of my Ketron SD1+ syles to OMB ( psr .sty format, soundsource is the new SD2 soundmodule) I put the sd style thru emc sd1 to yahama format & came up with a load of rubbish.
Decided to use EMC to save SD1 style as a midifile & used OMB's midi to style conversion & I've got it almost sounding like the original. Unfortunately it's a fair bit of work.

I think it will be fabulous for your clients if you can come up with a really good conversion tool.

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by LIONSTRACS:
[B]

We get a lot of styles request and a lot people seem that they CANT use well the EMC style converter.