Hi,

I read with great excitement sk880user's posting that General Music has recently released a new special edition version of their WK8 arranger keyboard, the WK8SE. Apparently this special edition model of the WK8 incorporates General Music's superior PRO1 "piano sample" featured on their
renowned PRO1 keyboard and RealPiano Expander sound module. I own the RealPiano Expander module and have always wished that its'great acoustic piano sound could be incoporated in an arranger keyboard.

I checked General Music's website but noticed that the WK8SE is 'only' mentioned on the Italian version of their website. There is no mention of it at all on the English portion of their website. Unfortunately I am not able to read Italian. Could someone here interprete the specs of the WK8SE and tell me what other feature
enhancements over the standarad WK8 that the
the WK8SE offers. What is the price and when will it be available here in the USA?

Here is the link the General Music which provides the "WK8SE" specifications (in Italian):
http://gem.generalmusic.com/it/special/wk8se/index.html

Here is a rough edit of an ALta Vista translations of one part of the website. Elsewhere, it says there are 192 ROM styles and 32 RAM styles. Not enough for me. 24MB ROM which is low these days. However it does include the damper pedal modeling and ample real-time controls.


Sound Generation:
The rational positioning of the controls and wide graphical display (320 x 240 pixels) in an ergonomic, result in a pleasant and directed approach despite the enormous contained power in WK8 SE.
WK8 SE has has 32 parts, with 32 layers, 32 splits, 32 dynamic switches and one polifonia of 64 notes.
WK8 SE contains 24 MB ROM of quality PCM, comprising 1016 presets more 16 new sounds than pianoforte with ' Damper Physical Model' drawn from library Realpiano PRO2.
Navigation to the inside of this richest one sound library e' facilitated from an able operating system " to remember " the sounds (and the styles) of I use more frequent, permettendovi than richiamarli with the pressure of a single key, independently from their position in the database of the keyboard (Last Selection Memory).
WK8 IF e' equipped of an able D-RAM from 8 MB with backup battery, that it concurs the loading and edit of champions the stereo, increasing the dynamics and space yield of the timbriche; the sample memory inner e' ulteriorly expandible, installing until 32 MB of SIMMs modules. WK8 can import champions in one varieta' of formats, included Wave (PC), AIFF (Mac), Sound Designer1, Akai®, Kurzweil®, Sample Vision and Standard Midi Given Sample Dump.
The powerful Edit Sound extraordinarily allows manipulations of the sounds evolute, thanks you to filters of 2° and 4° the order (12/24 dB/oct) with control of resonance, to the possibility to manage until six oscillating ones for voice on three layers, and to the Wave Vector that concurs of riprodurre the champions (inner or imported) leaving from the beginning, the end or in two alternated modality.
Tracking of volume, pan, envelope and cutoff of the filters come defined with broken to six segments; the controlable LFO e' via MIDI. All the functions of editing are visualized graphically on the display.
WK8 IF e' enriched from 64 new Realtime Performances, purposely programmed in order to use in optimal way the enormous bookcase of sounds and inner effects.
The exclusive rights Drawbars Performances, allow to control in real time the sonorità typical of the electromechanical organs through the 8 sliders present on the panel. ROM of WK8 IF it includes the shapes of wave of a true Hammond B3, that arranged with an effect leslie of great realism, offers one perfect reproduction of this irreplaceable instrument.