Thought Id start a Korg PA800 love fest here while its in Vogue .....
& please remember the title of this post


1- Songbook that saves transpose beside All parameters Sty,Smf,Mp3,Txt
2- Key-feel
3- Weight
4- Button layout & touch screen
5- Navigation/Touch screen in live play
6- 16 bar loop styles
7- Sequencer editing
8- Most Sounds for MY needs
9- DUAL Mp3, SMF player /recorder
10-Killer TC Vocalizer best I have ever sang thru yet.
11- Locking system

Theres more but I'll wait till more owners post their love.......then we can start disecting

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 10-21-2007).]

Great topic in anticipation of my board arrival next week Hope we have some replies

I'll be sure to chime in soon.

Zuki you made a very wise choice......

Good luck & be patient......ask questions, read the Korg Pa800 forum, use the songbook feature......
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=50
http://www.korgpa.com/pa_root/en/news/news.html?en
http://www.korg.de/index.php?id=6725&popup=9692&no_cache=1

Each Style Element can go upto 32Bars.

That I sell them LOL

All of the above plus:
Repeating hold on fills until pressed again.

Ability to change entire programs of voices on the fly without missing a beat.

Choices of control parameters available with EC5 pedal(a must have for me).

There are so many I can't even think of, or know yet.

1-Editing/Saving anything on the fly without missing a beat!

2-Fills continuously repeat when pressed twice.

3-Fade works on all media....styles/smf/mp3

4-Menu tabs on bottom of display touch screen or Button sts.....also displays what instruments on each STS sound instead of guessing + pads, lyrics,Mic....
super helpful in live play.

more to come............

hey Donny,as this thread is supposed to be dedicated to the pa800, shouldn't it really be in the Korg forum?
Dennis

Hi
ditto for most of the above.
Some of the functions like vocalizer & mp3 I can't comment on because I probably won't use them & haven't tried them.
For me , the pads are a great feature. They can add variety to a style. They can be added as additional instrument tracks, or I can mute a style track ( or 2 etc) & use a pad instead for a simple style..
The pads can also be triggered by the EC5 Pedal board.
Lots of pad creation functions onboard, including, smf to pad, style to pad & pad to pad. Plus event list editing.
Also theres lots of style editing functions onboard.

best wishes
Rikki

Dennis, that place is sleepsville...Donny wants to actually get some responses.

Ian

Hi Ian, yeah I figured that. But it still should be in the dedicated forum,imho, otherwise Nigel might just as well save some moderating effort and close all the forums except the general one, there would only be one to check on then...Hell, he might even save some dollars on bandwidth..He has gone to the trouble of setting them up and no-one uses them. It's not a personal dig at donny at all, just if I wanted info on a PA 800, the korg forum is the first one I would look at. Instrument specific threads belong on instrument specific forums.
dennis

Well I knew the hijacking would come sooner or l8tr....last time I looked this is the General Arranger forum

1- Ability to create "different titled" SONGBOOK Lists which can include Styles/Smf/Mp3's for different gigs with easy list access on the fly & then just touch the screen select to start AWESOME!!

2- Easily touch, select different instruments of style parts on the fly & save.

3- Velocity Organs YES!

4-The PADS, The PADS, THE PADS

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 10-22-2007).]

Nobody mentions the "sound". When people speak of G70, or Tyros, or PAX, or Ketron they always talk about how great it sounds. It seems nobody mentions this for the PA800.
I know it's improved since I had one, but is it GREAT???
DonM

refere to my #8

Don here we go into the personal opinion mode again.....

YES the Pa800 with RX technology sounds great for MY NEEDS.....or it would be gone by now....KORG gives you all the tools to make it be your own and Sound Fantastic...its up to you as a musician to sink your teeth into it and make it happen...
with OS1.51....my editing & tweaking on styles & sounds, a few converted styles....it IS definitly be on par with anything out there you want to compare it to....as far as the features its above most anything out there straight up!

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 10-22-2007).]

I have heard it both ways and you really should hear it with the 1.5 upgrade. It sounds better to me than the other major boards, but then that's only my opinion. In the features category, i'm blown away.

Bernie

Just curious, Donny, but was it really necessary to "edit and tweak" even after the OS upgrade?

Will Zuki have to do the same?

Hopefully I'll have my hands on one this week and see if it would meet my needs...hypothetically, of course...I'm staying with my S900 which meets, and even exceeds my requirements.

Ian

Thanks guys, that's what I was after in this case, personal opinions. I will eventually have to check one out again I suppose. I did like a lot of the features, but of course there are things I like better about the S900, as there were with SD1, etc., etc., . . .
DonM

Yeh Donny,

Will I have to major tweak? I have little tweak time. Off to 2 jobs, good thing I don't have the 800 with me - yikes!

Ian how naive are you dude? this may shock you,I have never had a Kb that I didn't have to make it my own with intense homework! there is NO arranger on the market that I am satisfied with out of the box that includes all of my Yamahas 8k,9k,740,2000,2100,3000,T1,T2, and everything else too long to list....
I'll repeat it to your Yamaha brainwashed ears NO KB!
If your gonna let some manufacturer dictate your music by what they give you your in big trouble.....get in there do your intense home work if you know how ....if not ASK someone for help, read the manual,....or maybe wait for a day when these companies will care about their customers enough and produce quality DVD tutorials on easy & advanced procedures of the operation of their products ....settle on what they give out of the box, No way Jose.....dont be a fool, be a realist........again & again my friends I say...learn how to listen.
I play it, I sing it, I dj it, I perform what ever is needed to have my audiences get 100%.........some day go listen to the crap your competition is projecting in venues around your area.....then say to yourself I CAN DO MUCH BETTER & go do it!!!

I LET MY EARS BE MY GUIDE Period!
Right now the pa800 is doing the job beyond the call of duty ....tommorow could be something else....who knows? & who cares I will play an dpeform with what ever comes down the pike IF NEEDED....but for now Im very happy with my KORG PA800 for sure......a little strong for an afternoon post with NO smileys either.....but IM finally off today and need to vent....laugh if you will.....but you know I'm right!

Play Music Everyday my friends.

zuki return the pa800 and go back & settle for what the yammy boards give you...if you not gonna put the time in to make it your own sorry,I dont know what to tell you.....
I'm serious.

And vent you did, Donny. Good for you, although it seems you were trying to justify your purchase rather than purge yourself.

I'm not nearly as naive as you suppose Donny, I was right about the PA-800...it needed a lot of tweaking.

Thanks,

Ian



[This message has been edited by ianmcnll (edited 10-23-2007).]

as do all my Yamaha arrangers, ketron & Roland..but even more especially in the style department....I went from 30 converted, to 7 I feel sorry for ya if your not editing & tweaking your KB's unless you just cant tell the difference......




[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 10-22-2007).]

That's cool, buddy...I rarely, if ever use factory styles except on clinics/demos, where they do an exemplary job.

For my personal gigs, I make my own styles...why sound like everybody else?

Ian

Wow! You did get up on the wrong side of the bed - chill out, I was only kidding. I'm looking forward to the PA800 (I thought you realized that by now)

zuki

zuki....I apologize for my crude behavior...I know your excited about receiving your new Korg PA800.....in time this may be your last kb for a long while...it can do it all....if I can help you please dont hesitate to email me ok?

Thanks Donny I am so excited I cannot tell you.....

Zuki so when is the big day?

1-Another thing I love is the #2 intro /ending that lets YOU Play your own chords this can make every song have a different intro/ending .......My G70 also had this great feature instead of the same FIXED ones you can mae the song YOURS.

2- I love that I can make edits on the fly WITHOUT any glitches or stops in REAL TIME Live playing, sometimes while your playing your NEED to make that perfect correction to a sound or style part, EFX etc etc ....I could never do that on my Yamaha's.....there would always be a second or two of stoppage disruption while playing while the unit processes the SAVE.

About the only kb that doesn't need any tweaking as far as the styles and voices is Ketron. After adjusting the vocal settings I could I just play them.
Haven't done much to the Yamahas either but the e.q. is critical and a lot of the styles parts need to be muted or the volume adjusted.
The Korg PA 80 didn't need a lot but I had to teach it to play a little country.
The Roland G70 only needed overall e.q. to sound good, and not much of that.
On none of these I had to really edit and re-save every style to sound good. And you shouldn't have to. I found on my PA800 I would have to do that to EVERY style. Probably the OS upgrade fixed it though. And a great feature of Korg is that EVERY style CAN be edited or replaced in the factory banks. All keyboards should be that way!
As far as I know only Korg and Ketron do it.
Anyway, if I had Korg PA800 still, that's why I would love it.
DonM


[This message has been edited by DonM (edited 10-24-2007).]

Hi DonM
Why would you need to overwrite the factory styles? Modern boards have plenty of User style slots available. (And if you have a hard disk the sky’s the limit)
I have had my board for 2 or 3 years now, and I am nowhere near to using up the 2000 available User Style slots. (Although as it has a hard disk it wouldn’t matter if I did)
Curious

Bill


[This message has been edited by abacus (edited 10-24-2007).]

Bill, you're right, you don't have to, but it's still very convenient to me to have all the styles I use in factory locations.
I like the Ketron registration system, so I used it almost exclusively. Don't like Yamaha's registration system much, because you can't just save a single registration, you have to deal with banks. Pretty much the same with Korg. Better with Roland.
On my Yamaha, I have so many styles, I need to spend about a week organizing them!
Thanks,
Don

Roland's can replace the ROM styles with edited versions, as well. This is VERY handy for creating your own OTSs, but still being able to call up factory styles on the fly.

Plus, on Rolands, there is a bank of ten 'Custom' style slots where you can put 3rd party or reworked styles for each bank of ROM styles, accessible when you are in the ROM style selection area (no having to go to a Finder or other Banks).

Add to that that each set of Custom styles can be different for different UPSs (sort of an overall Performance Setup) so you can tailor them for different occasions. Pretty flexible, IMO...

Well, this must be new. I don;t remember any 1990s era Rolands that let me write over the factory styles. You could always edit and REsave somewhere else, but the Korg let's you completely replave the entire rhythm bank if you want to. Pretty gutsy move on their part.

I have a request and it's just out of sheer curiosity: I am afraid that a topic like this one is going to be pretty useless for someone who is undecided about purchasing the PA 800 and hopes to make up his/her mind reading what has been posted here.
Why? Well, because it's obvious that those who are posting here are in their "honeymoon" phase with the keyboard and so their posts have a strong positive bias; yet, if you read between the lines, there are hints that not everything is so positive. For example, nobody is posting anything specific about the sounds: how are they? Which ones are your favorites? How do they stand against the competition?
And what about the styles? Are there weak points there? Is the PA 800 good for every kind of music or are you regretting a keyboard owned in the past that was better in a specific style (or sound) department?
I think that remarks (and comparisons) like these ones would be much more helpful for a potential buyer. Just like helpful would be a thread about the negatives of a keyboard (not just the PA 800, mind you!)
As an example, below there is a comparison between the PA 800 and the Tyros 2, done by Manuel Dorantes on another Forum (Arranger World): now, this is to me a good example of what I was just saying: I think that comparisons like this one, albeit subjective, are really helpful for a potential buyer.
Besides, Manuel is past the honeymoon phase with both keyboards...

"Comparing both is subjetive, and also depends on what kind of music you may be playing too, and I am not talking about the factory styles alone, I have loaded BOTH keyboards with user styles.
I both I Use registrations (17 pages of Banks of 8 in T2) and most of the Top row of the performances/registrations in the PA800, that way is very fast to operate either one.
For style of music:
Foxtrot......I prefer the PA800, aldo the T2 is not far behind.
Latin........Rhumbas in the T2 some chachas and tango in the PA800
Waltzes...a tie....
Polkas.....PA800
Swing.....T2
West Coast Swing....T2
Country......T2 by 3 hairs...LOL !!
SAmbas.....T2....
R&B close tie....for a hair, the T2 is ahead...
8 Beats.......PA800
SOUNDS

NYLON GUITAR......T2
ELEC.GUITAR....PA800
AC. PIANO.....PA800
CHOIRS....PA800
STRINGS....I Prefer the PA800s. I do not like the sustain/hold in this sounds, I like or used to a sustaining decay.....the T2 are also nice...but I "feel" more human the one from the PA800.
Vibes....T2...here the PA800 is like the choirs in the T2....BAD....
Accordions.....PA800
Saxes......T2
Brass......Tie....
Troumpets.....PA800 by a half hair.
Organs.....I like the S.A. Organs in T2 but I am not crazy on the other ones, In the B3 type, the PA800 wins.
Electric Pianos.....If you are using DX7 Type(Tines).....the T2....if you are using Rhodes/Wurlitzer type....the PA800.
Drums......Yamis are ok....but seems like the PA800 are a little more "RAW".
Other differences:

No score window in the PA800.
Faster USB load/save in PA800.
Going from playing style to song.....no need to switch windows, providing you are in Main screen in either, in T2 just press play in the Song....in the PA800, needs to switch to SOng Play and if you have not selected de song, it takes more moves than in the T2.....so T2 is easier and faster in this area."

Its interesting about overwriting Factory styles etc, as with all Wersi OAS instruments up to OAS4 (2002) this was possible, however from OAS5 (2003) a Factory protected section was added and the number of User Styles etc that could be saved was at least doubled. (This addition also satisfied the requests from a lot of Wersi owners)
My Personal Opinion is to have a Factory protected section, with a large User section.
It should be interesting to see what other people think.

Bill

I have now started a separate thread on this subject, rather then hijacking this one. http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum37/HTML/016451.html


[This message has been edited by abacus (edited 10-27-2007).]