Sure is a lot of money for a work in progress...

Sometimes such blind praise actually undermines an instrument in the eyes of intelligent observers. All the TOTL arrangers, even your old G-70, have great sound, and you will not find any consensus beyond that.

It's fine to have a preference, but to dismiss the excellence of the other manufacturer's arrangers is to be rather lacking in discrimination and sensibility.

Ian

Ian,

the G-70 is great
the AUDYA is GREATER
for me of course :-)

Ian, would you ever give the AUDYA a fair chance...
and actually try one out live?

I think we can all agree that Tony Hughes was the most upset, totally bashing Ketron for months on end.

If you read his comments in the Ketron Forum, he is a very happy customer right now.

He said his Audya is a different keyboard.

"The live drums are larger than life on OS4, if you thought for one minute they were good on Os3.0, they certainly are mind boggling now. I think that Roberts has had a lot to do with OS4 even though he lives in Canada and Ketron in Italy, the World isn’t that big anymore with the Internet. If he has had much to do with Audya he’s done an excellent job of it, this is not the same keyboard I bought last year, and it’s moved up 5 gears!
If you close your eyes and listen to Robert playing the Audya its sound like it says on the button, but 100 times better. "

So is it worth it ?

Perhaps the Audya is greater than the G-70, but it depends on what "greater" means to you.

I like an overall balanced sound, not just robust bass and drums...the G-70 (and Tyros3, and Korg PA2Xpro) have a far better balanced sound, when I compare the on-line demos.

That makes them "greater" to my ears.

I'll probably never see or play an Audya, I'm afraid, for it is too much of a mystery for the music dealers in my territory to risk the investment of bringing one in....so I have to rely on on-line demos for comparison.

Other than the more robust (and often, too loud) drums and bass, I fail to hear anything else that trumps similar products by the big three.

Ian

Lee, no offense but I have performed with many Ketron arrangers and modules, X1, X9, Midjay, Sd1, and always went back to Yamaha for various reasons...that drum & bass argument gets a bit old after a while.... There were however many features I did enjoy on Ketron products but the total package for MY needs on stage weren't enough to make me keep it.
I respect your opinion and hope you will enjoy whatever you decide to purchase and use.

Good luck.



[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 04-10-2010).]

Yeah, it's a real shame that Tony hasn't bothered to be as effusive in his praise of the Audya on THIS forum as much as he was determined to bash it while he had his (mostly self-inflicted) problems a while back. After dominating this forum bashing it incessantly, he ONLY posts his positive comments somewhere else. It unbalances the coverage, IMO.

I remember, after trashing the Audya for his button problem, after he actually got around to doing what some of us had suggested for AGES (and he had dismissed as not the answer) and it was finally fixed, he never even BOTHERED to post here saying it was fixed, and how he got it fixed. Now, after slamming it relentlessly for months, he chooses to post all his praise of it on the Ketron forum only. So those trolling this forum for information only have the bad stuff to read.

It's just like the newspapers... slander a guy on page one, and print the retraction on page eleven, in with the unread articles...

As to the Audya issue, as with most arrangers, I honestly think most people get their likes and dislikes of an arranger FAR more from the ROM styles than they do from any technical aspects of the OS itself. Those that primarily play Latin music are Ketron's most fervent fans. Then those that REALLY want that 'live' sound are the next bunch that admire it... But Korg and Roland (if you discount the guitars in Roland's case) are not THAT far behind it, especially if you voice them right and let the drums be as upfront as Ketron's usually are mixed. And they can be had FAR cheaper than the Audya.

But OS4 has introduced MANY quite important features, some of which, yes, SHOULD have come out in OS1 but some of which are quite new and beyond what was initially announced, so it's fair to say that, although the Audya IS a 'work in progress', it's no more a work in progress than say the PA2Xpro, which has been updated to include new features like DNC, but nobody is bitching that that SHOULD have been invcluded in OS1

Let us not forget that Yamaha have a sampler, too, on the T3, but it has next to NO editing, and NO import of any format whatsoever other than its' own (multisample import, that is), and AFAIK, can't even record samples using its' own hardware. So give the Audya a break... for an arranger, its' extra features are pretty much on a par for most arrangers save perhaps the PA2Xpro. And some of them are FAR in advance of Korg's, who still suffer from a paltry three fills, and gets a much bigger break about it than its' users are prepared to give the Audya...

To be honest, for every feature missing from an Audya (some of which are pretty irrelevant, IMO, like a full onboard sequencer - no-one doing SERIOUS sequencing is working in the box, these days), it has two or three that nothing else has. Not bad, really!

But, if you bother to listen to all the demos available for each arranger, most people's opinion of them still boils down to whether you like the styles or not, and what each of us is looking for in that department varies radically... so it's unsurprising our opinions of the same arranger vary radically, too.

well said Diki,

we are agreeing more and more these days

Not too expensive for me...its not more expensive from OL NEKO XXL which comes to my
house soon...i had the chance to have Audya for only half the price, but its not worth it.
Trust me, if it was something good i would've had my own already...sadly thats not the case.
NEKO will cost around 7500$, Audya 5000$ and for
me probably wayyyy less...i am still not getting it.

Apples to apples, please, Nedim...

Neko isn't an arranger in the slightest. Audya isn't a VSTi host. Comparing the two (even pricewise) is utterly irrelevant.

And just about EVERYTHING is pretty cheap compared with a Steinway D..! But that really has no bearing on whether one arranger is over $1500 MORE than an equivalent TOTL arranger from another manufacturer (equivalent, at least, in the sense that both are the top of their respective ranges). There's much quite unique on an Audya, but OTOH, there's much that is actually missing, too. So it's not like its' almost Wersi-like price point is simply taking everything that the others already have and ADDING the extra stuff.

Audya is 'one step forward, one step back', rather than 'one giant leap for mankind', as far as I am concerned...

I agree..

Neko is in a league of its own....the league of production music station...

-PRoduction station
-Workstation
-Solo synthesizer
-Arranger workstation
-Home arranger keyboard
-Stage piano
-Electronic Organ


All are digital keyboard instruments (which steinway is not) and all these types of keyboards someway have overlaps...
there are no strict borders between these different types of key instruments anymore and its allways possible to compare the taste of 2 different types of fruit with eachother...

Next to that... You can always change the Neko intoo an arranger with live-styler, but thats kind of trying to get a pineaple look like an apple...