I am a European entertainer and for the last 7 years I've been working overseas all over the world. My trusted friend for over 4 years was Roland G1000 and only because of its size and weight I have considered buying another keyboard. All the hotels that I worked with have they're own keyboards and electric pianos, therefore I said to myself that just a module will do the same job as a whole keyboard. Even more, it would save me a lot of trouble with the transportation of a big and heavy flight case. The only module that I could find on the market two months ago was of course Ketron XD3 and after downloading the manual and reading the reports on this forum, I have decided to sell G 1000 and buy XD3.
From the very beginning I had problems with the module. The power supply module was not properly set and the module could not even read a floppy disc. Thanks to the Ketron support I was able to fix this issue by myself. Even after I fixit, the module was not working well. The problems are:
1. For some reason the bass line of some midi files is dropped in the middle of the song for a measure or two, after that starts to play again and again some notes are dropped now and then. It is so frustrating because it did never happened with G1000 and I use midi files with no more than 5 tracks. But why always the bass track!?!?!!!
2. The Midi 1 input cannot be used as a GM module while a song is playing. I can use this only when I play with styles. I have been trying this with Roland G 1000 and it worked very well! G 1000 it has as well 64 notes polyphony and 32 midi channels and I have NEVER experienced dropped notes even when I used to play 16 tracks midi files!!!
3. The text scrolling is blocked if I am doing song tracks editing on the fly or anything else that requires pressing the EXIT button. If I am using a midi with lyrics, if I need to push the exit button during the play, the karaoke lyrics are mixed with some other text files that I used before, or the song may stop!!!!! for a second! It is so damn frustrating! My band has a repertoire of over 500 songs and I was so happy when I saw that I can load all the lyrics in the module and get rid of those big ugly songbooks. It looks so good with only a 14 inches flat screen on the stage and the singers do not need to search for the lyrics anymore, but this thing does not work fine!
4. Due to all this issues above I do believe that the 64-note polyphony is just a joke! It is something that Roland was trying to do with G800 seven years ago, when they've announced it as the first 64-note polyphony keyboard on the market. FAKE! Only G1000 has indeed 64-note and 32 channels of midi and you can feel this.
I have some other issues to write about but for now I think is enough. The worst thing is that all this trouble is happening during my current job in a 5 star Marriott hotel in China! It is just like a nightmare where this beautiful luxury hotel is becoming a prison! Yes, I have the feeling that I am stuck with this module here in China, away from any Ketron dealer or service center. And it's not only me, the other three members of my band have to share all these!
The idea of one box doing all those things is great, but it does not work! Ketron should build a module for professionals who don't mind spending extra dollars for a good tool that they can relay on! By the whole behavior, this module is just a toy for home users, far away from a professional level.
I was hoping that the new OS version would fix these bugs but NOPE my friends; the nightmare is still there! Maybe Ketron don't care too much about XD3 quality, as they don't have any competition on the modules market.
Too bad! And too sad!
From China - Flavi.
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