I'm french I hope you will unsderstand my english.

Among those three arrangers builders, i'd like to know which gives the best sounds (especially orchestral sounds and church organ sounds) ?

At this time I think I'll buy the casio WK 3700. What do you think about it ?

You may want to post your question over at the General Arranger Keyboard forum here.

But just to give my $00.02 there's no such thing as "The best sounds". All depends on what you are after. I personally like the sound of Yamaha keyboards better. Others will disagree. Or agree. Get what I mean? Its all just a matter of opinion.

Good luck,

-ED-

------------------
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
- - - Oscar Wilde

3351 is correct in saying post your reply on the arrager forum, but it's a well known fact that Casio are OK for beginners but their styles and sounds are not a patch on the likes of Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Ketron, Gem, Wersi etc. You pay for what you get.

Actually I haven't even noticed the word "Casio" until you've mentioned it. Ooops

I was only speaking about Yamaha, Roland and Korg. Casio did make a lovely cZ101 back in the 80s but I guess they haven't made anything cool since...

They make nice calculators though. Or so I hear. LOL

-ED-

Actually, you will probably find different 'voices' sounding better on different KBs ... SO ... try them and decide which voices suit YOUR needs better ...
t.

Yep, Casio made some pretty cool analogues back in the heyday. They also did make something cool since. It was called the MZ2000. It was a full blown arranger made about 6 years ago.

Sonically it stands up nicely vs the big 3. Alas, the styles themselves aren't of top quality, but the board is still useful as a synth anyway.

We just did an A/B demo using the same midifile over at the General Arranger forum. Surprisingly enough, the MZ stacked up well against the competition, which to this point includes a Roland G1000, a Korg PA80, the Yamaha Tyros, the Yamaha Motif Es, and a freeware soundfont, the SGM 180.

Overall I thought the G1000 and free soundfont SGM180 sounded best, followed by the PA80 ( better mix and drums than the MZ ) and the MZ ( better lead voices than the PA80 ). The Tyros was ok but not great, and then dead last was the Motif ES.

Go figure huh ? Except I also believe that Yamaha has never seemed to put much if any effort into their GM sounds anyway. Nowhere is there any more evidence of that then on the Motif ES itself, which has very poor GM sounds, but very good panel voices ( patches ) overall ( IMHO of course ).

Just for the record, I have the Motif ES, the PA80, the MZ, and the SGM180 soundfont.

The bottom line is that I echo what others have already said.. Trust your OWN ears because sound itself is way too subjective in the first place. It also seems that a large percentage of the dedicated Yamaha arranger players at the GA forum rate the WK stuff ahead of the low end Yamaha arrangers in a similar price range.

AJ

Seriously though folks. Lets pretend we are up on the stand and we have to answer the question among those three given. Who would you say overall. We all know it's really a choice of two (sonically).

If I only had the choice of one to work with, as cumbersome as it may be in some redundancy as well, I believe I would choose the Yamaha (overall that is).
That is a tough one when I think of some of the really high tech sounds that Roland is capable of.

EDIT: Darn, you know I just have to add this:
It's too bad that Kurz wasn't added among the choices because as cumbersome is that is, and makes Yamaha programming like child's play. The sound is superbly all its own, and nearly always sounds even better than that which it may emulate. But the time involved is too the point where we seriously need to live longer first!
What's even more shocking is as old as the Kurz sound engine is!

[This message has been edited by MORPH! (edited 05-21-2006).]

MORPH Kurzweil don't make arranger keyboards that's why they weren't added to the list. They do make great sounding synths which are easy to program as you put.

Craig, you can't be serious are you
Allthough I agree the Kurz is great (I own a K2600S since 1999) it is certainly not an easy to program synth!
Personally I'll need another ten years to find most of the in depth possibilities..

The structure of VAST itselve gives the synth unlimited possibilities..

Agreed. Although it all depends on what one means by "programming". Let alone what they mean by "unlimited">

V.A.S.T is trying to cover a lot of ground. It does offer a lot to mess with but in return doesn't take it far enough in any direction. BY that I mean that it's so called "limitless" sonic ability is rather limited when compared to dedicated FM,Additive, Wavetable and VA synthss (in other words "one-trick ponys").

But it's the ability to combine all these forms of synthesis in one box and link them together into incredibly complex layers of processing that makes V.A.S.T. limitless. Definitely a synth for folks who like more or less modular perspective on synthesis. Or more or less algorythmic modular perspective.

As one of my good friends always said: "Kurzs are for those who try to count their toes after dropping five hits of acid". Not sure what exactly he means by that but I assume it is his definition of infinity.

I'm thinking about picking up a 2600 at some point. I owned both K2000 and a K2500R and they were great. As synths that is. Can't say I regret selling them but I miss messing with V.A.S.T. and trying to emulate other synths.

Any decent studio should have a Kurz. I'm thinking about picking up a K2600 at some point. I owned a K2000 and a K2500R. Stock sounds were a mixture of all kinds of generic trash and a few good clever patches here and there. PRogrammed them as much as I had time for. Wasn't as intricate as programming a VL1 V2 or an FS1R but was a lot of fun. Using shapers and various filter types for formant type stuff was incredible. ALmost like using an E-mu Z-plane filters meats Digi Turbosynth.

Programming a Kurz can be somewhere in between tedious and excitingly surprising. Often times I've aborted programming a patch half way through because LFOs began acting funny, going out of sync. Envelopes definitely lack enough snap. Everything else was cool though. FX weren't great but worked for live gigs.

What else is there to say. A Kurz is a Kurz!

-ED-

I gotta say.... of the three listed Yamaha is the best sounding. I would like to add though, I agree with MORPH.. Kurz sounds great. I really would like to add a PC2R to my rack when I can.
A really sonically powerful set up would be
Roland XP-60 (or 80) controlling a Motif ES rack and a Kurz PC2R.

It's a very close call between the Kurz and the Yamaha... but since Kurz wasn't on the original list, the answer is easy.... Yamaha!


peace
Bob
<><

I've used many Kurzweil's over the years and have always found them easy to get along with eg. editing the sounds, setting up complex layers etc.

Geting back to the original question... I was thinking this way.. and I could be totally wrong here. If he was interested in a wk3700, it's possible, though he didn't in any way indicate it, that either his budget won't allow for a Tyros, PA1x, etc or that possibly he wanted to get his "feet wet' with an inexpensive arranger before committing to a top ender. Arrangers aren't for everyone, and for the kind of money the top enders command, you really might want to ask yourself if you need one in the first place.

Of course it would probably have been better to just ask those questions than for me to make an assumption, but, based on my own experiences, if either were the case I would easily recommend a wk3700 vs similarly priced Yamaha arrangers. Sounds aside, and while they are fairly close, at this price level I'd favor the wk, also for me, the keys on a wk feel much more like... keys. The only thing that had worse key feel than the lower end Yamaha arrangers that I can even recall playing was, possibly, the 2 octave Magnus Chord organ I got as a 6 year old.

As far as the other stuff goes, I have much respect for many hardware synths, but I've gotten used to programming in software, so sounds aside, I think I prefer programming there, particularly when working with sampling.


AJ



[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 05-24-2006).]

Hi all,

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This keyboard is open source:

I can tell you that you can every time use it as new instrument. You must only see what you want. In last two days come out really lot things in this keyboard: please look on:
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For your better please also look on side:
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My experience with this keyboard is fantastic. I need only more support from more colleagues who can help me to get better sounds.

I’m using in this moment in this keyboard VST NI KONTAK and VIRTUAL GUITARST, but nobody have not same experience. Of course because is open system. My system works, but I want something more.