I love the sample option on my PA600 and I am not am eastern musician It give me the option to change the PA600 into a whole different arranger for example the Musikant.

As for styles I told that several times there are enought styles for the Korgs.

There are also third party styles you just need to look around. See http://www.d-o-o.de or free ones at http://home.planet.nl/~aeduin/downloadKorg.htm

I happen to agree with Frans on this one Diki. How many styles does one need to go thru life contented ? I sometimes have the impression folks use them like sprinkled chocolate !!!
It is like how many sounds do you really need to perform well or to make your music enjoyable. For the crowds it hardly matters , for the discerning listener, as has been proven here time and time again it is often hard to guess where the piano , sax or whatever is coming from.
The more I see these kind of discussions the greater my respect for folks like Gary, who has been faithful to his PSR3000 for donkeys years and knows how to make it sing. I guess I am trying something in that direction with my Korgs though I have to admit I moved on to the PA800, but passed at the PA3X......
My request for advice in another thread concerning the possible exchange of my PSR750 for a Roland E80 could well be seen in the same light. The Roland has 350 onboard styles, thouasands on the internet and........the indepth possibility to tinker with them to your heart's content, often in a way that it has become difficult to tell how it sounded in the first place.
In shor, I don't think STYLES should be a motive for not including Korg, or any of the four major brands for that reason.

regards,
John

Just had a listen to the latest demos and I was just bored, music is supposed to move you, (Which is why I am out watching live bands and groups as much as possible) and none of the BK9 demos so far have.

Compare it with the old G70 (V2 and above) and there is just no comparison, you really enjoyed listening to the G70, and it made you sit up and go WOW that’s good.

The BK9 may be one of those boards that sound better live though; so I will reserve final judgment until I have heard it played live.

Bill

Can't say I agree with you, abacus. Having both (or at least the BK-7m for now), the basic meat of the rhythm section is far better in the BK's, the basses are far meatier, the guitars are better...

I think most of this, you are responding to what is being played, not what it is being played ON.

Not to mention, when the G70 came out, it was head and shoulders above Roland's previous arrangers (particularly if you had skipped on the V/VA series and thought primarily in terms of the G1000), whereas this BK-9 is simply a beefed up BK-5, which you have already heard.

I definitely find the styles to have been balanced better than the G/E series, and can discern little audio quality difference between the two. And that's from having a BK-7m resting on top of my home G70, run through the same Mackie HR824 studio reference monitors.

It's amazing how the material can sometimes color one's attitude towards gear!

And John... For me, I would prefer to never have to repeat a style during an evening. So a wide selection of styles, wide enough to offer me a dozen or so in any genre I want, is needed.

Does the audience notice? Probably not consciously, but hopefully there's SOME kind of awareness going on! And, bottom line, it's ME that wants the variety more than their needs, in the end! My goal is to convince MYSELF that I'm playing with a real rhythm section, and one thing a real rhythm section will do is never play two tunes the exact same way. In fact, a real rhythm section will rarely play the SAME tune the exact same way twice!

I'm good with just a few sounds but I like to have lots of styles pick from. The more the better. I don't even like to repeat the same style in a set unless it's a medly of songs.

Most everyone is good with just a few sounds, piano(s), half-dozen or so guitars, a few saxophones, a couple organs, some decent brass, strings for layers, a mandolin, a couple harmonicas, maybe a fiddle or two. As for styles, the more the better. Styles, especially great style files, are one of the reasons I've stayed with Yamaha for all these years. I have over 50,000 of them in my archives, and just about once a day someone posts another new one. Granted, they're primarily remakes of original styles, ones that have been modified by someone for a specific song. But damned, they really sound great, the audiences love them, and I love them.

I have all the G-70 styles that have been converted to Yamaha format. Also have most of the Korgs, as well as a half-dozen other makes, and dozens of models of each manufacturer. Each has been tuned and tweaked to perfection and the right hand voices are superbly tuned. What more could you ask for?

Now, I'm not a betting man, but I would venture a guess that the same process has been performed for most other manufacturers arranger keyboards. I'm fairly confident that someone has sat down at their PC and put together conversions of Yamaha to Korg, Roland, etc..., and I think they would probably sound pretty good. I just don't know, though.

Cheers,

Gary

Not a big time poster around here, but I've been following the threads about the Roland BK9. I've seen a few posts about sounds and/or styles. So I thought I would throw my 2.5 cents before taxes into this mix.

I play a VA5, started out with the RA800 which I used at church. I now have a drummer and bass guitarist so no need for an arranger keyboard in that setting, but the VA5 is used at home. With all the sounds on the VA5 and the other keyboards that I have owned over the years I typically find myself using a handful of sounds UNLESS I am really expermenting and doing a lot of computer based sequencing or recording. But for live performace it is usually one piano sound and maybe a dozen other lead sounds. As for teh styles? I prefer to have quite a few as my disposal. Most I probably will never use, but it's nice to go back and find one that I can freshen up with the sound set from the arranger.

One more comment on the sounds.....I have a Roland XP30 that I recently took out 2 expansion sound boards and another one that was on the shelf and sold them because I realized that I was never going to use them. The XP30 by itself has enough sounds for me.

Great forum, been lurking around for a lonnnngggg time. Lost of good information around here. So a big thanks to the mods that run this thing.

Joe

Demo 8

...the missing one!

Not the other way around.yamaha Styles can't be converted decently to Roland or korg due to use of mega voices within the styles.that's why Yamaha will have largest style library and larger than all other manufactures combined.
(also remember 4 fills and auto fill is new for Korg(starting from pa3x).Roland still lacks multi pads (Yamaha has been doing that since 2000's).
More yamaha styles especially if you play western (us/uk) music.not talking about Balkans or MId east music here(korg has the advantage there)