As mentioned in the general arranger thread AJ has been a great help in solving issues or rather queries that I had to familiarize myself with the Operating System of the Ketron SD7.
Apart from his modified and highly recommended manual for this outstanding keyboard you may, if you are an SD7 player as well, find many of his responses useful, see below.
Thank you most sincerely AJ for all of your assitance even if you are located in the USA. I know you have the expertise and willingness to help folks out wherever they are located.
AJ can be found at: www.AjamSonic.com

John Smies
the Netherlands.

Queries:

1
Now this gets me confused. Is this the very first Operating system or
does firm V 3.02 imply it has been somehow
miraculously updated ?
>>>AJ:- Use the first numbers only (which are the OS). So the OS he has in there is OS Version 1.0.0

2
Furthermore on all Ketron websites it says that if you update the OS you
must always update from the previous
update and not skip any e.g. from 1.2.1 to 1.3.1 etc.etc. but then it
turns out that you are unable to download
all version 2 updates from their sites.
>>>AJ:- Let me see if I can send you a link to all the subsequent OS versions. Take note, although this will update your keyboard, it will NOT delete any of the user file (User Voice, Registrations, Songs, Midifiles, Text, Videos, Wave … etc) that the previous owner put in if and where applicable. You will have to manually connect your SD7 to your computer and do this … or do it directly on the SD7 it self by pressing MEDIA, touch DISK EDIT, touch the KETRON disk, go into the relative folders and DELETE the content as needed.

1
In as far as I have been able to ascertain the 2n voice for the
righthand can only be selected from the
factory preset voices and not from the User voices, correct ?
Nor can I find one is able to "tweak " the 2nd voice, if at all possible.

>>>AJ:- Before I answer, I just wanted to make an observation (from experience). Coming from a "KORG" background, you will indeed experience a 'difference' in OS as you navigate the KETRON keyboards.
Remember that both designs have a different approach and slightly different target too. Korg emphasis is on giving you the "TOOL" to tweak nearly every parameter to your liking and thus use the on board content as a reference/starting point from which to develop your sounds/styles. KETRON's approach (similar to Yamaha's) is to give the player the best 'CONTENT' in terms of quality of sounds and styles and due to the less editable parameters found on these boards, this means you will establishe a love/hate relationship rather quickly with KETRON and YAMAHA (love what they give you or not) versus KORG (and to some extent ROLAND) where you have more flexibility to tweak content and thus change a so..so feeling to a good one. Having said that, and coming from that angle, let me proceed to respond to your concerns.

The 2nd voice is 'tied' to both preset/factory and user voices. So - in the KORG/YAMAHA approach, you select these voices independently as Upper 1, 2 and 3 - meaning on the fly, you can instantly select a lead voice (UPPER1) and then decide to add STRINGS (UPPER2) and GUITAR (UPPER3).
KETRON does not approach it this way. Their approach is you have to set this up BEFORE the show (in other words, program your lead and 2nd voices, then save as a USER VOICE for use on the fly or within a registration. What does this mean?
Right now, when you go to factory PIANO (USER icon off/blue meaning you are in the FACTORY voice selection), or USER PIANO (USER icon on/yellow meaning you are in the USER voice selection) automatically it selects (as was programmed by the factory say STRINGS as the 2nd voice which you can hear only when you press the 2nd VOICE button and also have the dedicated 2nd Voice volume slider up, correct? Now, if you want to CHANGE the 2nd voice associated with this sound, you simply go to the voice EDITOR... by pressing and holding down the instrument's icon for 2sec. So in other words, you would EDIT the PIANO sound by touching the PIANO instrument icon on the screen for 2 sec. This takes you into the VOICE EDITOR. Now here, you wll see that you can layer up to 3 voices (equivalent to KORG's UPPPER1, 2 and 3) and the 4th row is where you see the 2nd voice that was/is linked to this PIANO sound. So to change it, touch the current voice in the 2nd voice box (e.g STRINGS). It will open up the category of where the current 2nd voice resides. Now you can select a new 2nd VOICE to be associated with your current lead voice. When done, you can go a head and program all other parameters found on the next 5 pages for this and when satisfied, you press the SAVE button and touch SAVE AS to pop up a QWERTY keyboard where you enter the name of your new voice. This new voice will now be stored in the USER bank (USER - PIANO in this case) from where you started (you cannot over write the FACTORY voices but can start there and create your own USER Voice). So now, your new LEAD voice will have a new 2nd voice tied to it which you can quickly activate from the panel by pressing the 2nd VOICE button on the panel or touching it on the screen from the main page. You can then use this new USER VOICE and save into a REGISTRATION (SONG BOOK as KORG puts it) for use at a particular performance.

2
I still have not been able to find how to EQ each track separtely, and I
mean both the acc. tracks, drums, bass
as well as the two Upper Sounds.
>>>AJ:- Once you have gone through the answer to point 1 above, you will now see that although you have access to only 2 sounds via the PANEL, the total number of UPPER sounds the KETRON SD7 offers is 3+1.
You are correct. There is no individual EQ parameter for each track/voice on KETRON as is the case with KORG - and here lies my love/hate quote I had mentioned earlier on in this responce. You would either like the sounds provided or hate them since you do not have enough programmable parameters to tweak them to your taste. Having said that, the VOICE EDITOR (mentioned above in response to question #1) does provided you with some limited editable DSP parameters which you should explore as well.

3
I don't like how you have to muck about with the seperate volume
settings of the acc. tracks ( and its effects)
but I must be spoiled with the Korg.
>>>AJ:- Again, it's about taste here too. KETRON offers you this capability becuase they are modelling a LIVE performance. During a Live show for an example, if a band plays COUNTRY or BALLAD music and then later switches to ROCK n ROLL, automatically, because of the NATURE of the music, the ROCK will be 'Louder' and have more 'energy' than the COUNTRY or BALLAD and this is the fundamental reason why a ROCK n ROLL style on the KETRON will be a little 'LOUNDER' than the BALLAD stye - this is totally different from KORG or better still YAMAHA where all styles are of the same volume level by design. So, because of this, KETRON offer you instantly in the VIEW screen the capability to tweak these volumes on the fly or use the BALANCE ICON and instantly balance the volume of the ENTIRE style relative to the volumes of the other styles (pretty much similar to the style volume slidder found on the left, difference beeing this value is stored within the style itself)

Jon,


AJAMSONIC Packs:- Where listed, the sounds are new (which involves a mixture of new samples and new DSP set ups and tweaking of some factory ROM sounds. For example, the AJAMSONIC flute utilizes new DSP settings (which are installed when you install the package) and existing factory samples. The AJAMSONIC Nylon Guitar is a new sample all together with a touch of DSP processing from the older DSP set up. It all depends on what is needed to get the true AUTHENTIC sound reproduced by the SD7. Once you install, all the Styles and DSP and Samplers are transfered over into the internal RAM. You then manually transfer over the voices into thier respective USER VOICE locations (this allows flexibility for Users to say - transfer the SAX into the USER PIANO Category where they have their favorite sounds lined up ... or simply follow the installation instructions and transfer all SAX into the USER SAX category, all Pianos into the USER - PIANO category ... etc. The choise is yours.

Thanks ... and Marry Christmas in advance.

Check out our new Country Packages here and please leave a comment or two:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7x0XA87ZGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYSOrj9KvE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RMMkOvYA0A&t=315s




Hi AJ,
The main issue that might still turn retaining my SD7 into a dealbreaker is the chord tracking.I wonder if this has anything to do with the settings, the OS or other matter. Incidentally I have connected my SD7 to my Korg PA1000 only on one channel to feed the chord playing on the Korg.
In both instances, so playing the keys on the SD7 and playing a song it happens several times that the chord I have played is not recognised directly and I have to press the same chord keys again which of course is a nuisance to put it mildly ... Any ideas ??


John,

Go to VIEW - CHORDS - MODE - and set to Fingered 2 (more responsive/less 'forgiving'). This should do it.

Thanks,

AJ




Hello AJ,

Things are progressing fine on the SD7 but I keep on waging a real battle with the master EQ and Reverb settings.
new registrations but as soon as I touch another
registration ( e.g. Don Mason sent me some of his registrations) I find different settings.

Are the master EQ and reverb settings SAVED with EACH Registrations and as such differ ?
When I make a EQ/reverb setting and save it as Factory Default, will it then be retained for all ?

Other than that it is going well now...............
I am much indebted to you, my sincere thanks.

John



John.

I see you’re quickly getting deeper and deeper.

Yes ... you’re right. So on the Ketron products, registrations store and recall everything. However, you can program / teach the registration to ignore certain settings like Midi, DSP, footswich, style settings ...etc.

Press MENU, touch Regis setup (registration set up). Left shows general parameters (e.g Midi) and right shows internal functions within the selected general parameters. Select (yellow) the settings you want the registration to recall. In your case, make sure DSP is NOT selected (blue). Now when completely programmed, press the SAVE button on the panel and save the new registration set up. Reboot (to load your default dsp set up once more) and test. All should be ok.

Thanks.

AJ

Hi John,
Really pleased and glad to see the progress you are making. What you don't know is how much your posted questions will help others with a SD7 or a SD40. You have the ability to dig deep into whatever keyboard you own and many either will not or can not do that because they do not understand the technology. Good luck with the SD7 and please keep up the inquires.

Deane