KETRON AUDYA Styles '70-'80

I just wanted to post something different as there's hardly anything from Ketron being posted these days. Although I own Yamaha's and will most probably always will do, I always do love to hear what else is out there. I am not sure if anybody has seen this demo but I think it's brilliant and sounds exceptionally realistic.

Nothing you can't reproduce with 6 or 8 great musicians and a high end recording studio.

Definitely a powerful sounding instrument for sure...very realistic styles.

Why would anyone waste money on VST's when this instrument does it so much better, meaning...no fuss, no muss.

Thanks for posting this, Danny.

Ian

Er.... because VSTi's (or MIDI arrangers) can do so much more to the style to customize it to your personal needs than audio loops?

On stage? 3 gigs a weekend? Good luck with that...

I was already aware of the advantages of midi based styles...I use and customize them for most of my music.

If you check, you'll see my post was referring specifically to arrangers using VST's.

If there are VST based arrangers that can, as you say, "do so much more to the style to customize it to your personal needs than audio loops" being used by members on SZ, how come we haven't heard anything from them to illustrate that alleged capability?

Is owning such instruments that exclusive that mere words of praise, and the posting of specs about them, from the owners/users/players, should be sufficient to confirm the quoted statement above?

That may fool you, but I'm not so easily convinced.

As I said earlier, these Wersi (and other VST based) arrangers/organs/furniture are allegedly the best sounding arrangers we have never heard.

Ian

Hi.... Audya is realy AMAZING KEYBOARDS...
So...We working new styles and new Audio (live) Drums for AJ Projects.
We have already the first style and audio drums...
Here is demos... Just style and new Live audio drums...
https://soundcloud.com/sokratis-1974/ketron-audya-soul-gospel

STYLE CREATOR / PROGRAMING / PERFORMING / AUDIO MIX / EDITING:
SOKRATIS KAVLENTAKIS.

DRUMS PLAYER: FOTIS VAKOUFTSIS
Thanks

Great job Sokratis!

Good luck trying to reproduce that groove with just midi drums...

Coincidence or not but I have just decided to give the Audya a go. A Ketron dealer here kindly offered me a two weeks trial period on a used Ketron Audya, which should arrive in two weeks time. Looking forward to that but hanging on to my Korg PA800.
My recently acquired Tyros 4 will probably have to go again. Much as I like the righthand sounds and the beautiful black edition it is too much of a finished (CD) product for me to get inspirational and creative, that is using it as a real band to back up my singing. And of course the drums........

regards,
John

The Art of a good Midi Drum Style is that the style is played on the equivalent Midi Instrument (Midi Drum Kit for example) by a real performer, as that way you have all the feelings and groove that you get in an audio style. (There’s a reason the loops (Particularly Drums) in VST are called grooves and not loops)

Bill

John good luck with the Audya....prepare to be amazed......please keep us posted on your progress and review.

While the audya audio styles are mostly superb, i think the solo play instruments are one step behind yamaha, roland, korg... There is nothing like the SA2 or ensemble instruments in the Tyros range for example...

My friend....
You are right... it is very big art...
But i think is too big art to create a new audio style from (zero)
If you think it's very easy to make a Audio style (from zero) I am willing to send to you the original Audio recording from Drums, and you can to create (from zero) with this audio Record a Audio Style (with midi sequence) like this of Audya.....
I do not mean something (loops ready) but a single recording....

You must to make everything:
1) Audio Mix of Audio Drums record...
2) Audio procesing, edit etc
3) Export one by one to audio loops
4) Audio quantize
5) Backing sequence and arrange (different file) for drummer (to record)
6) Audio Mastering and Balance for Audio loops files... and and and......
And of course you need a very good equipment and Studio or Home Studio for this....

I respect your opinion but I think that is not easy to build a complete audio style from (zero)....

i dont think you understood what Bill meant to say..

Exactly my thoughts.
I find the Audya styles amazing, much more alive and dynamic (and "in your face") than Yamaha styles.
But the sounds are not as good as the Yamaha keyboards (IMHO!!)

Maybe....
I'm sorry if I said something bad My apologies......I had no such intentions ....

I am sorry but I have to disagree... big time!
If you listen to the example posted by Sokratis on Soundcloud the part that NO midi kit will EVER be able to reproduce is not the flashy (albeit impressive) intro with all the drum rolls, but the little fills played on the hi-hat and the cymbals, and do you know why? Because everytime a drummer hits an hi-hat or a cymbal it does so not only with a different strength (that you can somehow try to mimick with the midi velocity), but also in a different place of its surface and also with a different angle of the stick and this difference you cannot reproduce with samples taken at different velocities. A cymbal can have a diameter of 40, 50 or more centimeters and every part of its surface will sound different, not just the center (often called bell) or the rim. And the hi-hat, even if has a much smaller diameter, is even more challenging, because a real drummer will never hit it with the same degree of "openness" and this variability you cannot reproduce with just three samples (closed hi-hat, mid hi-hat and open hi-hat).
Combine these with the differences in velocity and angle and the possibilities become almost endless.
That's the reason why a real drummer playing an acoustic drum kit for "X" bars will always sound more authentic than the same drummer triggering a sampled drum kit through a series of electronic pads, for the same amount of bars.
You may call them grooves, loops or whatever, but they will never "breathe" in the same way.
BTW: the same principle applies for all the percussions, with the possible exception of the kick, where the felt hits the drum always in the same place and with the same angle; the only thing that changes is the strength (equivalent to the midi velocity).

Sokratis,

there is nothing to apologize for; you are not only a musician, but also a sound engineer with first hand experience on the field and thus much more entitled and qualified to express your opinion compared with many others, self proclaimed experts.
I actually wish that you could post more, both here and on the Ketron Forum, because I, for one, value greatly your input.

I agree: if we could combine the Audya audio styles with many of the Yamaha (or Korg) sounds we would have the ultimate arranger; that's the reason why I had so many hopes for the Tyros 5 and its audio styles... unfortunately they were the biggest letdown of all: not only there are just 40 of them, but they are bland exactly like the midi styles and to make things worse they have also short loops, so after a while they too sound boring and repetitive.
What a waisted opportunity!

I was lucky enough, as I was still working for Yamaha, to see a very well made and interesting video of the process used to make Yamaha's S950 Audio Drum styles.

You are totally correct...it is far from easy.

Yamaha even went to the trouble of using the same drums, mixing board and effects units, as well as recreating or using the original studio environment.

And that was just for drums.

Ketron goes a good deal further, and does much the same with bass and guitar parts.

The styles sound like a "real" band, because, essentially, they are a real band.

Ian

Thank you very much my friend!!!!!!

Edit of my previous post:

This style https://soundcloud.com/sokratis-1974/ketron-audya-soul-gospel I create for (AJAMSONIC Project)
Produced and Designed by AJAMSONIC,.

I agree that a real drummer has a vast range of timber and nuance at his fingertips... But a real guitarist, a real pianist, a real violinist and a real just about ANYTHING has the exact same degree of nuance.

Yet we use sampled recreations of THOSE sounds quite happily. And they keep getting better and better all the time, as keyboards have ever larger and larger ROM sizes, for more and more samples. To be quite honest, I think, if you listen to some of the better drum VSTi's out there, you will find yourself VERY hard pressed to tell that they aren't live drumming. Sure, one or two samples for a ride cymbal simply is not enough to fool anyone. But 24-48 or so? Pretty hard to tell that from the real thing. You even have 'round robin' triggering on some of the better VSTi's, so if you send it an old MIDI file or style where every single note of a drum sound is at the same velocity, the VSTi will alternate between several different (but similarly recorded) samples, so you don't get the machine gun effect.

So, if you put the sample count up high enough, basically the only way a listener can tell if it is a machine is if the programming of the groove is appalling. Which, if they are triggered by real drummers on a MIDI drum kit, should not be the case.

So, once again, I disagree that audio drum loops is the BEST way to get better drum grooves in arrangers. If arrangers start to have MUCH larger sample counts for the drum kits (which some of them already are, albeit in a bit limited fashion so far) and the grooves are played by real drummers on TOTL MIDI drum kits, you get SO close to the sound of the audio loop, it is pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing.

BUT...

The advantage of doing this rather than loops is obvious. For starters, every single style you have can use these improved KITS. Not just the paltry few that come with your arranger that have audio loops. And while you can take the audio drums of one style, and copy them over to another style, you can't do a damn thing about the mix, the sound, the groove, the kit, the ambience. They are all written in stone.

But a VSTi quality MIDI drum kit can do the exact same thing we already can do... Maybe you want the style the way it is, but with brushes instead of sticks? Maybe you want a piccolo snare instead of that fatty maple? Maybe you'd like to have the style swing a bit, rather than be four square? Maybe you'd like the toms a bit wetter?

Can't do ANY of that to an audio loop.

It all boils down to prioritization... The arranger manufacturers have spent a FORTUNE trying to get more and more realism and accuracy out of the sounds we PLAY... amazing sax sounds, guitar sounds, B3 sounds, grand piano and Rhodes's. But sadly, the drum section hasn't QUITE got the same love. But rather than suck it up, and add a bunch of ROM to significantly increase the drum sound range (the more samples, the more dynamics and nuance), Ketron first, and now Yamaha are diving into the audio loop solution. I think it's a mistake.

You want realism in arranger drums? You can have it without painting yourselves into a corner with loops. You can have it without ANY of the shortcomings of audio loops. But you have GOT to do it with better kits.

Loops are a dead end. The future is sampled kits. They just have to get bigger in size, just as out sampled pianos had to, or our sampled saxes had to, or our guitar sounds had to.

Hi,

I think that AJ brought the solo sounds on the Audya close to if not on par with the Yamaha voices. His demos tell the full story.

Keep well all,

Henni

By the way,

I'm really amazed by the number of members upgrading or considering upgrading to the Ajamsonic Audya - some who will NEVER admit doing so over here doing it in any case in secret...

You made the right choice my friends & I guarantee you will not regret it. I do not even get butterflies in my tummy when I listen to the T5 demos - yes, it's really good, but nothing that wants me to upgrade(or would that be downgrade - smile...) from what I have.

All the best my friends,

Henni

Sorry,
I beg to differ.

Hi Dreamer,

I guess it's all up to how one uses ones arranger. I'm no good at playing complicated solos with my right hand - I utilize the styles to it's fullest instead.

On top of this, I could never play like those in the T5 demos, especially in that one hour long demo. That guy is in a class of his own - his hands can move as fast as his brain & he has a VERY good brain. I would like to hear him make the Ajamsonic Audya "talk". He'll put it in the class it deserves...

So for me, it's all about how the voices sound in the styles. And here, really, apart from the new DSP guitars on the T5, I'm still more than happy with my Ajamsonic Audya. And I still think the existing new guitars in the Ajamsonic Audya can be made to sound like those of the T5 in the styles as it already includes all these effects. I'ts just a matter of better programming.

I'm not running the T5 short in the least, but what I've seen & heard thus far do not make want to upgrade in the least from what I currently have. I listened to every single demo I could find on the T5 direct on my Audya (good playback quality), & immediately after that listened to some Audya demos. The T5 demos do not impress me more than the Audya demos...

On top of this, AJ is constantly adding to his conversion - there's much to come from him still, even in the voices. He already reproduced some of the Yamaha voices accurately like i.e. the vocals, bagpipes, trumpets etc. And Ketron is working on the new Audya which should be released sometime in 2014...

We have much, much to look forward to!

All the best mate,

Henni

Henni,

my reply wasn't directed to you but instead to Diki. I hate being long winded, but I guess that in this case I was maybe too concise.
To expound a little more (without becoming long winded), it all boils down to what you are after: Diki obviously craves for control and to be perfectly happy needs to control every aspect of the music recording process. I, on the other hand, look for authenticity and here nothing can beat a recorded loop.
And let me add something: the more a drum kit becomes complex, the less it's interchangeable with others. On my Kronos I have a drum kit made just of congas samples; on an ordinary kit there would be just three keys dedicated to the congas, but here you have more than three octaves of congas sampled in every possible way: not only high, low and slap (or mute) but played with the palm, the finger, sliding the hand, etc. The Kronos has also midi loops specific for this kit, and they sound amazingly real, ALMOST like a sampled loop, but of course they sound like total cr@p when played with another drum kit.
So my point is: if you want authenticity nothing beats a sampled loop; if, on the other hand, you are after control... good luck with the drum kits.

Henni,

this one is directed to you.
I think that the Audya has some interesting and even unique sounds (like the organs), and they have more guts (or balls) compared with the Tyros, but overall the Tyros has still the edge, sound wise. I have heard the Midjay Pro demo's and, even if they say that it has a new DSP, am somewhat unconvinced. Where the Audya shines is of course in the style department and for this reason I am seriously considering a second hand Audya 4.
Finally, considering the way Ketron keeps datelines (the Midjay Pro was officially announced in 2012), I think that it's unrealistic to expect a new Audya in 2014 and, even if this was the case, I would never buy one before they iron out all the bugs (this process is still not yet completed in the current Audya).
All the best.

The problem is that ROM memory of the arrangers are still sooo far away from the serious VSTi that the audio loops might be an easier solution for now.

But I rather agree with what Diki said. The whole point of using MIDI signal chain is to be able to adjust, modify and tweak after your heart desire. With AUDIO you gain realism (for this stage cannot be beaten) but all those possibilities of changing are gone. Some will preffer this, as they don't care much for tweaks, but it's a shame to loose that.

The HiQ drum VTSi are the prove that realistic sample is possible and a better way.

IMO, even a partnership of let's say Roland with let's say SWW for Drum Core will improve every aspect of drumming in an arranger, while avoiding re-invent the wheel with all the R%D investments. But this is merely an example, Roland is actually doing very well with drums in BK9 I believe.

So, I'd vote for large samples and larger memory and flexibility.