zephonic

Id love to have a Montage 7, but its $2K more than a MODX7, just for the aftertouch. Want it, not sure I should. I've mentioned it all before in the MODX thread, but the 8 is just not designed as a bottom-tier board. The second-tier board partially obscures the display, which means I have to adjust my body position to see the upper live sets. After 6 months, grabbing the main volume knob still requires a conscious effort. It's a pity, because I love the sound and ease of use. So I'm thinking a MODX7 or Montage 7 on the top-tier, as I don't want to lose all the good stuff. Aftertouch is definitely a semi-weighted only thing for me. I just love it for proper synth stuff, modulation or LFO, you know, or vibrato for woodwind emulations. In general, I prefer semi-weighted for everything except piano and Rhodes. The CP has most of what I loved about the Nord Piano, and adds versatility.

I played the CP88 for about an hour today at GC. I can definitely see myself owning one. I don't particularly like the toggle on/off switches for the three sound sources and the knobs for instrument selection, but they're not dealbreakers. Otherwise, it's very Nord-like and something I'd love to have and play. I'm thinking about how to replace the MODX8, though. As a bottom-tier board it's not quite right for me. I played the MODX7 too, and as a top-tier board it's perfect for 90% of my gigs. The action is very short, but consistent and snappy. Definitely a class up from the Krome. But I still yearn for aftertouch, so maybe a used Motif XF7, or go the whole hog and just get the Montage 7. Don't need it for the regular gigs, but I miss it every time I do a synth solo.

It reminds me a little bit of a Synclavier.

IIRC from a conversation I had with the Ravenscroft guy at NAMM last year (or the year before?), that was really just them buying, modifying and reselling VPC's. About the NG, the Fatar in my old NP88 didn't bother me that much, my issue was more with amplification. But if the NG's velocity mapping mellows out the sound it may just help with that, too. More than the weight (which is not too bad, IMO), the bulk concerns me. It looks unwieldy.

I feel your pain, Carlo. Leclerc was FLAWLESS the entire weekend and thoroughly deserved the win. Vettel's spin was odd. He had a great start but I think Leclerc overtaking him messed with his head a little bit. So after all that... ...Mercedes 1-2. Again. McLaren is looking better than I thought. Norris and Sainz both seemed to have a lot of pace. The latter looked like he was faster than Verstappen until the incident. Norris has impressed me, both in Oz and today.

So, after pre-season testing the pundits unanimously agreed that Ferrari had the quickest car. So, of course, today we get a Mercedes double victory with a friggin Honda in third. Ferrari was 56 seconds off the pace. All those pundits should get their pay cut. But Bravo Bottas! Superb start won him the race, and he fully deserves it after last years bad luck. I hope hes gonna make Hamilton work for it this season!

Nice pics, Mark. I found some interesting reading regarding the teams' budgets: https://www.racefans.net/2018/12/19/how-much-f1-teams-spent-race-2018-part-one/ https://www.racefans.net/2018/12/26/the-cost-of-f1-revealed-how-much-teams-spent-in-2018-part-two/ Mercedes and Ferrari are the biggest spenders, and the results reflect that. RBR is just behind them. Haas remains an exceptional case, and I can understand why certain other teams have complained about their business model. Williams need to accept that the times have changed and adjust their operations accordingly.

Enjoy the weekend, Mark

I'm ready! But without Alonso, I don't really have anybody to root for. We ditched cable and I subscribed to the F1 streaming service. Both the app and browser version are pretty terrible, but the archive is worth it. Has anybody watched the official F1 Netflix show "Drive to Survive"? I binged the whole thing and thought it was very entertaining, although the "Reality TV"-like narrative and fake SFX has all the diehard fans up in arms. @Marino: maybe Arrivabene's departure and Binotto's promotion to Team Principal will make the difference this year. Or maybe Leclerc's arrival will start an intra-team feud that will cause the Scuderia to self-destruct. I hope Danny Ric will do well at Renault, but I'm not that optimistic. And I think there's a good chance Williams F1 won't finish the season. The biggest question is whether or not Honda has finally built a competitive PU. If so, this could shape up to be an interesting season!

That has happened to me several times as well. There are a number of odd design choices on the MODX that werent on the MOXF. Convention on most keyboards is that (as seen from the front) the jacks line up as follows: headphone, output L/R, (alt outputs), input L/R, sustain and control pedals. The MODX switches the positions of the ins and outs, and I kept making that same mistake. NowI have reprogrammed myself, but it still is odd.

Im falling out of love with the MODX8. The layout of the controls and touch display just make it a cumbersome bottom-tier board, and Im getting tired of the GHS, too. Maybe I should get a MODX7 or a Montage 7. Itd be nice to have aftertouch again after almost three years without. Not sure what bottom board to get, though. Maybe a CP73 but thats a bit limited and I am aesthetically OCD, so having the bottom tier board be less wide than the top-tier board would bug me to no end. But a 5 octave top-tier board...I just cant...

FWIW, I briefly tried the MODX7, FA-07 and KROME EX 73 at NAMM and they felt pretty similar. All short throw, bottom out easily, but a little better than the old Krome or FA-06. It was by no means a thorough examination, though. I played the EX for ~20 minutes as it was new, but I didnt spend more than 2-3 minutes with the other ones.

Undo functionality would be a great addition. If only to compare before/after. Multi-level undo would be even better, but not sure how to implement that with the current UI.

I didn't know they are different. I like both. "Nothing more to say about it I have."

Thanks, Busch! Do you have similarly detailed info on the AP's in the respective series as well?

I definitely like the BH better, always have. But I don't mind the GHS as much as I used to. Oh, i thought the EPs are new samples...? And from what i hear in the demos, they sound different... (?) I didn't do an in-depth side-by-side comparison, but they sounded and felt very similar to my MODX.

I played each briefly at NAMM and while the CP88 action feels a little nicer, the difference isnt enough to matter much to me. The 73 simply feels great, too. AFAICT, the EPs are the same as whats in the Montage/MODX. They sound good, but not world-beating like the CFX and Imperial samples. Still, I think the new CPs are terrific, and if I hadnt just bought the MODX8, Id definitely get one.

The MX88 and MODX8 have the same action.

Thanks all for the kind words Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all the KC Brethren! [video:youtube] Tina Aldana on vocals, Alfredo Lopez on bass, and yours truly on keys.

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check them out. I have had the same thought, why can't keyboards double as USB hubs? Especially with the dearth of connectors on modern MacBooks, it would come in very handy. Yes, my Jupiter 50 had that, too. Perfect solution.

I hate myself. Last Friday I rushed to the gig and forgot to unplug the USB flash drive from the MODX8 before carrying it around in the bag. Sure enough, I damaged the USB port. Yamaha service center locator lists Advanced Musical Electronics as the nearest repair center, but my previous experience with them wasn't great. I guess I'll never forget to check for flash drives ever again.

Let me clarify about the distortion, so it doesn't look like I'm slandering the MODX for no reason. When I first got the board, the output levels were generally low, and on the first gig it totally got lost in the mix. The +6dB helped but not enough, and the +12dB was too much. I realized a lot of performances had their levels set at much lower than max (i.e. 62 out of 127 etc.) so I figured if I crank their levels to max and keep the output bump at +6dB I should be good. This worked in the sense that it solved my loudness problem, but in the studio I now noticed the distortion on some patches, in particular the AP's and some more powerful synth sounds. I thought the output was too hot, but taking the +6dB off didn't solve the problem. I bought new cables and contemplated buying a new audio interface, until I read MotiDave's post. Last night I dialed back the performance volume of the distorting patches, cranked it back up to +6dB and it looks like we're good. So no, out of the box there is no distortion on the MODX.

Mark, thanks for that link, useful. Dave, thank you. Your post got me thinking the distortion could be internal rather than external. Like you said, dialing it down just a bit fixed most of it. I also found the AP's were the most affected by distortion. I never really considered that the distortion could be internal, but I guess if they are on fixed-point you eventually run out of bits to fill, right? I wonder if moving to 32-bit floating point would ameliorate or even fix this? Tomorrow on the gig I'm gonna see if the reduced internal levels and the +6dB output have finally sorted my volume issues. Anyway, after 2+ months I'm beginning to hit my stride with the MODX. This thing does sound awesome. Really mature, somehow, makes the Krome sound like a toy. The presets don't need much tweaking, it is super-easy to operate for the most part, and you can't beat the schlep-factor. But the volume knob situation is perplexing. I still don't know how they got that so wrong. I mean, ALL other Motif/Montage/MOXF/MM/MX products got it right, why on Earth did they change it? It is really cumbersome when you have another keyboard on top. However, it has got me thinking maybe I need to start gigging with just one board again.

That's how it was for me. I used to work in an untreated room with a tile floors and wall-to-wall mirrors, there was no point in buying expensive speakers as the room was so reverberant that any increased accuracy was immediately lost in the acoustics. Once we moved and I was able to control the acoustics in the new work space, the sound of my old KRK's no longer sufficed so I bought the HEDD's. I have quite a bit of treatment in here now, and in the sweet spot it really sounds pretty great already. But I know I'm gonna want a bigger room and bigger speakers at some point...need more bass extension...