mojkarma

Yup. All gone. It kinda makes sense -- many folks won't care about user samples nor even downloadable patches. Actually, it doesn't make any sense at all. We don't know who the "many folks" are, personally all my friends who play a Kurzweil, use samples. Besides that, Kurzweil sample based sounds are actually ancient and stemm back to the K2000. There were some additions in the string section, and lately in the piano section. But generally acoustic sounds are on the level of the nineties, mono and with just one velocity level. So, being able to load user samples is the only way to get better quality samples when needed. I have no idea who should be the potential buyer of this keyboard. It is something between a PC and SP. Kurzweil continues with to much variety and rehashing the very same product. There most certainly is a memory chip on the motherboard, it is just cut away thru the OS.

1st rule for Kurzweil buyers: Never ever use the Soundtower editor software for a Kurzweil keyboard instrument, regardless which model !!! This might be true, but Kurzweil is here clearly to blame because they promote the editor, yet there is some very very strange relationship between them and Soundtower and the customers are the one who suffer from this. I had some very nasty artifacts on my Artis with the soundtower editor which destroyed all my user programs after using it. Kurzweil doesn't use touch displays, so using a computer editor is the only way to do some heavy editing without stressing to much the buttons on the keyboard which tend to fail after some time. And it is a sad situation that this very editor is not recommended to be used.

I'd say, it's the Kronos action minus aftertouch. Certainly better then those keys on the Krome, but I myself didn't like them to much and think that Roland and Yamaha offer better synth action on their flagship models (This is of course my subjective opinion). Korg developed this action for the M3 and at the end of lifetime for the Triton series when they stopped using Yamaha keybeds and know it is used in the Kronos 61 and obviously Nautilus 61/73.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but there already is a vast editor for practically every Kurzweil model from Soundtower and it is free. The problem is actually that Kurzweil and Soundtower don't cooperate very well together and the editors often have some very nasty bugs which can even destroy all your existing programs in the keyboard. Soundtower is also painfully slow in sorting out bugs or adapt the software to the actual state of the keyboard (does the editor still show only four parts in the multi mode for the Forte?) but a computer editor definitively exist.

While the solution works for you, it is basically a cheap excuse for a cheap design. Because, while I'm on stage, I can hardly control the power conditions there and where I can (safely) plug in my keyboard.

Not really, at least not for me. For just a little more one can buy a MoDX and get a five octave keyboard, 8OP FM, including a sample based enging, sample import abilities and a lot of other goodies, not to mention the multitimbrality, bigger screen, controllers and touch display and so on.

FB is just such a terrible platform for support/information, because there's no good way to search the posts, view complete threads, etc. Exactly!

What did you expect from Apple? I'm using Macs and Apple products for almost 20 years and with the last ios and ipados update, one can use a mouse with the ipad. But only their Magic Mouse 2 is supported. Not the older Magic Mouse 1 which is about 5 years old although it is practically identical to the newer one. At the same time, every third party 5 dollar mouse will work. I am extremely pissed off how they make their own hardware so fast obsolete.

Wow dinna know dat. Super lame. Why? I would say: kinda of a bad attitude because "we are a big company" and there is no standard anyway, so we are not wrong in producing narrower keys. It is the same why they refuse to implement a software polarity switch for the sustain pedal. You have to buy a pedal with the right polarity, otherwise, there is no way to change the polarity in the keyboard itself. There were two three situations where I forgot my sustain pedal and there were other keyboards and player on stage and it happened that the sustain pedals they used were not compatible with my yamaha keyboard.

Unfortunately, these days "very light" doesn't mean that the keys are not semiweighted. It is not a clearly defined term so the manufacturers use it when they find it convenient. Yamaha also states that the MoDX6 and 7 have semiweighted keys. Maybe they really have some kind of microweights attached to the keys but if you tried those keys, you'll know it doesn't feel anywhere similar to the Montage or similar keybeds of higher quality.

I always use onboard effects. And I don't use a lot of them. A littlebit of the eq, chorus, compressor, delay where needed and almost no reverb because I play live, mostly in big spaces and it is not needed. I don't see why the hassle these days with external equipment besides if it is much better than what is there internal. And in most cases it is not or doesn't make an audible difference.

Another Setlistmaker (Bandhelper) user here. The app is IMHO terrific, very flexible and has everything one may need. It sends program changes on 16 midi channels simultaneously, it can even send control messages to devices and activate/deactivate certain functions. One can even create multiple midi presets for different song parts within the same song and switch between those presets either with a bluetooth pedal, or by using certain swipes on the screen. In short: it is a mature, well written app and I couldn't imagine to select the sounds I need on stage without it. Arlo who created the app is also very helpful and responds in a short time when one needs help or an explanation.

NW2 is 2600 Euros at thomann.de

There is no point in asking Ed. Ed is a kind guy from Roland US and does his best to promote Roland products. The decision is made by Roland Japan and we don't know when and if and I'm sure that even Ed doesn't really know what will be released and when. I agree absolutely here with Lady Gaia. I remember a time when I and other Fantom G user discussed on the Roland forum about what will be the next ARX Expansion for the Fantom G. It turned out that there was no new ARX Expansion and Roland introduced the Jupiter-80 with a bunch of new SN Sounds and Fantom G turned suddenly and unexpected to a legacy product. I don't say this just for the sake of complaining, but I wouldn't buy a keyboard where essential sounds are intended to be released at some later point, all that based on a rumor from facebook. Releasing additional sounds for the sake of variety is fine, but releasing a keyboard where the acoustic sounds are based mostly on a 20 years old WaveRom, being 64 Mb in size, well, I simply don't see a point in that. The same is of course true for any other manufacturer

Ah, the perils and pitfalls of ever-advancing technology. In case I wasn't completely clear, this free Ozone Element software will stop functioning in a couple of days when Apple releases its new MacOs Catalina which will accept only 64bit software.