To The Synth Industry

[humannoyed]

First off let me say what a welcome thing it is to read and participate in this forum. I thought up a forum like this about 8 years ago and glad to see it arrive already (sorry, I dont mean that to sound cocky or smug like I was ahead of my time....again).

Anyway I wanted to call it To The Synth Industry to provide needed feed-back to keyboard manufacturers from actual end users of their products (wow, I know, what a concept) The reasons for which are obvious: There are too many great features (like the patch remain Dave B mentioned) that should never have gone-put my vote in for that one too. Didnt the Rhodes MK-80 have that?

Players who have been around and worked with a lot of different equipment are a very valuable resource to manufacturers of professional keyboards if they would just listen up! I sure hope they will be reading this forum cause GUYS, THIS BUGS FOR YOU. (bug in the ear, not system)

So folks, you know you have worked with a lot of gear over the years. Please list again those features you think a professional keyboard should have. And any of you folks connected somehow with the manufacturers please get then to read this forum.

Okay it is my turn: Before I got my Alesis Quadrasynth Plus, I was used to programming in two separate modes- single program/voice mode or mix/performance/combi mode. In one you programmed on the parameter level, in the other you combined those programs/voices into splits or layers. If you wanted to program a complex sound with a lot of oscillators, you hade to constantly go between each mode saving each time. This of course is very tedious. On the Quadrasynth Plus you have a huge edit buffer, in fact two. You can edit on the PARAMETER level any of the 16 programs in a mix WITHIN MIX EDIT. I nearly did a back flip when I discovered this. I wanted to kiss an OS programmer, and Im straight! Also you can exit mix mode without having to save anything yet, go to program mode and search for places to store the programs you edited in mix mode. This is certainly much hipper than the method I was used to, and so much easier for programming complex sounds. Do any other synths have this feature?

Hum

[marino]

humannoyed (hey, that's a great name!):

I have nothing against the Quadrasynth Plus, it's an excellent keyboard. But the ability to edit single patches from within a multipatch (or whatever is called by the designers), and then search a memory location where to store the new single patch is nothing new. The Oberheim Matrix-12 had it. Another older synth, the Yamaha SY77 had it as well.

Most modern high-level workstations implement this feature: Roland XP-80 is an example.

BTW, welcome to the forum!

 

marino

[Bubbajazz]

I just launched a diatribe on my K2500 thread that might better fit here. In a nutshell, a keyboard that needs adequate memory to function should either come with it, or make it easily user-installable. And charging $80-100 for a hard drive mount? At these prices, the mount should have already been in there.

 

Basic functionality shouldn't be an add-on option.

 

Sorry - it's a sore topic today.

[dansouth]

Originally posted by Brian Leary:

I just launched a diatribe on my K2500 thread that might better fit here. In a nutshell, a keyboard that needs adequate memory to function should either come with it, or make it easily user-installable. And charging $80-100 for a hard drive mount? At these prices, the mount should have already been in there.

 

Basic functionality shouldn't be an add-on option.

 

The K2500 will work fine without extra memory; it depends on how you want to use it. You won't need the disk mounting kit if you use an external drive.

 

It's just like a car. A base model has fewer options to lower the sticker price and get more people thinking about buying one, even though most of them will purchase some combination of options.