For Marino - K2000 betterment

[ITGITC]

Marino,

 

There's a good chance that you know more about the Kurzweil synths than anybody here.

 

I was wondering... could you list a few things off the top of your head that you've done to your machines to make them sound better?

 

Probably #1 is to raise the overall gain structure, right?

 

Are there any other tricks you can recommend for us?

 

Maybe there's a link to the answer to this question and I've lost it. Nevertheless, I wanted to ask YOU anyway.

 

If I find the link, I'll post it.

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

[Mike Martin]

On the MIDI/Channels there is a OutGain adjustment for each MIDI channel.

[marino]

Hi Tom!

 

Three things come to mind.

 

- First, the overall gain structure. The quickest way is what Mike suggested; this way, you don't have to go into edit mode. However, as you may know, you can do it from the AMP block, the last stage of most VAST algorithms. Plus, a lot of VAST blocks have "Pad" and/or "Gain" parameters.

Just make sure that the sound doesn't go into distortion by playing many loud notes.

 

- Second, the effects. The Digitech effect chip on the K2000 can be noisy; plus, the preset effects are programmed a bit too conservatively gain-wise. There are from one to four gain stages in the Digitech, depending on how many effects it's doing at once; just make sure that at least one of the gain stages is set to 10, then scale the others accordingly. This is one of the reasons why the K2500 sounded cleaner out of the box: They reprogrammed the effects this way.

 

- *Or* you could bypass the problem entirely, and use the separate outs (and external effects). This will lower the noise floor quite a bit.

 

Hope this helps!