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From: [email protected]
Date: 3 Feb 92 01:05:05 GMT
Someone asked a week or so ago if the K2000 was still vaporware. Well,
kind of...
Pianos 'n Stuff in Pittsburgh has had a demo unit in the store for the past
couple of weeks, but they haven't yet received units to sell to customers
(or if they have, they have gone to people who got orders in a long time
ago). I think that it will be some weeks, at least, before dealers have
enough units to clear their backlog of orders.
The marked price at P 'n S was $2400, and I doubt that price wars are going
to break out until the initial demand is sated. New samples can be dumped
into the machines via SysEx or read off the built-in floppy drive; the
board that allows sampling from analog or digital sound sources is not
ready yet, and the expectation is that it will cost about $500 when it
arrives. So far, I have heard no credible rumors of a rackmount version of
the K2000. Foo!
The store was very noisy while I was in there, so it was hard for me to get
a good fix on tha machine's sound quality. Headphones were no help.
Kurzweil made the all-too-common mistake of not putting enough power into
the headphone jack to drive typical music-store open-ear headphones at
levels that can compete with the in-store guitarists and drummer on a
Saturday afternoon. But the sound I heard during the rare quiet intervals
hinted at impressive capabilities. The filters are digital (two pole, four
pole, parameteric, and several other options, depending on the "algorithm"
in use), but on some patches they sounded very smooth and fat, even when
formants are being moved around in real time. The machine can also do very
nice "ambient" sounds and high-frequency details. So the possibilities are
there. On the other hand, a lot of the factory sounds I listened to
sounded like K1000 sounds with a thick, gooey layer of effects ladled over
the top.
The user interface is based on decent-sized LCD display, and it was quite
easy to tweak the sounds in interesting ways (changing the filter type,
effects, and modulation routings) without ever having looked in the manual.
Of course, there could be lots of little problems that would drive you
crazy after a few days of trying to do real work, but superficially, at
lest, the interface seems to be very well designed. I didn't have time to
play with the sequencer.
Physically, the thing looks a bit like a toy. The case is small,
matte-finish black plastic, with cute rounded corners, but it is light and
seems to be quite solid. The five-octave synth-feel keyboard was OK, but a
bit soft for my taste and the aftertouch (channel only) seems to kick in
rather abruptly. For a machine with so many controllable parameters, it
was disappointing that there are only the usual two wheels, plus volume and
data-entry sliders (both of which, I think, can be mapped to MIDI
controllers). Oh, and a big (not red) knob for scrolling through paramter
settings and voices.
Thumbing through the manual, the amount of "distancing" power on the
machine seems enormous. Add that to a big sample memory and the add new
samples easily, and I think you've got enough possibilities to last a good
long time.
-- Scott
===========================================================================
Scott E. Fahlman
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Internet: [email protected]
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| Man, have I gotten jaded. A machine that would have had me drooling on
my shirt just a few years ago gets a ho-hum. Light action, short
keyboard ? No rack version ? I also got an E-Mu Systems' flyer on
their new MPS, essentially a controller keyboard with a Proteus inside..
zzzzzzzz...
re .1:
>Thumbing through the manual, the amount of "distancing" power on the
>machine seems enormous.
Uh, WTF 'distancing' is ?
karl
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