RE: (Kinda OT) Keyboards (Sometimes Studio sometimes live)

["Goddard, Duncan" <goddard.duncan@mtvne.com>]

>>Am looking for a keyboard for the studio-good strings are a plus as well 
>as cool World Music sounds. Been looking at the Korg stuff: X50 and TR61.
I can get decent deals on both-one being new the other slightly used.<<

dunno about the korg- my ex has a triton, & I could never get my head 
round the programming/architecture. I guess what I'm trying to say is, 
that ease-of-use of the programming side has to be the most important 
aspect of the choice..... none of the synth modules, romplers or whatever 
that I've ever used has had /bad/ sounds in it- some are better at one 
thing than another. 

generally speaking then, unless you are after a very particular rendition 
of a sound (e.g. the korg grand piano samples may sound marginally more 
convincing to your ear than, say, the roland), make sure you are 
comfortable with how the machine is laid out & what it feels like to use. 
you don't want to be stuck with the factory presets, after all!

my own preference is for the last version of emu "proteus" architecture 
(which started with the audity-2000, though this particular module isn't 
compatible with the rest of the range). in particular, the keyboard 
version (PK6 &c) is a nice box, with a nice-feeling keyboard, reasonably 
easy to edit stuff on, & (depending on the model- the PK6 had a sort of 
"generic" set called "composer") a great selection of sounds. they can 
probably be found NOS or on e-bait quite cheaply. mine was new & cost 
£300. you can pay more than that for a decent controller keyboard that 
doesn't make any noise. go, as they say, figure!

btw, I went for the emu stuff because I could make my own flash-rom for 
them, using a big emu sampler.... I guess the triton offers something 
similar.

duncan.