Kurzweill PC 361 (sell it or throw it in the river!)

[Thorhead]

 

I was talking to my friend and he told me, if his Kurzweil sounded half as good as a Trident ( sorry I'm sure I spelled this wrong) he would be happy. His reference meaning, when he heard me in an other band with the same PA, another guy played a Rolland and a Trident, they sounded awesome. Nothing like his Kurzweil. Here is a hint, the keys don't seem to have any sustain on the piano. I think he's going to have to get on here and give a little more detail. I'm just relating and not doing a very good job at that. Thanks to all of you for being understanding, I really appreciate it. I won't give up. I really believe the sounds are there it's just finding the solution.

 

 

Well Jordan Rudess and many other famous guys used kurz for main and they had TRITONS as well.

 

Triton has OK sound, but it is VERY high boosted and the mids are almost not there. But it does cut through.

 

Also comparing piano sound of triton and PC3 is stupid comparison. PC3 has piano that sounds like piano. Triton has piano that doesnt sound like piano and is useful for only single keyer lines.

 

Also, comparing triton, fantom X and kurzweil organs, the triton has 1 OKish organ sound, but it is only one type, and you cant really edit it well. roland is complete crap. Kurzweil has the best organ easily, only the leslie is a bit bad and that has a lot to do with the settings as well. Download the "ventiklator" pack. Also if you buy the ventiklator FX box, it will sound like the real deal.

 

400 yamaha synth has better string and piano sound?

 

Now that must be a joke...

[poserp]

 

He said it sounded good with headphones.

 

 

Sounds like it's plugged into the mixer wrong and you're getting phase cancellation. If you run it in mono, it's gotta be plugged in mono (i.e., just use the Left main out).

 

If you do end up throwing it in a river, throw it my way. In fact, consider this a standing offer to take anyone's Kurzweil PCxx off their hands for free (I'll pay shipping)...

[McHale]

 

I like Korg's sounds. I have a Trinity that I still love. They get a big ZERO when it comes to piano sounds though. Yamaha and Kurzweil own the market there (IMO). I used a newly acquired Triton in a recording studio a couple years ago (the studio's purchase, not mine) and everyone was appalled at how crappy the piano sounded. I tried and tried to get them to just record MIDI but they had no clue what I was talking about.

 

 

The stock piano sucks, no question. I took their EXB-PCM08 .pcg file and edited it to use the stock internal samples and it sounds 10 times better. Good enough I took the PCM-08 back. Live, I use the M50 and the Triton Pro and I just heard some tracks from last weekends shows and I used the piano sounds on both and sadly, I preferred the Triton piano I created.

 

Agreed on the yamaha piano sounds. I don't know the Kurz well enough to say but you're probably right on that one as well...

[EricM]

 

Don't get me wrong, the Kurz is a fantastic machine and I've been a big fan of them through the years, but there's a reason you see Tritons even today 10 years after they were introduced dominate the stage.

 

 

Well that has a lot to do with Korg's phenomenal marketing than the machine itself. They're easier to use than the K-Series or PC3, substantially cheaper than a K2600 or PC3, and there are just a lot more of them floating around on the used market because Kurzweil owners don't seem to want to give up their boards. I've been looking for a K2600X for a while now, it's controller functions are second to none.

 

I remember the Hip Hop guys all going nuts over the Triton Extreme. It's a fine board and all, but I always felt it paled in comparison to the Motif ES and Fantom X soundwise. But as someone already said it really comes down to personal preference and what you want.

[McHale]

 

Well that has a lot to do with Korg's phenomenal marketing than the machine itself.

 

 

I doubt it. One of the two keyboard players on the Jimmy Fallon show uses it as his primary (I know, it's Jimmy Fallon) and I'm sure he could use anything he wanted. I believe the other keyboard player uses a Motif.

 

We've opened for the Guess Who, Ides of March, Genesis Rewired, and countless Chicago based bands and NONE of them have used a Kurz on stage yet. And I can't speak for everyone but I've had the ability to buy any keyboard for years and the Korg stuff (Triton for the past 10 years) was the best for me.

 

As far as their marketing, with the exception of the hype on their website, I don't see any of it. I don't buy keyboard magazines and places like Guitar Center deter me from buying ANYTHING. I buy Korg because of a combination of their interface, features, and previous experience. Kurz has never been the synth I really wanted to own.

[Sad Darwin]

Workstations suck as synths.

 

That's all I got for now.

[Megakazbek]

 

Workstations suck as synths.

 

It's stupid to generalize things so much.

For example, Kurzweil K-series, Korg Trinity, Yamaha EX5 are workstations and at the same time wonderful synths.

[clusterchord]

I had load of Tritons. gigged for a few years, and sold them all in the end. they sound like plastic crap to me. good only for multi-layered ambient/complex patches with barrage of things going on. otoh classic keys sounds.. pianos, rhodes.. terrible. "analog" synths leads... ouch. bass? thin and plasticky.

 

i liked the polyphonic arpeggiators. and the whole setup and edit system. flexibility of fx system, combinations are great as master keyboard setups with zones etc.. many things.. but the sound... naaaah.. i even did tests importing samples comparing to other samplers. all digital transfer. and it was evident this board definetely cuts off the xtreme upper bandwith and imparts "plastification", to anything that goes thru its audio path. filters? characterless and bland. when you hype the high end with its EQ, youre still hyping the lower highs, not actually extending its bandwith.

 

 

imo basic audio quality of Kurzweil 26xx clearly surpasses it. not in the numbers, memory or polyphony but in SOUND. that being said, for sampling, IME an EOS sampler of later generations is even better/bigger/warmer sounding.

 

 

today, for gigs of generic type, im thinking if i were to add a 2661 to my A6, there would be very few things i coudln't pull off with that combo.

 

 

 

 

question for 2661 owners, i didnt try this myself but - i heard its impossible to route the sliders/drawbars to other internal synth functions like filter, or to midi controllers for other ext synths, or etc? is this correct, or an misinfromation?

[zzzxtreme]

off topic

 

i remembered how roland XP80 was the popular choice during the "korg triton era". It was for a good reason. People were still holding onto their M1s. Yamaha didn't offer anything "accessible" or easy. For stage pianos, it was RD600. I didn't recall anyone dumping their M1 or 01W for triton for gigging. guess it's only true for my country

[Tomkeen]

 

question for 2661 owners, i didnt try this myself but - i heard its impossible to route the sliders/drawbars to other internal synth functions like filter, or to midi controllers for other ext synths, or etc? is this correct, or an misinfromation?

 

 

With the PC3x you can route the sliders to any destination you can think of, so I'd guess it's possible on the K's too.

[Franz Schiller]

 

question for 2661 owners, i didnt try this myself but - i heard its impossible to route the sliders/drawbars to other internal synth functions like filter, or to midi controllers for other ext synths, or etc? is this correct, or an misinfromation?

 

 

Hell yeah its possible. You can use the sliders, mod wheel, side buttons, foot switches, and expressions pedals to control damn near anything on the k26-- or any synth midi'd to it.

 

Oddly enough, the only thing I've personally not been able to figure out, is how to control ADSR with the sliders. BUT I KNOW ITS POSSIBLE because there are a bunch of presets that do indeed have sliders control ADSR. I just haven't been able to reverse engineer the modulation routing.

 

One thing I like to do is MIDI my k2661 to my Moog Little Phatty, and use the k- sliders to control CC paramters on the LP. You end up with 12 real time controls over the Moog (and its possible to do more). Tons of fun. I'm certain you can do the same with a PC3.

[poserp]

 

Oddly enough, the only thing I've personally not been able to figure out, is how to control ADSR with the sliders. BUT I KNOW ITS POSSIBLE because there are a bunch of presets that do indeed have sliders control ADSR. I just haven't been able to reverse engineer the modulation routing.

 

 

 

The VAST envelope control system (at least in the K and PC3 series instruments) is a bit different from other synths but it makes sense once you get used to it. The page you want in the K2xxx is ENVCTL (description starts on pg 6-39 of the K2661 musician's guide -- ftp://ftp.kurzweilmusicsystems.com/pub/Kurzweil/Pro_Products/K2661/Documentation/MG_K2661.PDF). The settings on that page affect AMPENV, ENV2, and ENV3. This changed in the PC3, so that ENVCTL settings only affect AMPENV.

 

The meat of the matter is "Adjust", "Source" and "Depth". Source is where you specify the midi CC or other control source (FUN, LFO, sample playback rate, etc) that you want to use to control the specified parameter.

 

The unique part is Adjust and Depth are specified as multipliers. On other synths it's usually given as a absolute value -- i.e. 0 to 60 seconds. In VAST it's specified as, say, 0.018x or 50x.

 

What the heck does that mean? Well, instead of saying "I want an attack time of x seconds", you're saying "I want to speed up the attack portion of the envelope by a factor of x". 50x means you're speeding up the envelope by a factor of 50, 10x means a factor of 10, 0.018x means you're slowing down the envelope by a factor of about 50, and so on.

 

Assume I assign MIDI CC 22 to Source for "Att", set "Adjust" to 1.000x and set "Depth" to 50.00x. When CC 22 is at 0, the attack portion of the envelope plays back at its normal rate. When CC 22 is at 63, the attack portion of the envelope will play back 25 times faster, and when CC 22 is at 127, the attack portion of the envelope will play back 50 times faster.

 

If I wanted to go the other way (i.e. slow down the envelope as I increase CC 22) I would set Adjust at 1.000x and Depth at 0.018x. Now a value of 63 slows down the attack portion of the envelope by a factor of 25, and 127 by a factor of 50 or so.

 

BTW, Kurzweil now has a knowledgebase section on its website. Here's the entry on the K26xx's midi controls:

 

http://www.kurzweilmusicsystems.com/KnowledgeBase.php?product=43&topic=6&entry=35

[EricM]

 

Workstations suck as synths. That's all I got for now.

 

 

Generally I would agree with you somewhat. However VAST is quite possibly one of the best synth engines available in any non-modular hardware unit. It's just amazing, and the VA-1 oscillators in the PC3 have only made it sound even better. The PC3 is the best sounding VA in my opinion. It just doesn't seem to get the same respect as Waldorf, Access or Clavia gear due to the lack of knobs. It certainly sounds better and is far more flexible than any of those, and thats on top of the fact that it is one ace Rompler.

[Sad Darwin]

 

Generally I would agree with you somewhat. However VAST is quite possibly one of the best synth engines available in any non-modular hardware unit. It's just amazing, and the VA-1 oscillators in the PC3 have only made it sound even better. The PC3 is the best sounding VA in my opinion. It just doesn't seem to get the same respect as Waldorf, Access or Clavia gear due to the lack of knobs. It certainly sounds better and is far more flexible than any of those, and thats on top of the fact that it is one ace Rompler.

 

 

 

You buy one, I'll try it with an open mind. Deal?

 

The Kurzweil's are the only workstations that ever remotely interest me. As you know I've owned a Triton and it was just utter garbage. It did everything imaginable unimaginably poorly. If you want to write generic music with stock sounds reach for a Triton, shut your brain off, and let the sound designers at Korg do the work for you.

[Sad Darwin]

 

I had load of Tritons. gigged for a few years, and sold them all in the end. they sound like plastic crap to me. good only for multi-layered ambient/complex patches with barrage of things going on. otoh classic keys sounds.. pianos, rhodes.. terrible. "analog" synths leads... ouch. bass? thin and plasticky.

 

 

God bless your truthful soul.

 

x ?

[Reptilian]

How to use a Kurzweil:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aJI8qI54c8

 

In my opinion, for rock music, Kurzweils are amazing. :-)

[Reptilian]

Workstations suck as synths. That's all I got for now.

 

VAST is very powerful indeed to tweak sounds, the most powerful synth engine I have in my studio so far (and I do not have only workstations on it).

 

The sound you can get is other topic if you were talking about that, since you probably wont achieve the sound quality of some VAs or analog synths. But personally I like the Kurzweil sound in general

[Thorhead]

Workstations suck as synths. That's all I got for now.

 

YOu know Kurz PC3 actually has a "real" VA too? It is pretty awesome, but kinda slow to use though. And with the FX section (that lacks few classic FX though) it is even better.

 

The truth is ALL workstation pianos suck, because there are NOT ENOUGH samples, and some other things are missing too. That said kurz has probably the best or 2nd best of em (Well the top ones are OASYS, MOTIF and PC3x). It mostly has problems with the release time/type/character and lack of samples I do say.

 

But yamaha DGX vs kurzweil

[clusterchord]

Hell yeah its possible. You can use the sliders, mod wheel, side buttons, foot switches, and expressions pedals to control damn near anything on the k26-- or any synth midi'd to it. Oddly enough, the only thing I've personally not been able to figure out, is how to control ADSR with the sliders. BUT I KNOW ITS POSSIBLE because there are a bunch of presets that do indeed have sliders control ADSR. I just haven't been able to reverse engineer the modulation routing. One thing I like to do is MIDI my k2661 to my Moog Little Phatty, and use the k- sliders to control CC paramters on the LP. You end up with 12 real time controls over the Moog (and its possible to do more). Tons of fun. I'm certain you can do the same with a PC3.

 

thanks that's good to know.

 

 

so, it seems i might be gigging again with a pop singer (beside giggin w my own project).. so i'm considering some Kurzweil to do pianos, rhodes and rompler stuff, complemented with my Andromeda doing leads, electronics, synth bass and pad/polysynth duties. i do want to be able to load some of my own samples too, setup key range velo switch setups w assignable midi cc (like i can on EOS). synthesis depth isn't of outmost priority, its pop music , but sample handling and key range/split/layer setups are..

 

 

in light of this, could some of you Kurzweil boys gimme a rundown of main differences btwn 2661, and something newer like the PC3 series. pros cons sound memory etc. ive read some, but its nicer to hear it from the trenches.

 

 

thanks

[Franz Schiller]

As an aside, I approve of how this thread turned from how a dude didn't like a Kurzweil, to all the things a Kurz can do, and general Kurz love, and I also approve of the frequency of Kurzweil thread recently.

[Thorhead]

thanks that's good to know. so, it seems i might be gigging again with a pop singer (beside giggin w my own project).. so i'm considering some Kurzweil to do pianos, rhodes and rompler stuff, complemented with my Andromeda doing leads, electronics, synth bass and pad/polysynth duties. i do want to be able to load some of my own samples too, setup key range velo switch setups w assignable midi cc (like i can on EOS). synthesis depth isn't of outmost priority, its pop music , but sample handling and key range/split/layer setups are.. in light of this, could some of you Kurzweil boys gimme a rundown of main differences btwn 2661, and something newer like the PC3 series. pros cons sound memory etc. ive read some, but its nicer to hear it from the trenches. thanks

 

In short:

 

Get the PC3K, it has very good FX section, and has VERY GOOD keyboard instruments like rhodes, clavs (with great wah FX and so on), I dont use these things, but I think they are probably the best sounds in the keyboard overall. They dont have a lot of ram, the PC3K has 128mb of user rom and 64 mb of kurzweil rom inside (though this is the uncompressed number, so in korg/yammy/roland language its actually 128mb). Even the pads are pretty good if you layer them. There is also passable organ sim inside.

 

Main DIffrences:

 

-PC3 has a organ sim based on PM.

-PC3 has a VA synth inside.

-PC3 has 4x the FX power

-PC3 has the string expansion board (maybe some others? The orchestra board came after K's?), though not all the samples of K's are included.

-PC3 has cascade mode, where you can create a 32 layer "monster patch" (aka you can combine filters / parameric EQ's / synth waves in the manner you desire worth of 32 layers / program). The algorithm blocks are also better, not much aliasing noises to speak off. There is also a "mogue filter" which tries to emulate moog 24 db lowpass filter, dont know if it suceeds.....

[Keyrick]

Your own samples would have to be created on a K2xxx to be read by the PC3K. The PC3K does not sample, but it can playback K series samples. That is the main difference between the PC3 (x) (61) and the PC3K. The PC3K and The PC3x both have weighted keyboards.

 

There are better orchestral sounds on the PC3 than the K2661, and the KB3 Organ is better.

[Franz Schiller]

What if the OP sampled with a computer, and loaded up the PC3 with .wav files? Could he not program the PC3 with those samples, i.e. assign zones, makes loop points, etc? Does it not have a sample editor?

[Keyrick]

 

What if the OP sampled with a computer, and loaded up the PC3 with .wav files? Could he not program the PC3 with those samples, i.e. assign zones, makes loop points, etc? Does it not have a sample editor?

 

 

I guess it is possible, but my understanding is that the PC3K was released predominantly for the K2xxx market whose 2600's were getting long in the tooth. Broadway productions, Las Vegas Shows, etc. needed a replacement and they could not wait for the promised new K series devices. Kurz created the PC3 (K) to play back these K series samples. This way they could take the sounds and programs that they already had, on their 2600's, and play them back on the PC3K. I don't know if there is a sample editor or not, but I'm sure you could find out at sonikmatter.com.

 

Rick

[evildragon]

 

What if the OP sampled with a computer, and loaded up the PC3 with .wav files? Could he not program the PC3 with those samples, i.e. assign zones, makes loop points, etc? Does it not have a sample editor?

 

 

Won't work at all with PC3. With PC3K, perhaps it would. All in all, Soundtower announced they will make an editor for PC3K as well, so I suppose all the keymap editing could be there.