New to Forum & AKX10

[4music]

Greetings from NZ to all Medelians - and others.
For years I have been using stacked late nineties flagship arrangers (Yamaha PSR 2700 [Tyros 1] & Casio WK 3800) for amateur recordings, TV documentary soundscapes and live performances. The Yamaha has recently started crapping out after over two decades of service, and last week I purchased an AKX10 after reading all the relevant threads. So far wonderfully impressed by its technical capabilities, but not so much so with the factory sounds - many of which are not as authentic and robust as my turn of the millennium boards. Currently planning to transfer some sounds across using Grand Suite and buy the AKX Global Sound Karma Pack from Timur.

Question: I have many songs recorded on both the Yamaha and Casio 8 track sequencers that I want to playback/record through those boards to the AKX and then overlay or add to them for live performance. Is it best to record the songs distinctive analogue sounds real time through AKX jack inputs (but can I then use those songs for adding/editing tracks/overlays internally), or should I use midi but lose the sound nuance & quality? Still working through the owners manual/Google for clarification, but has anybody undertaken a similar path? I would also like to do similar input with my guitars but of course will use my DAW for that - yet to decide/contemplate about live/recording vocals.

There are many of you out there with enviable knowledge and capabilities, and it would be great (and time saving) to share experiences and tap into some of that expertise.

Many Thanks from an adopted Kiwi!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mnPcXN8Bvg
https://youtu.be/r4_P2otxwq0

 

[4music]

Just further to the above - over the past couple of days I have used the AKX editing capabilities to tweak and change several of the factory sounds and styles - bloody marvellous!
Now I am sold on this machine!

 

[Biggles]

Welcome.

Yamaha sued Medeli for breach of copyright and won.

Announcement of Successful Legal Action for Infringement of Copyright against Chinese Manufacturer of Electronic Music Instruments

News Releases - Yamaha Corporation

www.yamaha.com

Whilst the keyboard does offer vfm, do check on what support is available in NZ for your keyboard, it is non existent here in the UK.

Honest opinion, return it and buy a Yamaha or Korg.

 

[4music]

Hello Biggles - after having read multitudes of threads, themes and reviews over recent weeks, I suspected that I would hear first from Polo or yourself - interesting history of communication.

I gave a lot of thought to PA1000 or SX900, but in the end focused on best technology and the challenge of creating my own styles/sounds (more time now being semi-retired from corporate life here and UK). Also not doing many live concerts or conference entertainment now, concentrating more on creation in my studio. Being primarily a guitarist (70's Fender Strat, Gibson SG, Ibanez Professional 500, Takamine Abalone Edition) I mostly compose and record my own keyboard arrangements into the boards media storage and use the playback as accompaniment for solo live work using guitars/vocals - or track it to my DAW (Protools) for later editing.

Don't care much about the copyright infringement (obviously AKX10 is good enough to worry Yamaha), and have a reliable music store (one year return guarantee) plus a friend who is a keyboard performer/technician who has kept my current boards serviced and active for the last 20 years. He can't wait to get his mitts on my new purchase.

Good to hear from you, and will arm you with the news if the Medeli turns out to be a crapper!

(Biggles - Bet you do a mean 'Dambusters Theme' on your Pa5X........)

 

[amwilburn]

To answer your original question, probably best to just spit them out to a wav/mp3 and use that as a backing track for your AKX, as you said, different midi nuances.

But if you import them into the AKX as midi, and the AKX is your 'main' board, you've much more flexibility down the road with your songs.

BIggles: that's actually hillarious. On PSRtutorial, someone had suggested Yamaha and Medeli were working together, and as someone who works for one of the largest Yamaha dealers in the world (and also once the largest Medeli dealer in the world! But that was almost 2 decades ago) *and* some of our staff actually joined Medeli at the start, I could emphatically tell them no. But I also noticed that the AKX sounds sure shared a lot of familiar sounds from PSR3000/s900, as well as a lot in common with the sx700/sx900 OS... it's actually hillarious that Yamaha sued them and won

Mark

---

www.youtube.com/MarkWilburnTLM/Videos
DX7, CLP300, PSR60, Roland E20 + MT32, CVP309, PSRS970, Fender Std Strat, Squier RB3 Midi Strat, Ibanez SA262, Yamaha CG131, Fujiyama FC390, TUC-Kitty

 

[4music]

Thanks for the helpful response Mark - I had come to a similar conclusion on that matter.
However, having now owned the board for a week I think the sound editing abilities of the AKX10 are such that, with perseverance, I should be able to duplicate (or import) the fuller Yamaha sounds I want available (sax, strings, choir).

To create similar styles might be a bit more challenging but the Medeli has some good ones with a bit of tampering. It is to my advantage (over NZ$2500 worth vs SX900/PA1000) that Medeli might have plagiarised some of these in the first place.......

You have a lovely country - here is brief visual/musical perspective I did for mine:

K

 

[amwilburn]

Absolutely! It may be funny that Yamaha sued them, but that only lends *more* credibility that you're getting something worth more than what you paid for it (ie they illegally saved on R&D by using some of Yamaha's own). I wish we still carried them so that I could get my hands on an AKX (10/1100 are the same thing, but i think the 1100 had less expansion ram)

I'm also very curious if anyone can analyse their expansion packs and reverse engineer them for Yamaha (and vice versa for the ppf's)... someone claims to have reverse engineered a cpf pack, which is a *real* breakthrough!

Mark

 

[Gourockian]

Now I am sold on this machine!

Unfortunately, my brief (1 week) experience with the AKX10 was not quite as rosy. It locked up on me twice, in that I could select different factory sounds on the screen but the actual sound it produced stayed the same. Switching off and back on was the only way to clear it and was obviously not ideal.

The other thing which really put me off it and I know I've mentioned this before, was the keys. They are not quite full size but apart from that, each has an 'overhang' at both sides of the front portion, which I found to be annoying at times, as they interfered with key release.

It has some great features and sounds (some not so great) but I knew it was not for me so returned it and bought a Pa1000.

I hope you have better success with your's and it does what you need.

 

[4music]

Unfortunately, my brief (1 week) experience with the AKX10 was not quite as rosy. It locked up on me twice, in that I could select different factory sounds on the screen but the actual sound it produced stayed the same. Switching off and back on was the only way to clear it and was obviously not ideal.

The other thing which really put me off it and I know I've mentioned this before, was the keys. They are not quite full size but apart from that, each has an 'overhang' at both sides of the front portion, which I found to be annoying at times, as they interfered with key release.

It has some great features and sounds (some not so great) but I knew it was not for me so returned it and bought a Pa1000.

I hope you have better success with yours and it does what you need.

Hello Gourockian _ thanks for sharing your opinion.

It is quite bizarre that the same system hang-up happened to me today while I was tweaking styles and sounds. I was stuck on one sound that I had been editing. However, I found it was me not the machine - I had inadvertently turned on a settings 'lock'; all good when released.

I don't notice the slight key frontal overhang as all my other keyboards have the same - one of my Yamaha WorkStation's much more so......

By the way, despite still learning the keyboard I got some great results today editing factory sounds and styles. I brought a tenor sax, French Horn and Choir up to my Yamaha Arranger standard and five styles to performance quality. It took much of the day so I wouldn't want to do all of them
I will now get the 'Global Sound' pack which reportedly produces sounds of Pa4X/Genos quality - we will see
Cheers, K

 

[Gourockian]

Hello Gourockian _ thanks for sharing your opinion.

It is quite bizarre that the same system hang-up happened to me today while I was tweaking styles and sounds. I was stuck on one sound that I had been editing. However, I found it was me not the machine - I had inadvertently turned on a settings 'lock'; all good when released.

I don't notice the slight key frontal overhang as all my other keyboards have the same - one of my Yamaha WorkStation's much more so......

By the way, despite still learning the keyboard I got some great results today editing factory sounds and styles. I brought a tenor sax, French Horn and Choir up to my Yamaha Arranger standard and five styles to performance quality. It took much of the day so I wouldn't want to do all of them
I will now get the 'Global Sound' pack which reportedly produces sounds of Pa4X/Genos quality - we will see
Cheers, K

Hi K, thanks for your very quick response and glad to hear that you are having fun setting up your AKX10 to sound the way you want it. It certainly has quite a steep learning curve, as is also the case with my Pa1000.

It's interesting that you had a similar hang-up situation to mine, although I don't believe my problem had anything to do with setting a 'lock'. On both occasions, it just happened while playing normally - everything was fine and I could change sounds etc., then it would just hang up without any warning. Incidentally, according to the manual, you would need to actually select 'Sound' if you wanted that to be one of the locked parameters.

Just to clarify, I wasn't referring to the frontal overhang of the keys, which is more or less standard on all non-waterfall keys. If you look at the picture I attached, or check your own AKX10, you'll see that the keys have an 'side indent' right at the front, which causes the side overhang. I've never seen anything like this before in all the years I've had many various keyboards and can't think of any reason for them being designed that way. It didn't cause me a problem if my fingers were placed further back on the keys but if they were more towards the front, especially when playing an octave, there was a tendency for the adjacent key to sort of snag my fingers.

If you can live with the 'defects', it certainly is great value for money and has a lot of potential.

Al