Does anyone have experience with this instrument? It's looks like a comparable board to the latest from Roland, Yamaha, Kawai, and Korg. Some of the samples sound great. Haven't seen or heard much about this model, or really any Kurzweils lately.

http://kurzweil.com/Product.php?id=208

It's basically a PC3X with flash ROM (128MB). 98% identical to the previous generation, but twice as expensive. Sounds are the same as they we're the last 15 years from Kurzweil. It's got the latest OS that delivers some tweaks and K-series compatibility , but for the tweaks you can load this OS 2.0 on the other PC3's as well. So if you don't need to be backward compatible , the only advantage over the old series remains the Flash ROM of 128MB. Which is tiny considering it's 2011 and not 1989.

Action is FATAR TP40L. Average keybed, quite light - which is good for other sounds like synth and organ etc. (but not rally great for the best piano-feel).

Kurzweil has got a ROM board in the pipeline that will among other things probably add some K-series ROM samples for full backward compatibility and a load of drum-sounds (who asked for those ??). Would have been great to have a new AP, but that won't happen according to Kurzweil. Shame...

Reason for buying: great all-round gigging board with mainstream sounds. Great controller functions (lots of pedal-inputs and aftertouch) and optional add-ons like Ribbon controller and breath control. Software editor. Balanced and Digital Outs.

Not buying: price to high IMHO. Sampled sounds have aged tremendously. Average keybed. No controller knobs, only sliders. Small display (but that may not be an issue, because the interface is quite intuitive). Competition from they're own - now very cheap- PC3X.

Yeah when I think of Kurzweil, I think 80s and 90s synths. It's a shame they don't have a more competitive selection of sounds. Their hardware even looks dated to me. Although I did think some of the sounds did sound great. The only Kurzweil boards I've seen have been with older guys with older boards (SP88). I just don't get why Kurzweil isn't and hasn't invested more in touch and sound...

Cause they have been out of business for a while and had to downsize tremendously. It seems , there are only a bunch of guys left to run the show, which means they are very , very small compared to the big names in the industry and simply do not have the resources to develop something new quickly.

They keep on repeating they have a new (really new) board in the pipeline, but considering the history of things, I wonder if that will materialize when I'm still around (and not 98 years old ;-) , or before they go out of business again.

I want one - if they ever make it ; they have some things done very right in the past , meaning there must be some smart guys left that do thing differently (better) than the rest of the industry. For now (at this price) its a no go. I would only consider a cheap PC3X leftover for the time being - these boards still do the job well - especially with the latest firmware.

I think you're being less than fair to Kurzweil. The PC3X is a nice instrument, though perhaps not the best from a piano point of view. It does have some great selling points, though:

* The Kurzweil sounds can sound a bit flat in comparison with the big manufacturers, who hype up presets to sound flashy and impressive on the sales floor. But these hyped-up sounds rarely sit well in a mix, whereas most of the Kurzweil sounds blend far more naturally.

* The orchestral samples may be old but are still miles ahead of the competition, even recently released models such as the Yamaha Motif XF and Korg Kronos.

* The PC3X features genuine patch remain, with no bump or interruption of sounds switching from preset to preset. Korg are making a big deal of this because they've done it in the Kronos, but Kurzweil were there years before.

* The "VAST" synthesis architecture is incredibly flexible and in the right hands, a very powerful tool.

* The current Kurzweil team has built an enviable record for customer service, posting regularly on forums and intervening personally when people have had service issues.

* In the UK at least, they are significantly cheaper than their competitor. Here, a Yamaha Motif XF8 costs close to £3,000 - you can pick up a PC3X for half that.

There's a reason that Kurzweils are common in the orchestra pit - you can cover a lot of things very well with just one board. Not all the sounds or samples are front-rank but most are comparable with competitors.

If you're looking at it purely from the perspective of a digital piano, there are admittedly much better options. But as a workstation/all-in-one board, the Kurzweil has a lot going for it.

Kurzweil is kind of like the office screw-up - they perform a tremendous service for their peers by plumbing the bottom and exploring the bare minimum of effort necessary for continued employment. As long as you rank above them you can relax and take it easy. The state of the current DP industry in a nutshell.

You know what? I'm frankly tired of your aggressive, self-aggrandising, ill-informed and downright rude posts here.

I have no connection at all with Kurzweil. I don't own any of their equipment. But what I do know is that with their history, it's a minor miracle that the company is still here at all, let alone producing decent equipment and continuing to develop new products.

The fact that it does exist is, I believe, down to the hard work of a small core team of dedicated people who believed in their products and their future development. For you to demean and dismiss their work using such language strikes me as both arrogant and gratuitously offensive.

You appear to believe that your little "project" sets you up here as some kind of visionary or arbiter on the state of the industry.

Yet by your own admission you're not a pianist, you advised people to buy a keyboard you had never (at that point) played yourself and many of your posts also suggest that you know screw all about the commercial realities of the MI industry to boot.

Maybe you should switch your avatar back to that bitter and twisted face - it was certainly very apt.

We did, the SP76. Sticky keys from day one, poor sound, an all-around bad experience. Finally just gave it away to a starving artist friend.


Isn't this how capitalism is supposed to work? Poor products should fail in the marketplace, regardless of how nice or well-meaning the developers / producers are. Make a good product and you get good word-of-mouth. It's nothing personal, I'm sure they're a great bunch of fine upstanding people, but their sounds need a serious update. And it's not like I'm the first one to notice that.

Look, the PC3X "Standard Grand" is an unblended 3 layer ultra stretched sample set - a mere 15 samples cover 88 notes. It fails virtually all of the DPBSD v1.6 key / pedal tests including half-pedaling. Overall a really, really poor showing in the sound technology department. 10 or 15 years ago you might have been able to crow a little about those specs, but today they are just embarrassing, particularly for a $2200 flagship.

Except your feelings about capitalism appear somewhat ambivalent, don't they?

On the one hand, you're happy that "screw-up" companies like Kurzweil should fail. On the other, you moan when the majors don't deliver the products you want because it's more profitable for them to recycle and incrementally improve old ideas and technology than it is to come up with something radically new. Then, it's all part of a capitalist industry conspiracy you appear to believe exists.

In my experience, people who work for competing companies in whatever industry are usually (if they're smart) immensely respectful of each other, and each other's work. Your picture of people at Roland and Yamaha kicking back with a pina colada because Kurzweil's samples are a decade older than theirs is frankly delusional.

As for Kurzweil itself, it's unfortunate that you had a bad experience with one of their products. But thousands of top touring pros, including the likes of Billy Joel and Roy Bittan, use and trust Kurzweil gear night after night and like how it sounds.

And that's because real musicians choose a board based on how it feels, how it sounds in certain acoustic spaces, how the keys connect with the sound – not a bunch of statistics garnered from a MIDI test file.

If you tell me that the PC3X has 15 samples stretched over 88 notes, I'm not going to argue with you.

But you know what? Most musicians could care less - if it sounded great, they wouldn't mind just 10 samples. For all their age and modest size, Kurzweil's orchestral samples still sound far better than anything the Japanese big three can offer. That's why they're a staple in Broadway pits. It's about more than the numbers.

On this board, musicians like Dave Ferris and Zachary have reminded us just what these instruments are - they're a bunch of compromises, tools for gigging and maybe sometimes recording. And compared with our choices just a couple of decades ago, they're phenomenal choices despite the inevitable compromises.

I'm not asking you, or anyone else here, to like any company or its products. However, there are ways of expressing preferences without being gratuitously offensive.

I also worry that your pronouncements "ex cathedra" will cause less experienced visitors to this forum to immediately dismiss instruments they've never even laid hands on. You're more dangerous than the average uninformed oaf on such places because your "project" tends to lend your posts an air of scientific gravitas, rather like the "science bit" in an Olay ad.

Folks, whatever board you're considering, please just go and play it - and as many other keyboards within the same budget. Buy the one you think feels and sounds the best. Whatever you do, don't feel that your purchases have to be endorsed by myself, Dewster or any poster on any forum.

Then play the thing and enjoy it and don't worry about whether we like what you bought. At the end of the day, it's about the music you make with it, not what you're making the music with.

Well said.

Best post of the year (so far) for me.

Cheers,
James
x

"Then play the thing and enjoy it and don't worry about whether we like what you bought. At the end of the day, it's about the music you make with it, not what you're making the music with."

Ha ha, reminds me of the famous words against equipments fetishists in the recording studio world; " if it sounds right, it is right !". As always the truth will be somewhere in the middle I suppose.

Basically that's true. As a previous Kurzweil owner (K2000, K2500x, K2600XS) , I know the value of their boards. Just wouldn't know if I would be willing to plunge down the extra € 1000 for a PC3K compared to the PC3X, just for the Flash ROM and nice wooden side panels, since (as said)) the sounds are still basically the same as they have been for many years. I hop though they will work things out at Kurzweil and they will continue to exist. We'll see...

Yep...

The first piano patch in the PC3X is technically very dated. Listen to the following and see if you agree.

Exhibit A: Stretching


Figure 1. Spectral pan view of the entire stretching test, normalized to -1 dB peak. Huge tracts covered by single samples.

MP3: http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/kurzweil_pc3x_stretching_normalized.mp3

The PC3X piano is obviously highly stretched, with the low and mid group transitions audible. The stretch group sizes are: 7,5,3,7,5,7,5(x3),6,6,5,4,7,11 = 15 groups. Reducing this to 10 groups would only degrade the sound even further.


Exhibit B: Layering



Figure 2. Spectral frequency view of the entire layer test, compressed 20:1 to minimize volume change, cursor located at second layer switch.

MP3: http://www.pianoworld.com/Uploads/files/kurzweil_pc3x_layers_compressed.mp3

The PC3X piano has at most three unblended layers, little if any timbre variation with velocity within the layers, and abrupt timber changes at the layer transitions. Visible and audible velocity layer switches @ vel=94,116. Velocity 94 (~75%) is a long way to go for any significant timbre change.


Exhibit C: Misc.

No pedal sympathetic resonance. It fails the brief partial damping test. It doesn't even support half pedaling. Note decays are really short (~1/3 to ~1/2 Pianoteq).

I can see a gigging musician maybe using this piano voice in a mix or with a band, but it really isn't good enough for convincing solo playing, and I think it would disappoint most DP enthusiasts who are usually looking for something as close to real piano sound and behavior as possible.

I must say, the PC3X/K is a synthesizer/workstation/controller, not a digital piano. Kurzweil piano sounds are not personally my cup of tea, but piano is about 10% of what I play on my board. Orchestral is the other 90%. Look at the voice selection in any Kurzweil workstation-- it echos this sentiment. Only about the first 20 or so are piano-related. I believe this is the target market (bread & butter) for Kurzweil, especially their workstations. The Broadway/orchestra pit references are very correct. The sounds may be dated by a technical standpoint, but the sound of a string ensemble has not changed much in the last 15 years and in my opinion, Kurzweil captured it very well the first time.

Now, the SP76 is not the best board from Kurzweil. It is their "lowest-level pro line". Think of it as a spring action P60. It feels nothing like their other boards and I will say it is not the best feeling action, at all. However, judging the entire company based on your experience with this one board isn't very fair.

My opinion: Yes, Kurzweil should invest more in their piano sounds to stay competitive (especially in their Digital Piano line), but I hope they do nothing to their orchestral sounds. They are leaps and bounds ahead of the big 3, even if the sounds are older. The fact that many of their orchestral presets use several layers of string/flute/brass sounds and introduce them in to the mix based on your velocity and which octave you're in sounds like a weird idea, but it calls for a very organic sound.

I hope this doesn't sound like an attack post. I have owned a Yamaha S90 and several Kurzweil boards, as well as gear from Roland, Alesis, etc. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Kurzweil has many "on paper" weaknesses, but they really shine in an orchestra pit. (Interesting side note: many Broadway scores have synth books written especially for the K2600. 'Wicked' currently uses 2 or 3 K2600's in their pit).

From what I've read in postings from Dave Weiser on various forums, Kurzweil is well aware of what it needs to do. It knows it's behind the curve on a lot of fronts because of the company's recent history. So let's wait and see what they come up with.

As you say, Les, the PC3X is marketed more as a workstation synth than a DP, and workstation piano voicings are often somewhat disappointing for the purist. I only have to turn on my Motif XS Rack and compare "Full Concert Grand" with anything on my CP5 to remind myself of that.

Oh, and Dewster...exhibit D:

A bit unfair Aidan!

Having owned two Kurzweil DPs, a Micro-Piano and Micro-Ensemble I think Dewster's tests merely illustrate in a visual form WHY the piano sounds are so weak. If I add my personal opinion, Kurzweil have another difficulty with their piano sounds, besides their technical deficiencies; they are so distinctive that I can spot a Kurzweil instantly...there are clusters of notes with some really nasty timbral characteristics. In pure acoustic piano terms I really think they have no redeeming features whatsoever. God, when I hear Billy Joel's live piano sound (which is Kurzweil), I could vomit. I hear all those characteristic noises that plagued me for a couple for years.

All that said, I accept their other sounds are very good. My first Kurzweil was a MK 10 DP - it broke and went totally haywire...the shop never even bothered to try and fix it, they chopped it up and put it in a skip eventually. But it did have a large range of other sounds and they really were very good - and this is a long time ago. Not terribly good news for me because I'm only interested in piano sounds, but it was a virtue of the instrument nonetheless.

It's not as if Kurzweil need to do anything astoundingly original...why don't they just buy in a decent piano sound if they haven't the resources to do one themselves? I don't get it.

Steve

Steve, there was a certain irony implied in that post which maybe you missed. In a previous post, I said:



I wasn't taking issue with the tests per se, but I was pointing out that there is a whole load of stuff - important stuff which matters to musicians - which cannot be quantified in exercises like this.

Also, the main plank of my original response was centred on Dewster's gratuitously offensive description of an honest business and my own particular weariness of his conspiracy theory that the MI industry is deliberately delivering sub-standard keyboards as part of some dastardly corporate plot.

His response was to repost a load of graphs.



As a guess, maybe because people won't sell it to them? There's got to be a reason that the likes of Kurzweil and Nord source their keybeds from Fatar and presumably that's because there's no chance the big three would supply such parts to third parties.

It's not like doing a deal on a software piano, remember - this has to fit inside the limited ROM of existing or next-generation machines or you're facing another huge R&D bill - a budget I expect is pretty tight at Kurzweil.

I can see that my Kurzweil comment could be too easily perceived as overly flippant (it was more a poor attempt at humor) and I apologize to those who took it to heart or felt personally offended by it.


The DPBSD thread is littered with disclaimers to this effect, including the first main post and the project readme file. You may not want to read them - if that's the case I'm not sure what I can do to mollify you.


I don't think it's a conspiracy, but the result is the same: virtually all DPs are woefully behind the technology curve. It's a mystery to me as to why this is, and I find it quite frustrating.


There are also accompanying MP3 files - which you probably didn't listen to so I might as well be talking to the wall.

PW has this great feature that enables you to ignore posts by specific users, and I urge you to use it rather than resorting to personal attacks. Get a grip, man.

"Can't we all just get along".

Dewster, I have no wish to get involved in personal battles. I simply felt you were being unnecessarily unpleasant about the guys at Kurzweil. You've apologised and I'm sure we can draw a line under it here.

And honestly, my "Olay" graphic WAS meant to be tongue in cheek - sorry if I caused offence.

You're right - I didn't bother to listen to the PC3X stuff you posted, mainly because I owned one for a couple of days before deciding to send it back - so I'm very aware of its pianistic shortcomings.

If I hadn't been looking at the purchase primarily from a DP point of view, I might have kept it, as the rest of the sounds were excellent and the VAST synthesis system is extremely flexible and deep.

Aidan, I regret that I started this off with my careless offhand comment - I want to apologize again, and to you in particular.

Since you were looking at the PC3X from a DP point of view, it seems that the DPBSD project is perhaps rather targeted towards your experience with it. It started because my wife was replacing the Yamaha P120 in her piano studio, and I was concerned that we might end up stuck with something that wouldn't hold up to long-term scrutiny sound-wise. Since the test is primarily of the main piano voice (and not the other voices, the keys, UI, etc.) and because it only samples a subset of that voice, it is by no means comprehensive. It's much more of a no-go test than a stamp of approval, and maybe I should put more effort into conveying that to readers.

Without people here taking the time to test their DPs and submit the samples, I never would have been able to hear and evaluate as many piano voices. In the process I've learned a tremendous amount from the exceedingly friendly and incredibly knowledgeable folks here at PW.

Accepted and reciprocated, Dewster - we now return you to your regular programming of gear-drooling