Mad at korg for pa900 Tc helicon

[alfredokiwi]

The Pa900 and Pa3xLe use the same mainboard as the Pa600. Regarding the TC-Helicon voice processor quality on Pa900 and Pa3xLe series it should be enough for venues but to poor for professional recordings because is not a dedicate TC-Helicon DSP chip. The Pa600/900 and Pa3xLe use a generic OMAP processor CPU+DSP solution in one chip a technology found on today tablets and smartphones. The OMAP CPU/DSP overloads frequently because can´t handle all the features together due the lack of enough processing power (ESD synthesis + TC-Helicon vocal harmonizer + mp3 recording + arranging sequencing, etc). This CPU/DSP overload situation leads to issues for example reduced polyphony, notes cuts, degraded voice quality on recordings and harmonizing. We can say that Korg followed a cut-in specifications using a very cheap OMAP CPU/DSP one chip solution comparing previous models with dedicate processors (true EDS chip for synth engine + true TC Helicon DSP chip for vocal processing + main CPU chip for sequencing arranging) which affects the performance.

The only partial solution here is to reduce processing power using an external recorder connected on line outs disabling the internal mp3 recording module. Also a dedicate TC-Helicon or Digitech Vocalist connected via MIDI is strongly recommended. The OMAP CPU/DSP load is less in this way which gives more headroom for core processes.