The PA5x is brilliant!

[pax-eterna.1]

When it gets down to it, and by that I mean simply playing music, this thing is pure wickedness!!!

I remember all too well the PA1x (and the 2 and 3 - not so much the 4) and just how far this series has come.

Yeah sure, it might have a few foibles, but man, this is "the bomb"

Major kudos to Korg!!

[the_boss81]

I fully agree with you - of course I also still see potential for improvement and minor flaws in the system - but I would buy it anytime over again - superb for me.

[bensel46]

+ 100

[Danster72]

I have really enjoyed this keyboard from day 1 it came out. The OS is the best OS on any keyboard out there and I also own the Genos & Ketron Event so have been able to compare them all.

[chelsea4023]

Hi,
I have to say I am really confused why you guys did not post your feelings on the Forums sooner. Up to now, virtually all the Posts have been negative regarding the PA5X. Personally, it has put me off buying a PA5X, so I'm going to stick with my PA4X and have a look an alternative replacement. You only have to look at the number of PA5X's available secondhand. I just had a brief look and spotted three used models for sale.

Here in the U.K. a Member of staff at Korg U.K. Milton Keynes paused the Korg U.K. Official PA Series Owners Group on Facebook stopping Members from posting due to the number of negative Posts regarding the PA5X.

If as a Members you are really happy with your PA5X please post on the Forum and let us know.
Chris

[QuiRobinez]

Hi,
I have to say I am really confused why you guys did not post your feelings on the Forums sooner. Up to now, virtually all the Posts have been negative regarding the PA5X. Personally, it has put me off buying a PA5X, so I'm going to stick with my PA4X and have a look an alternative replacement. You only have to look at the number of PA5X's available secondhand. I just had a brief look and spotted three used models for sale.

Here in the U.K. a Member of staff at Korg U.K. Milton Keynes paused the Korg U.K. Official PA Series Owners Group on Facebook stopping Members from posting due to the number of negative Posts regarding the PA5X.

If as a Members you are really happy with your PA5X please post on the Forum and let us know.
Chris

I'm really happy with the pa5x, but i have to admit that i also don't post a lot of my experiences over here and on the facebook groups, because you know upfront that a lot of people will give the same reaction over and over again that it's so bad.

That is how the internet works nowadays, the positive people will stay away because why should we bother posting when people just want to read that this is the worst thing that happened to them over history.

That doesn't mean that there aren't forums where the tone is positive. Actually on one forum we share a lot of positive information and experiences about all kind of indepth and hard to find features of the pa5x. Like for instance how to use insert effects on the 16 pads system (yes that is possible) or EQ theory and compression techniques and the new filter system on the pa5x.

so there are sites where you can read a lot of info and positive messages about the pa5x. But i won't share those sites to keep the negativity out.

But on facebook it's much worse then over here, I keep my posts over there to a minimum, i've read enough negativity there and my experiences are the opposite, my pa5x is working fine.

[pax-eterna.1]

..........Actually on one forum we share a lot of positive information and experiences about all kind of indepth and hard to find features of the pa5x. Like for instance how to use insert effects on the 16 pads system (yes that is possible) or EQ theory and compression techniques and the new filter system on the pa5x.

Colud you please perhaps PM me with that forum name please Qui

[pax-eterna.1]

Hi,
I have to say I am really confused why you guys did not post your feelings on the Forums sooner. Up to now, virtually all the Posts have been negative regarding the PA5X. Personally, it has put me off buying a PA5X, so I'm going to stick with my PA4X and have a look an alternative replacement. You only have to look at the number of PA5X's available secondhand. I just had a brief look and spotted three used models for sale.

Here in the U.K. a Member of staff at Korg U.K. Milton Keynes paused the Korg U.K. Official PA Series Owners Group on Facebook stopping Members from posting due to the number of negative Posts regarding the PA5X.

If as a Members you are really happy with your PA5X please post on the Forum and let us know.
Chris

haha, I only got mine about a week ago!! An initial frustration as the last one I had (a 4 briefly) was about two years ago and I was , wrongly, applying that knowledge,

[Dmkeys]

Hi,
I have to say I am really confused why you guys did not post your feelings on the Forums sooner. Up to now, virtually all the Posts have been negative regarding the PA5X. Personally, it has put me off buying a PA5X, so I'm going to stick with my PA4X and have a look an alternative replacement. You only have to look at the number of PA5X's available secondhand. I just had a brief look and spotted three used models for sale.

Here in the U.K. a Member of staff at Korg U.K. Milton Keynes paused the Korg U.K. Official PA Series Owners Group on Facebook stopping Members from posting due to the number of negative Posts regarding the PA5X.

If as a Members you are really happy with your PA5X please post on the Forum and let us know.
Chris

I'm really happy with the pa5x, but i have to admit that i also don't post a lot of my experiences over here and on the facebook groups, because you know upfront that a lot of people will give the same reaction over and over again that it's so bad.

That is how the internet works nowadays, the positive people will stay away because why should we bother posting when people just want to read that this is the worst thing that happened to them over history.

That doesn't mean that there aren't forums where the tone is positive. Actually on one forum we share a lot of positive information and experiences about all kind of indepth and hard to find features of the pa5x. Like for instance how to use insert effects on the 16 pads system (yes that is possible) or EQ theory and compression techniques and the new filter system on the pa5x.

so there are sites where you can read a lot of info and positive messages about the pa5x. But i won't share those sites to keep the negativity out.

But on facebook it's much worse then over here, I keep my posts over there to a minimum, i've read enough negativity there and my experiences are the opposite, my pa5x is working fine.

I think that people are talking past each other on this. The PA5X was released initially with an incomplete OS that made live use difficult. (for example, it took an extra bar to switch styles, so smooth transitions during a dance set were difficult if not impossible). This meant that the keyboard largely worked well for people who only play for enjoyment at home, but was not usable for live musicians who needed to segue from style to style smoothly.

The first update fixed that issue. But, it largely left the issues with programming/converting styles, which meant that the board (or the vast majority of its programming features) were inaccessible to musicians.

It's important to keep in mind that the primary use of high-end arranger keyboards by pro musicians is usually not to play stock styles/sounds, but to program(or buy other's programming) custom styles/sounds, most often to play ethnic repertoire not well represented in the factory styles, especially for expat communities. So, in the USA, while arranger keyboards are generally relatively rare, you'll find them often in communities like Arab, Jewish, Greek, Armenian, Balkan, etc. where —with proper programming — these boards allow musicians to authentically recreate the sounds/styles of the "Old Country" (as well as newer cultural pop music) without requiring the live participation at a gig of specialists on all of those instruments.

So, for example, I can play a Turkish melody with authentic sounds/rhythms without needing to supply a saz player, a baglama player, various hand drummers, a Turkish clarinet, Arabic strings, etc. These options, which are critical for many gigging musicians in the ethnic field, were completely frozen out by Korg's buggy PA5X release and those musicians were/are rightfully upset by this. When you couple this with the fact that many sold their PA4X's in order to pay for the Pa5X, their frustration is understandable. And, being told that this doesn't matter or that "there are no issues" by musicians who don't use these features isn't helpful. It just means the people saying it don't use the boards that way. That's fine, but they need to understand the other perspective rather than dismiss it.

Personally, I'm in the middle on this. After the first update, I was able to convert a PA4X set and play live, but I really needed/need to be able to tweak/program on the board which I haven't been able to do.

I haven't had a chance to update yet, but I'm super frustrated to read that you still can only save things in banks alphabetically. This is a huge inconvenience, and although it's possible to workaround it by numbering styles, that doesn't necessarily help when you then need to change the order for a specific gig, or because you've added another style to your set etc.

In short, instead of dismissing people who have complaints, maybe understand that they use the board in a much different fashjon than you do. Their frustrations with Korg losing functionality compared to the previous generations is understandable, and Korg's promise to fix it in the future is nice, but doesn't help with what they need(ed) now or since last autumn.

[QuiRobinez]

I haven't had a chance to update yet, but I'm super frustrated to read that you still can only save things in banks alphabetically. This is a huge inconvenience, and although it's possible to workaround it by numbering styles, that doesn't necessarily help when you then need to change the order for a specific gig, or because you've added another style to your set etc.

yes, this is something I read a lot and don't understand. With the new Pa5X system you have unlimited space for styles. I have thousands of them on my pa5x. I can't remember where certain styles are located, in which tab and page a style would be located with such large number of styles.

So when you are gigging professionally i absolutely don't understand why you don't use the songbook and setlist system for this. It's designed for this and is so convenient to use.

Just select your style, hold the songbook button for a few seconds and your song is in the songbook. Now create a setlist for the gig (or maybe you have multiple setlists for different purposes) and you can add any song that you stored that way to any location in the setlist. It's always the same and doesn't use the alphabetical order.

It's beyond me, that professional gig players aren't using this system.

[pax-eterna.1]

I haven't had a chance to update yet, but I'm super frustrated to read that you still can only save things in banks alphabetically. This is a huge inconvenience, and although it's possible to workaround it by numbering styles, that doesn't necessarily help when you then need to change the order for a specific gig, or because you've added another style to your set etc.

yes, this is something I read a lot and don't understand. With the new Pa5X system you have unlimited space for styles. I have thousands of them on my pa5x. I can't remember where certain styles are located, in which tab and page a style would be located with such large number of styles.

So when you are gigging professionally i absolutely don't understand why you don't use the songbook and setlist system for this. It's designed for this and is so convenient to use.

Just select your style, hold the songbook button for a few seconds and your song is in the songbook. Now create a setlist for the gig (or maybe you have multiple setlists for different purposes) and you can add any song that you stored that way to any location in the setlist. It's always the same and doesn't use the alphabetical order.

It's beyond me, that professional gig players aren't using this system.

And me too, for that matter! I do use it professionally and have done since the PA1xPro - the Songbook was always a "killer" feature, and nearly worth " the price of admission" by itself. I am surprised other manufacturers never copied the idea tbh.

And outside of middle eastern circles, I totally disagree with the prime reason folks buy it was to create styles! I only ever tweaked styles....there are hundred of factory and buyable stuff that ALWAYS was plenty for me.

[mstodola]

It took more than a year before the Pa5x was able to be purchased. They were coming in one and two at a time. They were always out of stock. But I was just able to purchase one about a month ago and I really like the Pa5x. I also own the Pa4x and like that keyboard too. I find the styles are better and are easier to adapt to songs in the Pa5x. I'm not a pro, just play in church. I am able to adapt the styles to use with the songs we sing and I think they come off really well. The sounds in the Pa5x are very good, and don't need to be tweeked very much. Like I said, I am very happy with my Pa5x.

With this new 1.2 update it seems to be faster in both booting and running and so far has not crashed. The last version locked up on me. None of the buttons would work. I had to unplug the unit and reboot. But that only happened once. But I've owned dozens of pro keyboards of many makes, and all will lock up from time to time. We don't live in a perfect world. We have to adapt and work with it. I find that when I'm just playing and not programming that I don't have any problems and they are safe to use live. This hating one and loving another is ridiculous. How about liking one and not liking another as much.

Mitch

[AntonySharmman]

Dmkeys wrote the actual truth of all users needs in any aspect ...

- An international home/pro user could work from last year with factory resources and all were happy with easy tweaking that was possible ...
- Ethnic Pro users could not work/gig with their custom Styles since nothing was working correctly , like INTRO1/END1 conversion bug , plus
important missing multi time signature , plus the missing deep style editor plus missing time slice mid file generation ... do you want more ?
They had any right to complain for features that they were used to
- For a Pa sound developer like me ... only Sound engine in simple stereo mode with pairs was working fine , that's why I created only Sound
Libraries and not Styles at all !
- After this OS v.1.2 , all are back in order and soon all will be happy ...

- For alphabetical order crap , he is also right , because Sound Developers need positions for high significance resources or styles or KBD Set
or similar group of Styles or Sounds or KBD SET that do not have the same name.
That's why Pa5X Factory resources are messed up compared to Pa4X browser , and premium sounds/Styles/KBD Set are scattered in banks
and difficult to find as we had used to.
- A position order option in Pa5X file browser should had added from the beginning as shown in copy Sound function ...

[Asena]

Hi,
I have to say I am really confused why you guys did not post your feelings on the Forums sooner. Up to now, virtually all the Posts have been negative regarding the PA5X. Personally, it has put me off buying a PA5X, so I'm going to stick with my PA4X and have a look an alternative replacement. You only have to look at the number of PA5X's available secondhand. I just had a brief look and spotted three used models for sale.

Here in the U.K. a Member of staff at Korg U.K. Milton Keynes paused the Korg U.K. Official PA Series Owners Group on Facebook stopping Members from posting due to the number of negative Posts regarding the PA5X.

If as a Members you are really happy with your PA5X please post on the Forum and let us know.
Chris

Well, in 20 + years i have never readed something like this,
Openly and great.
Plus 100000
THANK YOU.
ANLAYANA

I'm really happy with the pa5x, but i have to admit that i also don't post a lot of my experiences over here and on the facebook groups, because you know upfront that a lot of people will give the same reaction over and over again that it's so bad.

That is how the internet works nowadays, the positive people will stay away because why should we bother posting when people just want to read that this is the worst thing that happened to them over history.

That doesn't mean that there aren't forums where the tone is positive. Actually on one forum we share a lot of positive information and experiences about all kind of indepth and hard to find features of the pa5x. Like for instance how to use insert effects on the 16 pads system (yes that is possible) or EQ theory and compression techniques and the new filter system on the pa5x.

so there are sites where you can read a lot of info and positive messages about the pa5x. But i won't share those sites to keep the negativity out.

But on facebook it's much worse then over here, I keep my posts over there to a minimum, i've read enough negativity there and my experiences are the opposite, my pa5x is working fine.

I think that people are talking past each other on this. The PA5X was released initially with an incomplete OS that made live use difficult. (for example, it took an extra bar to switch styles, so smooth transitions during a dance set were difficult if not impossible). This meant that the keyboard largely worked well for people who only play for enjoyment at home, but was not usable for live musicians who needed to segue from style to style smoothly.

The first update fixed that issue. But, it largely left the issues with programming/converting styles, which meant that the board (or the vast majority of its programming features) were inaccessible to musicians.

It's important to keep in mind that the primary use of high-end arranger keyboards by pro musicians is usually not to play stock styles/sounds, but to program(or buy other's programming) custom styles/sounds, most often to play ethnic repertoire not well represented in the factory styles, especially for expat communities. So, in the USA, while arranger keyboards are generally relatively rare, you'll find them often in communities like Arab, Jewish, Greek, Armenian, Balkan, etc. where —with proper programming — these boards allow musicians to authentically recreate the sounds/styles of the "Old Country" (as well as newer cultural pop music) without requiring the live participation at a gig of specialists on all of those instruments.

So, for example, I can play a Turkish melody with authentic sounds/rhythms without needing to supply a saz player, a baglama player, various hand drummers, a Turkish clarinet, Arabic strings, etc. These options, which are critical for many gigging musicians in the ethnic field, were completely frozen out by Korg's buggy PA5X release and those musicians were/are rightfully upset by this. When you couple this with the fact that many sold their PA4X's in order to pay for the Pa5X, their frustration is understandable. And, being told that this doesn't matter or that "there are no issues" by musicians who don't use these features isn't helpful. It just means the people saying it don't use the boards that way. That's fine, but they need to understand the other perspective rather than dismiss it.

Personally, I'm in the middle on this. After the first update, I was able to convert a PA4X set and play live, but I really needed/need to be able to tweak/program on the board which I haven't been able to do.

I haven't had a chance to update yet, but I'm super frustrated to read that you still can only save things in banks alphabetically. This is a huge inconvenience, and although it's possible to workaround it by numbering styles, that doesn't necessarily help when you then need to change the order for a specific gig, or because you've added another style to your set etc.

In short, instead of dismissing people who have complaints, maybe understand that they use the board in a much different fashjon than you do. Their frustrations with Korg losing functionality compared to the previous generations is understandable, and Korg's promise to fix it in the future is nice, but doesn't help with what they need(ed) now or since last autumn.

[Asena]

I,m also Happy after they changed my PA5X to a new one, I had problems, But for now , after the change it,s working, and 1.2 is not bad, We miss a lot of things thats the bad of it.
No one will wait 6 more month, and people lost the time, and i dont think Korg will ever be in the same position again like before, KORG was , everything to many musician. And after this disaster, i dont believe that they can catch up like what it was.