This is the Real Deal Trade your Genos for You Know What!!!

[Duffy]

To overwrite such things as Midi files from Genos (not my own) which keep coming back after I deleted them and replacing my style with one to suit the Midi file.
When this happens, it is usually putting a Midi file in Player A where I use nothing but audio in that slot. My Midi's always go in player B.
It's a real pain switching player A from Midi back to Audio and getting rid of the Midi file.
Also registrations (probably given to me by third parties) where the split point varies in some slots and prevents Right 3 voice from sounding.
Quite a few occasions where you may want to make changes which have a GLOBAL effect.

[pjd]

It appears that many prospective purchasers are holding off for a while because the PA5X does not yet have the brilliant and easy to use, Korg version of Yamaha's Style Creator and also the Midi to Style converter, both of which are on the PA4X. 

I read through the Pa5x section of the Korg forum. Must say, if one thinks the whinging on this Forum is bad, please take a look at the Korg-ites. ("Korgee" sounds too much like "Corgi".  No offense intended toward humans or canines.)

Ah, human nature. 

Wishing everyone a chill afternoon -- pj

[Michael Trigoboff]

I read through the Pa5x section of the Korg forum. Must say, if one thinks the whinging on this Forum is bad, please take a look at the Korg-ites.

Wow, no kidding. I just went and looked. They are not happy.

[EileenL]

My Friend had a chance to play one last week and said it is awful and full of bugs with parts not finished yet.

[Lee Batchelor]

Not surprising, Eileen.

Question for Michael: Why is so much software released these days before it's even close to being ready? I know the engineers cannot possibly anticipate every permutation of how we're going to use the product, but it seems they don't even ensure the basic functions all work. Why do they charge big bucks for us to be their usability subjects or did I just answer my own question ?

[Gunnar Jonny]

Regarding software. Just look at Microsoft, Apple and whoever it is, all versions came with lots of bugs, and they're still releasing fixes and addons.
Yamaha and Korg is not any exeption. Genos is mostly a continued Tyros with a new design, PA5X is pretty much a new baby build up from bottom with new fileformats and lots of new stuff.
And as usual, the customers is the betatesters..... It's probably the name of the game. 

Btw, there is not only negative reports at Korg Forum and elsewhere, there is happy buyers as well. But, if it's so that we want the new keyboards to be a clone of what we already have, why bother to buy a new one?
Did'nt we see the same atitude when Genos was launched? 

[Michael Trigoboff]

Question for Michael: Why is some much software released these days before it's even close to being ready? I know the engineers cannot possibly anticipate every permutation of how we're going to use the product, but it seems they don't even ensure the basic functions all work. Why do they charge big bucks for us to be their usability subjects or did I just answer my own question?

Adequate testing costs money. Getting your users to do it for free is an economic win. So if you don't give a rip about ethics and you have no pride in your workmanship, that's what you do.

There's a reason why so many people can relate to Dilbert cartoons.

[Lee Batchelor]

Thanks for answering my questions, guys.

Jonny, I agree that MS and Apple offer up constant fixes and updates but even their new OS releases are basically functional from the beginning. Subsequent updates tend to be minor fixes and security updates. From a basic functioning point of view, the Genos is close to the Tyros BUT the Genos is a complete redesign. The OS is totally different and many surface control buttons have been eliminated and put in reach through the OS. When they make such a drastic change to the control surface, the OS better be stellar. The first Genos release was very good, unlike the the PA5X. It sounds like Korg has a horror story on their hands. They jumped the gun and are going to pay a hefty price.

Michael, what you describe is corporate greed on an unprecedented scale. I can remember a time when it was absolutely out of the question to release a product until it was thoroughly tested and ready for the market. Not today. God help our grandchildren! It seems it's acceptable in this pathetic modern world to do everything half-assed.

[EileenL]

I think that bench testing can only go so far in keyboards. Yes someone can sit and press all the buttons to make sure they respond as they should. This dose not necessarily mean they are players and therefore do not know how a customer will use it. We all know that people have so many different ideas on how they want to set it up and how they adjust things. This is where some of the little faults appear and we then report them. If they are genuine faults and not user error they are put right fairly quickly with up dates and all is well.
  This is one of the reasons I stick with Yamaha because they give first class service in this respect.

[pjd]

Systems like Genos pose real challenges for systematic, repeatable testing/quality assurance. Screen-based user interfaces have  special challenges.

Aside from physically pressing buttons, the UI could be driven by an automated, GUI-oriented test script. (Such tools are well-known practice.) As a former developer, I'd love to chat with the Yamaha team about software quality assurance (QA) just to find out what they are doing. Even button pressing needs to follow a script in order to achieve coverage or to perform regression testing (that is, testing after a change/bug fix for non-developers reading this).

Reading the Pa5x posts in the Korg Forum, I wonder what Korg's QA process is like! They seem to have had quite a few "escapes."

Back in the day, I was the interface between our development team (USA) and QA team (India). Been there...

All the best -- pj

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

I think that bench testing can only go so far in keyboards. Yes someone can sit and press all the buttons to make sure they respond as they should. This dose not necessarily mean they are players and therefore do not know how a customer will use it. We all know that people have so many different ideas on how they want to set it up and how they adjust things. This is where some of the little faults appear and we then report them. If they are genuine faults and not user error they are put right fairly quickly with up dates and all is well.
  This is one of the reasons I stick with Yamaha because they give first class service in this respect.

Hi Eileen
One thing people here in the Uk should do is stick with Yamaha.
Korg can be hard to get hold of for tech support.
I have had a few questions i needed answered in the past and if you give Yamaha in Milton Keynes a phone call , they have a support man answering you in seconds and i say that Yamaha are great in responding.
Yes, this is the reason i will wait for the next Yamaha keyboard. 100% support.
The Genos still knocks the pants off of the new Korg
Like you say Eileen ,play the keyboard and learn chords instead of chord looper as a little practice you can get a song finished much quicker.
My failings is mixing and mastering, but i will not stop trying.

[Michael Trigoboff]

Michael, what you describe is corporate greed on an unprecedented scale. I can remember a time when it was absolutely out of the question to release a product until it was thoroughly tested and ready for the market. Not today. God help our grandchildren! It seems it's acceptable in this pathetic modern world to do everything half-assed.

Money talks. We would be better off with a system that also listened to talk from other concerns: ethics, workmanship, competence, compassion...

[Lee Batchelor]

Excellent point, Michael. Then again, you're referring to how we used to do things when companies took pride in their work 🙃. I'd say Yamaha's initial release of the Genos compared to the PA5X, is stellar. There were things we wanted but if I recall, at least everything worked.

[Misu]

When we talk about the sound, and the sound is everything, it depends on everyone's preference, for example, for me only the saxophones are clearly better in Genos, but it's just my opinion.
When we talk about functions, let's be serious, this beta version, where many things are not present or do not work correctly, will clearly send me to the computer less times (if I want to edit something: sound; style; chord looper, everything) than the current version of Genos software.
We like to put on a pedestal what we prefer, but we noticed that our brain doesn't really love the truth.
I worked few months on the Yamaha pack and when I had to open the Korg to take specific sounds or styles, I immediately gave up because it seemed far worse.
After that I decided to improve my Korg set and, after a month of work when I reopened the Yamaha, almost everything seemed to sound wrong.
And I opened the computer only once to take in a sound from Yamaha - of course from TYROS 4 the last real arranger in terms of sound editing with the possibility of IN but also OUT (not like now IN all that you have OUT nothing(it is Yamaha property)).
Then, there is also the pride that we made the right decision by choosing one brand or another, even material interests for certain people, and so on.
Both are extraordinary keyboards, but our requirements are even higher.
We want Genos&Pa5x in one plus everyone's preferences.
Best regards to everyone!

[Gunnar Jonny]

We want Genos&Pa5x in one plus everyone's preferences.

YESS! Now we're speaking! 😁🎶

[mikf]

Rushing products to market with some bugs is usually the result of desperation by executives to meet internally set deadlines rather than a corporate mindset to short change the consumer or greed. It has always happened, but it seems more common now partly because the nature of many software/firmware driven products is to provide such wide and deep functionality. So its getting harder and harder to test and address every possible scenario.
I have no knowledge of the problems being experienced by PaX5 buyers, but there have been many demos where the keyboard appeared to perform well. So maybe we shouldn't read too much into these reported 'bugs'. I suspect the main functions work quite well, and the problems are mainly experienced by "deep" users of the functionality. That's not to excuse it, but realistically, that may not affect sales too much.
Mike

[Duffy]

Before people jump to slate it too much as being unfinished with lots of bugs, just remember that we have seen with our own eyes, the PA5X being played by highly respected players who we have previously seen playing Genos, and many of the board's sounds and technical abilities are absolutely first class.
I am looking forwards to trying one in a shop but, unfortunately, that will mean travelling to do it because there are no real keyboard shops left in my area and I live in a major UK city.
Price we pay for buying things online. I bought my Genos from a local dealer who no longer sells keyboards and so, spoils my dreams.

[Amwilburn]

Pa5x First Impressions: (I'm not starting a new thread for this on a Yamaha forum)
Our 1st customer's unit arrived and my impressions (only had 15 minutes of play time before he was done asking me how to navigate it)

The physical casing is typical, beautiful Korg. Yes, Yamaha focuses more on sound and less on aesthetics, but let's not kid ourselves, physically, the PA5x is gorgeous. Brushed black aluminum casing with dark wood sides (It's a slightly odd design choice; why not make it all black brushed aluminum? They actually do that so if you chip or dent you can just sand it out. Visually still odd, but consistent with all their Kronos/Krome /Nautilus designs as well).

Ease of use out of box: what you'd expect, just as easy to navigate as a Genos for just selecting styles and voices. None of the difficulty of either OS really shows up until you try to get into intricate editing.

Sound: the electric guitars sound amazing, really benefitting from actual guitar amp modelling on board. The drums sound phenomenal. The stereo imaging of most of the styles was also fantastic; a really wide audio image. With some notable exceptions: the brilliant 12-8 Movie Soundtrack style (designed for Pirates of the Caribbean, which is what I converted to Yamaha for my long pirates medley on YouTube) while the drums sound great, all the orchestral horns sounds are weak and sound rather monaural rather than stereo (same was true on the Pa4x for the same style), but at least the strings were better than their previous gen (those were new with the PA4x equivalent of the Genos Superior pack, they added spiccato strings on par with T4/T5).

Control: as with the PA4x, the S.Art 2 sounds are bizarre; as I'd mentioned before on Yamaha, S.Art2 automatically switches between mono and polyphonic to join things like glissandos, sampled pitch bends, etc. With the Pa4x, you had to manually stop a note going into a glissando or both saxes would sound; it's always in poly mode. That remains with the Pa5x. likewise, so do the other articulation idiosyncrasies, like needing to hold down notes on the right hand while slapping the joystick down for string slap/body tap.

That's all I had time to dig into. Oh, and I love the piano. It wasn't as crisp and clear as the Genos, but it was warm, and was never too bright (I mainly tried the 1st one, the Austrian grand I think it was. the 2nd piano, meant to be a Steinway I think, I only tried briefly). But the piano was impressive.

The built in styles were very modern and up to date, the Weeknd clearly being one of their favourite artists to base styles on (and those are *great* styles). On the other hand, the Country ones sounded a tad anemic to me; in particular the "Country Rock" style sounded more like dueling banjos to me. But if you're into modern pop/dance/r&b, the styles will be heaven for you. Likewise, those who like to noodle around with electric guitars on rock styles; some of those sounded *real* to me. Like it sounded like I had a couple of actual guitars playing power chords and strums in the background.

Mark

[Bill]

Hi Mark

Thank you very much for an honest and un-biased first impression.  Just a pity it was only a 15 min trial.

Bill

[dinapoli]

It's a long time I don't buy musical equipment from the stores for the same reason.  They can't afford to keep in stores all these keyboards.  Especially the Arranger keyboards only attract a few people.

The keyboards have become so sophisticated that I don't expect support from anyone at the store level.  Sometimes even companies' support don't know what a keyboard can't do.

I found more help at forums like this.

The good thing about this, there are companies in the USA such as Musicians friend who will send you a keyboard to try, you have 30 days or more to try it on your own equipment, if you like it you'll keep it, if you don't ship it back, you pay shipping cost.  Some companies charge restacking fees.

I kept almost all the equipment I purchased over the Internet.

[Amwilburn]

Hi Mark

Thank you very much for an honest and un-biased first impression.  Just a pity it was only a 15 min trial.

Bill

Well, the 2nd person who pre ordered one was unimpressed (because it mostly had the same styles as his PA1000, which is true, but he *completely* missed the point that there's still 170 brand new styles, and 500 brand new sounds (especially impressive are the new piano and drums), so his special order has become our display model.

So further impressions: the piano and drums are truly impressive (doesn't mean the Genos' aren't good, but I'd give a slight edge to the PA5x in both fronts). Brass is decent, Genos edges out here. But the Genos strings (which anyone who watches my YouTube videos knows, I *live* on orchestral strings) are still vastly superior. Solo strings however, are *really* good on the PA5x; better than on even PSRsx900.


The saxes still have that weird articulation thing where it's always polyphonic (the Genos S.Art 2 saxes are usually more natural because they automatically adjust from poly to mono on the fly). However, these saxes are now close to the Yamahas S.Art 2; in some cases it now switches properly (not all) between poly and mono. *much* better than on the PA4x/PA1000.

The guitars still have that weird joystick down thing which won't slap if you don't already have notes playing.
Hammond organs are fantastic on the Korg; the only oddball thing is that you need to slap the joystick up to change rotary speed. But it *works* and sounds great! And yes, the seamless switching of voices works (so far)

On the other hand, their version of megavoice is a match to Yamaha's, the keys and the build quality are amazing (the semiweighted keys have so much spring to them that some customers asked me if they were weighted keys!). Yamaha gives you 2 years warranty in Canada, Korg only gives 1.

Mark

[adrianed]

Stop saying the Genos is so good, how ever am I going to get one cheap if you keep building it up 
Adrian

[Dnj]

The KORG Pa5x is a wonderful instrument with some amazing features,
BUT,.....you have to be will to DIG IN DEEP and make it your own. Many players are not motivated to do that & that is their prerogative but instead choose to just turn on and play & that is fine also.

[stephenm52]

The KORG Pa5x is a wonderful instrument with some amazing features,
BUT,.....you have to be will to DIG IN DEEP and make it your own. Many players are not motivated to do that & that is their prerogative but instead choose to just turn on and play & that is fine also.

Donny, My long time friend.  Good to see you post.  What are you playing now?  A mutual friend of ours told me he just bought your T5.

[Whitecolin11]

I think you do not understand what the new Korg Pa5 brings to the table.  They have embedded the Kronos, SV1, and Nautilus sound engine into the Pa5.  If you have ever played ANY of those instruments, you should know the sound quality is 2nd to NONE!   Also, there are now 100's of Kronos and Nautilus sound libraries available to used within the Pa5x.  As a matter of fact, I used many of the Orchestral sounds on the Kronos and I'm sorry to say, they equal or exceed the Yamaha counterparts.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge this keyboard until you actually play it and hear it in person!!!
[would you able to direct me to which kronos sounds work on PA5X i have a genos also and wonder which for mats work regards Colin/quote]

[Pianoman]

Yamaha will up their game at some point, and so it will continue. That's great for all arranger enthusiasts. One thing I don't understand, is why some are so defensive about the Genos. Nothing has changed on your Genos, if you liked it before it's still the same. My CVP didn't change because there is something new out there. If you try the new Korg and decide you still prefer Genos, that's no issue. If you decide the Korg might be a step up, and you like it better, you now have choice, - how can this be bad?

Mike

Well said Mike.

I will buy the 88 key PAX5 in July to use together with my Genos. Why July? I'm hoping that by then they will update it and fix some of their software issues that I have been reading about.

I have a 34 Kg Kawai MP11 piano that seems to get heavier with each passing year, which I shall leave at home for practice. Arthritis crept up on me and the Korg is lighter (20 kg.) It probably would also be good to combine different sound and style options as well.

Make no mistake, I've grown to love my Genos and will not part with it, but it is always good to keep an open mind about things. This will benefit all of us as these two companies each compete to stay one step ahead of the other. Waiting for Genos 2.

Pianoman.

[Amwilburn]

34kg? Holy smokes that's heavy. Heck, the P515 is heavy at 22.5kg

You should really check out the 15kg PXS6000/7000 or the even lighter 11kg PXS5000. Wooden keys (wood resin hybrid).
The Genos is a comfy 13kg. One of the reasons I like the CP88 so much, best portable wooden weighted keys, 18.6kg (not too heavy) and really clean sound.

Mark

[iulistil2]

From what I've tested, Korg is a very small child compared to Yamaha! Plus the Korg does not master the technique of mixing several tracks simultaneously in an arranger! Besides the Genos which has a 32-bit sound card and a polyphony of 256, the korg is a toy in a metal box. So don't hurry because Genos 2 is on the way!

[wagtunes]

Fascinating conversation.

** DISCLAIMER ** What follows is just my opinion based on over 40 years of spending more money on keyboards than I care to admit.

In 1979 I bought my first keyboard. It was a Hohner Stringvox. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world because it sounded like "real" violins. LMAO. Down the raod I picked up the following. This is not an all inclusive list.

Yamaha DX 7 (that amazing choir)
Crumar Orchestrator (Great strings and brass)
Roland Digital Piano (real sounding piano and strings)
Kurzweil 1000 (Wow. All real sounding instruments and choirs)
Korg Triton (Wow. Even more real sounding instruments)

And on and on and on. Not to mention synths like all the ARP stuff.

Everything was great and the next thing was always greater.

Then in 2014 I chucked all my hardware and went ITB. In these last 9 years I have discovered a world that, IMO, is nothing short of amazing. And without one keyboard (outside of my Arturia controller) in sight.

Then my church needed a solution for playing something other than a piano or organ so, on the advice of a good friend, I bought the Genos. While it's still a learning curve for me, I love it for what it is capable of. Soundwise, it doesn't hold up to the top of the line VSTs. Certainly you can't compare Genos strings to VSL orchestra samples. Granted, for the latter, we're talking thoughsands of dollars just for orchestral sounds. But wow, what sounds.

No, Genos is great for what it does. Is it better than Korg?

Well, that depends. And here's where I have to look at things from a practical standpoint.

Exactly what is it you're trying to do? Not every keyboard is best suited for every task. Some keyboards would be overkill for certain tasks. For example, if the only thing we wanted to do was replace our acoustic piano at church (because it's constantly going out of tune) with a digital one, I certainly wouldn't get a Genos to do that.

1, It's overkill.

2. The piano sounds are not top of the line.

But if I want to play anthems at church that sound like a whole band is playing, the Genos is more than adequate. Would the Korg work as well? For some people, maybe. Especially if price is an issue. For that matter, maybe a completely different keyboard would serve their purpose better.

To categorically state that keyboard X is better than keyboard Y leaves out too many variables regarding need to be of any value.

So while these discussions are fascinating, they're not going to answer the question for a prospective buyer "which keyboard do I get?" because we don't have all the facts, at the top of the list being what do they even need a keyboard for.

Personally, if another church came to me with the same need that our church had, I would recommend the Genos with the additional proviso that they sample other keyboards as well so that they can make an informed decision. Because there may be something else out there that better suits their needs.

I have spent over $50,000 on music related stuff over the years.

It's funny how each thing I got was better than the thing I got before it.

[mikf]

If that was true there would be plenty stores stocking them. But it's not. Competing with Internet pricing has killed margins on electronic keyboards.
The CVP range is generally sold thru piano stores rather than guitar or electronic instrument stores, and must have kept a decent margin because it's usually possible to play them in a local piano store if they are a Yamaha dealer.
Mike