knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (mike knudsen) (12/09/85)
I've been to a decent store and been able to see for myself the answers to my original questions. I am just about sold on the Korg, but the store has a Roland JX8P next to it, which has 2 less voices but crisper sound. The Roland alos points up a shortcoming in the Korg, which I hope people can tell me how to get around: Both the AX80 and Roland can apply the two EGs separately to the two oscillators, thus getting different ADSR envelopes on the two. If the two oscillators are putting out different type sounds, this means that the mix changes in time. Main use of this is to have one osc do the main tone with a slow envelope, and the other one do an attack transient (high harmonics, noise, whatever) with a very quick AD and zero SR. The Roland gets very realistic attacks for bells, harpsichord, harmonica, etc this way. The AX80 seems to have this ability too. The Korg mixes the oscs together first and then inflexibly applies one EG to both of them; the other EG is likewise hard-bound to the VCF. So far, it seems that the DW-8000 can get attack transients only by attacking with the VCF open wide, then quickly closing down for the sustain. This works OK for steel drums (No. 44), where the attack is high harmonics and the sustain is a dull tone, but won't work for brass, where the sustained tone is almost as bright as the attack, just different. Also if the attack is noise, the VCF won't cut it out completely on sustain. How do you get around this? Am I missing something? Also the Korg has no cross (ring) modulator (multiplier). I guess with those prestored waveforms it isn't as necessary, but ring mod used to be a standard feature on synths (even the Radio Shack Elton John model had it!). Is there any way to move a patch from one numbered slot to another (other than manual write-down and entry from scratch)? mike k PS: the Korg Poly800 and EX-800 midi slave have THREE separate EGs -- for each oscillator and the VCF. Still no cross-mod.