Synth Site |  novation |  KS 4

EFFECTS: 6 of em, delay is great, can go really fast ala' electribes can't pitch shift and warp it up like them tho. reverb: kinda crappy, phaser: good, chorus/flanger: great. distortion: great, EQ: dumb. pan: its panning how much can you say? vocoder: pretty good.

ARP: the arp is great, offers more types than average, including chord-repeating arps. they just repeat the chord (or single note) that your playing, instead of arping the indiviual notes. they're great actually for auto-repeated one-note-at-a-time bass lines, so you dont accidentally start an arpeggio if your playing timing goes off. arp also is kind of a mini drum rhythm player, preset rhythms tho, i think you can save one user rythm.

DRUMS: drums are one of the most amazing parts of this thing! each drum kit is actually 49 synth patches mapped out across the keyboard one key per patch. that means you have the FULL(!!!!!!) synth engine to create EACH drum sound with!! this thing is great for ER-1 like drums or ANY analog synth drum sound you could want, any electro or kraftwerkian sound. forget acoustic drums tho. 'cept maybe kicks and hats.

EASE OF USE: it aint no ms2000, but neither is anything else BUT the ms2000. but this thing is pretty simple to use. if the ms2000 is a 10 and the yamaha dx7 is a 0 I'd give this a 9.

PROS: amazing drum set-up, great sound, many parameters to work with, deep editing. FM synthesis! really steep env depths! great for sharp blips etc.

CONS: keyboard feels pretty delicate, I' get scared I'll break it when i'm getting into it and starting to want to play more aggressively, i hate that. the amp modulation is kinda confusing and complicated, you assign LFO's individually to oscillators and if that osc's Vol. is too high it won't put volume all the way off at the low end of the LFO. havent fully figured this section out yet, but seems kinda dumb so far. can't really think of many cons beyond those. no filter stepping, none of that dumb shit. early OS's have bugs tho so be sure you downlaod the latest at novation's site. novation are also really helpful, they've responded to my emails very promptly in the past and have been willing to go the extra mile to help.

nkay good enough, i love this thing! lata!

- C