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I bought the A90 for the keyboard primarily, though I like the dedicated
buttons and controllers far more than the layered pages and assignment
procedures in other MIDI controllers. It came down to the A90 or the Kurzweil.
I ended up with the Roland after concluding that as good as the Kurzweil is
in other respects, its construction leaves a lot to be desired. After
monitoring mail lists and talking to people, it's clear that Kurzweil gets
the most user complaints as far as quality goes. The A90 has a really superb keyboard, is built like a tank, and is exceptionally
easy to use. It is also heavy, but mine stays put, so that wasn't much of a
consideration. (It is still lighter than a few of the workstations out there,
though.) I think the documentation is good, but basic. It also assumes you know quite
a bit about MIDI. It contains no tutorial-type information. In other words,
it tells you how to operate the board, not what the various functions can be
used for or why. There are a few things I would change. The aftertouch is too heavy, though
it does has poly aftertouch, which is great. You can't program your own
velocity curves, it comes with a palette of 7 preset curves to choose from.
In practice that's fine most of the time, but occasionally a curve doesn't
quite fit a synth patch, so you end up re-programming the patch to respond
better. I'd also like some sort of "cancel" function - when you touch a
data entry slider, you made a change. That's a problem because the same
slider(s) are used for multiple settings, so the position will be where you
left it for the last parameter change. As soon as you move it, the value
jumps. That's a confusing description, but in practice you just have to make
sure you note your current setting on the screen before touching the slider. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat.
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