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Damn, you guys! Seems like everyone wants their review to be the "end all" final statement for the collective DJX reviews. For the love of Satan, calm down! Anyway, I'm not going to be complaining about how the $6000 setup MIDI heads keep complaining about how bad this thing sux, that's their problem if they hate it. So I finally got one of these...I must say, this thing is nice. When I commented earlier about how the Reso didn't do shit for the sound, let me correct myself. When I brought this thing home, I made just about every tone I'd been dreaming of. In fact, I did get that Reso thing to work. A cool setup: Voice #43, "Fish 303", with "Hard Distortion" DSP effect on (BTW: these effects are swell...), and I set the Assign knob to "Decay". With the arpeggiator on, this does not sound too much unlike a sqeualing nasty 303. Just my opinion. Also pad sounds are very nice. The piano sounds definitely blow, this thing was not made for them. General MIDI voices are the same as another PSR unit that my brother owns, nothing astonishing. The sampler is kind of a cool feature, my only complaints about it being 1.) too low of a sampling rate 2.) not enough banks and 3.) can't set the BPM to match the sample. But hey, for $320, what the hell else can you want? The 6-track sequencer isn't too shabby, only I wish that it could loop instead of do just "songs". The ribbon controller is awesome, I usually use it for Turntable, Pan, Mod, or Arpeggiator Speed. The DSP effects I mentioned before are great. You can't adjust the speed or depth or anything like that of them, but they sound really nice. Distortion is especially useful, particularly for beefing up drumlines. My favorite thing to do with this thing is to turn the arpeggiator on and screw with the filter stuff. Fun shit. Oh yeah the part control is what separates the rhythm section from the shitty keyboards in this price range's rhythms, you can take the bass drum, snare, etc. out or add filter and effects to them. Well that's about all I've figured out so far, I only got it on Thursday and it's Sunday night. I've practiced with my band with this thing. Vocalist loves it, he's absolutely obsessed with the pad sounds, and my guitarist hates synthesizers but loves the drum beats and sampler. I put a groove off an old record onto the sampler and the one from "Scentless Apprentice" by Nirvana on it at the same time, had some fun with that. That's really what this is good for, both doing samples + hip hop type groove stuff and also to make squeaky fun with the arpeggiator and filters. Lots and lots of fun. This unit can really stand alone as compared to most stuff, though I wouldn't recommend (I use a 606, turntable, etc. with it). Generally an all-purpose unit, overall good quality, design, etc. It's OK that they cut the few corners they did, because the bottom line is bang for the buck. Swallow your pride and buy this gorgeous shark-blue (as opposed to mundane black) unit. I will post again if I find something else cool.
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