Thanks for posting this since this Kurzweil and all other Kurzweil music instruments were serious offerings to the musician .Some "workstations" today have fewer options.
When trying to use K2500 with daw software, as sound source it bugs me that sometimes programs seem to be staying in their channels that I have designated them.. but it can't be trusted. Every other time I boot kurzweil up, they have changed and I need to find programs again. I wouldn't like to go oldschool and write down what programs I am using in each channel. Using setups is not an answer because they are not same as multitimbral performance presets in other brands. QA banks are just collections of fav sounds which is not same either. Looks like using Kurz as soundmodule is plain nightmare. I have owned it little over half year and using it is still pure pain. What I have also encountered is that some sounds change by itself! WTF?! Like when I made modified version of prog.10 and added "overdrive" type of elements to it with ALG that used wrap or something (because included fx processor does not have distortions or overdrive fx), it sounded pretty convincing and I was happy for a while. I even took backups from the sound to diskette and through MIDI using sounddiver. Then went couple weeks and sound didn't work anymore. It was changed to just noise. High volume noise, aka. cacophony. I have absolutely no any clue what could cause it to go "corrupted". I tried to load that program back to unit from backups and they also sounded noise. Something obviously changed outside of program because loading it from backups didn't fix it. Same kind of oddities happen all the time with the machine esp. with the effects settings. No matter how I try to use its included fx processor it fails almost everytime. Like reverting effect that I have edited to fit certain program back to its original (or something else). I have tried different fx mode settings, same insane problems stay no matter what I do. Almost like universe is trying to say that don't waste your time to this. It's endless sea of troubles and waste of energy. Surely it drops my vibes to "hell frequencies" while using it. Even writing this post gives me huge anxiety + heart pains. Saving and loading anything is unbelievably painful with this. If I only had knew better.. . I wouldn't want to get Kurzweil my whole life.. like I did. I was impressed about its specs in paper. Having sampler with resonant filters (after owning Ensoniq EPS16+ in the ninetees it was issue) and having onboard synth capabilities from VAST. Now when I have it I couldn't be more disappointed. Ok. It has nice keybed and feeling, and it is capable to great sounds to practice playing. But it needs your brains to be suitable for it. If you are engineer, programmer, coder, Linux/unix power user.. You might like it. I have used other brands samplers and synths since mid 90's and programmed my brains and subconcious with their logic so that earlier experience with other machines have become more burden than giving any help with this thing. Kurzweils have their own language and terms for everything and nothing I knew in advance didn't help a bit. So far I have got impression that best option to get performance (program/channel mappings) saved and loaded is so called "master tables". I tried once to save that. Not sure whether it was success. AFAIK master table is kind of folder or zip file which contains everything you choose them to contain. There really is needed to do so much choosing and picking different parts of settings, when saving something. Keymaps, samples and programs must be chosen separately and so on. It's easy to save too much stuff in a big chunk when you are trying to save and are not careful of what you do. Or too few. Like saving sample without saving program or so.. Which have caused me to loose everything I have done with it all the time. Now I have a feeling that I'd like to hit it with a hammer! :D But I can't give up with it because I already put so much effort to it; I replaced worn out switches under the push buttons which was huge task that forced to put whole unit into pieces and back together. I also cleaned contact strips under the keys because there were some velocity problems in some keys. And I just bought SCSI2SD HD emulator and more RAM to it.. . Like somebody said in some forum post "worst ui ever". This tutorial videos do not address very well those real life problems I have had, they give too much attention to setup mode and sequencer instead.
So be warned. Not recommended for ADD/ADHD ppl. ;) It is needed to put huge amount of time and effort to it. Same could ofc be said from any synth or sampler, you get most out of them if you dedicate to it thoroughly.. but *with Kurzweils it is mandatory to get even started!* Need to RTFM and memorize it from cover to cover.
Some time has passed now and now I know how to save / load stuff properly, but I still do mistakes and loose all my work constantly. I've found it to be most convenient (which is not much) to use "save everything" function to save whole content of RAM to a file that I load next time. Fav. sounds loaded with "auto load" at boot up and then having own container dedicated for each project. KurZee program (3rd party) works OK which could help workflow if taking effort to learn programs own kb shortcuts... Internal FX still give burden. I wish that it wouldn't even have that onboard fx processor at all. I'm glad that I have external effect boxes to use with it. I guess it would be wise to concentrate on them and ignore it's own fx completely...
Now, after owning it few more years... I still need to refer manual and this tutorial videos. I've now progressed so much that I tried to do my own sampling. Tried it from schratz and failed miserably as usual. Now I'm trying to figure out how to edit sample, trim silence out of test sample... without luck. I just can't wrap my head around the logic this machine uses, like at all. For example, how to select that part of the sample I wish to delete while doing that trimming. Gosh! There was never this kind of troubles when I used Ensoniq's or Yamaha's.
Thanks for posting this since this Kurzweil and all other Kurzweil music instruments were serious offerings to the musician .Some "workstations" today have fewer options.
wait... what does opaque do.... come back!!!
I think that makes an inverse of the keymap.
i thought the sawtooths tracking differently were FAR more interesting than tracking together - good tip - even though you did not mean it that way
what does tildec do on the layer page? is that the xmas function?
HAIR! He's GOT HAIR!
When trying to use K2500 with daw software, as sound source it bugs me that sometimes programs seem to be staying in their channels that I have designated them.. but it can't be trusted. Every other time I boot kurzweil up, they have changed and I need to find programs again.
I wouldn't like to go oldschool and write down what programs I am using in each channel. Using setups is not an answer because they are not same as multitimbral performance presets in other brands.
QA banks are just collections of fav sounds which is not same either.
Looks like using Kurz as soundmodule is plain nightmare. I have owned it little over half year and using it is still pure pain.
What I have also encountered is that some sounds change by itself! WTF?! Like when I made modified version of prog.10 and added "overdrive" type of elements to it with ALG that used wrap or something (because included fx processor does not have distortions or overdrive fx), it sounded pretty convincing and I was happy for a while. I even took backups from the sound to diskette and through MIDI using sounddiver.
Then went couple weeks and sound didn't work anymore. It was changed to just noise. High volume noise, aka. cacophony.
I have absolutely no any clue what could cause it to go "corrupted". I tried to load that program back to unit from backups and they also sounded noise. Something obviously changed outside of program because loading it from backups didn't fix it.
Same kind of oddities happen all the time with the machine esp. with the effects settings.
No matter how I try to use its included fx processor it fails almost everytime. Like reverting effect that I have edited to fit certain program back to its original (or something else). I have tried different fx mode settings, same insane problems stay no matter what I do.
Almost like universe is trying to say that don't waste your time to this. It's endless sea of troubles and waste of energy. Surely it drops my vibes to "hell frequencies" while using it. Even writing this post gives me huge anxiety + heart pains.
Saving and loading anything is unbelievably painful with this. If I only had knew better.. . I wouldn't want to get Kurzweil my whole life.. like I did. I was impressed about its specs in paper. Having sampler with resonant filters (after owning Ensoniq EPS16+ in the ninetees it was issue) and having onboard synth capabilities from VAST. Now when I have it I couldn't be more disappointed.
Ok. It has nice keybed and feeling, and it is capable to great sounds to practice playing. But it needs your brains to be suitable for it. If you are engineer, programmer, coder, Linux/unix power user.. You might like it.
I have used other brands samplers and synths since mid 90's and programmed my brains and subconcious with their logic so that earlier experience with other machines have become more burden than giving any help with this thing. Kurzweils have their own language and terms for everything and nothing I knew in advance didn't help a bit.
So far I have got impression that best option to get performance (program/channel mappings) saved and loaded is so called "master tables". I tried once to save that. Not sure whether it was success. AFAIK master table is kind of folder or zip file which contains everything you choose them to contain. There really is needed to do so much choosing and picking different parts of settings, when saving something. Keymaps, samples and programs must be chosen separately and so on.
It's easy to save too much stuff in a big chunk when you are trying to save and are not careful of what you do. Or too few. Like saving sample without saving program or so.. Which have caused me to loose everything I have done with it all the time.
Now I have a feeling that I'd like to hit it with a hammer! :D
But I can't give up with it because I already put so much effort to it; I replaced worn out switches under the push buttons which was huge task that forced to put whole unit into pieces and back together. I also cleaned contact strips under the keys because there were some velocity problems in some keys. And I just bought SCSI2SD HD emulator and more RAM to it.. .
Like somebody said in some forum post "worst ui ever".
This tutorial videos do not address very well those real life problems I have had, they give too much attention to setup mode and sequencer instead.
So be warned. Not recommended for ADD/ADHD ppl. ;)
It is needed to put huge amount of time and effort to it. Same could ofc be said from any synth or sampler, you get most out of them if you dedicate to it thoroughly.. but *with Kurzweils it is mandatory to get even started!*
Need to RTFM and memorize it from cover to cover.
Some time has passed now and now I know how to save / load stuff properly, but I still do mistakes and loose all my work constantly.
I've found it to be most convenient (which is not much) to use "save everything" function to save whole content of RAM to a file that I load next time.
Fav. sounds loaded with "auto load" at boot up and then having own container dedicated for each project.
KurZee program (3rd party) works OK which could help workflow if taking effort to learn programs own kb shortcuts...
Internal FX still give burden. I wish that it wouldn't even have that onboard fx processor at all.
I'm glad that I have external effect boxes to use with it. I guess it would be wise to concentrate on them and ignore it's own fx completely...
Now, after owning it few more years... I still need to refer manual and this tutorial videos. I've now progressed so much that I tried to do my own sampling. Tried it from schratz and failed miserably as usual. Now I'm trying to figure out how to edit sample, trim silence out of test sample... without luck.
I just can't wrap my head around the logic this machine uses, like at all. For example, how to select that part of the sample I wish to delete while doing that trimming. Gosh! There was never this kind of troubles when I used Ensoniq's or Yamaha's.
pbmode = peanut butter mode ??? I'm LOST!
pb = pitch bend?