I need an advice, please

[vnk]

Hello and sorry to bother with the question, but I would really appreciate if someone will take my question, as it is important to me.
I'm taking my steps into synth keyboard and I consider 8HD. I'm multimedia producer, but music wise, I’m primarily guitar player who managed learning how to play keyboard. I do scoring for my products. I turned to Alesis with their cheap XGuitar which happened to be superb, quality, playable instrument. It is not as sexy in appearance as other but I sold my Fender Jag after two weeks with this $160 Alesis, so I have a great deal of respect to the effort and to results they made.
I need an advice. I love the sounds of what I have tried in GC, but I need someone’s opinion, (as I’m not keyboardist in a full sense) and I want it to be opinion of someone who actually plays the instrument, not of some idiot who gives “opinions” because he hates something. I can’t afford 2 pro keyboards, and I can’t have this “trial and error” pathway as I had (like everybody else I believe) with my guitars. I need an instrument with lite but realistic keyboard; it absolutely has to have great grand piano sound (many other sounds as far as I tried are fantastic).

So can it be my “the only” instrument?
Greatly appreciate any input.

[gmoehrke]

By all means, especially if you like the sounds you've heard so far. This partially depends on what you intend to use it for...if you're using it as a workstation, then you need to try out the sequencer, understand how it works and be sure it will meet your needs. If you're using it primarily for sounds, then just make sure you're happy with the on-board sounds OR that you're comfortable editing the sounds to your liking. For me, the power of the Fusion lies in its flexibility. The stock sounds are good, but I'm consistently thrilled at how quickly I can come up with just what I was looking for, or better, in a very short time. The architecture is simple, but deep and quite powerful. I will be using mine for live shows. I've been using a 2 keyboard rig for years, but with the quality of the VA engine in the fusion, I could easily imagine moving to a 1 keyboard rig - or just using a MIDI controller as a second-tier extension for the Fusion.

[mps]

Best advise is to read Steve's suggestions elsewhere in this section and then spend some time at GC trying things out. make sure that it will do the job that you expect. Everyone has different needs and tastes in what sounds good. Don't buy any gear only on someone's say so.

Piano sounds. I had a young lady over to record last week and she is a piano performance major who plays on nice Steinways. We hooked up the Motif (the wife's) because it has 76 keys. the girl could npt find a piano sound that she liked. So I suggested that we midi it to my Fusion and pulled up the HG piano.. TA DA! She said "oh, that's better! It feels more real."

As to it being your only instrument. Sure, depending on how you work and understanding that there is a learning curve on all high tech gear.

[Hollow Sun]

vnk said:

I need an instrument with lite but realistic keyboard; it absolutely has to have great grand piano sound (many other sounds as far as I tried are fantastic).

Opinion is mixed about Fusion's piano sound (as it is about ALL sampled piano sounds, even the big 25Gb offerings for software samplers).

I like the 'Holy Grail Piano' on Fusion and find it very playable and useful. Others do too but others don't seem so keen for some reason

You can hear for yourself HERE

This is one of Fusion user Rich Menga Jnr's many piano pieces composed and played entirely on his 6HD.

For what it's worth, UK magazine, Future Music, said of Fusion's piano in their review of the instrument:

"One sound worthy of note is is the sampled piano. It's lovely. Every workstation needs one but few have one of this quality."

Draw your own conclusions.


Steve

[Khazul]

admin said:

vnk said:

I like the 'Holy Grail Piano' on Fusion and find it very playable and useful. Others do too but others don't seem so keen for some reason

I guess it depends what you are used to; my experience so far seems to be that people who are used to yamaha digital pianos tend to want to stick with them and in workstations tend to prefer the Motif, while those used to an accoustic piano will tend to prefer either the holy grail or bright jazz piano presets.

I have both (Motif ES rack and Fusion 8HD) and use both alot - if not pilling on fx, then Ill tend to prefer my own variations of the fusion's pianos. If I am going to be doing mellow chillout/ambient type stuff involving a piano sound with loads of fx (outboard reverbs, delays and other stuff), then I will generally much prefer one of the Motif ES piano - simply because of the much smoother sound clashes less with heavy fx use - particularly reverb. The main reason I dont like the yamaha APs for playing is the sustain on them is way too short and without fx they seem a bit lifeless and the velocity to level in the yamaha presets allways has seemed really odd to me - so I tend to use my own tweaks of them anyway.

I personally think that the Motif ES paino and fusion painos are sufficently different for it to be worth keeping both if the breadth of music your produce warrants having both.

The big different between them is tha the yamaha sounds are way more processed and smoother sounding. The sample switching is barely noticeable unless you look for it - yamaha have done a great job of masking the transition between samples both in velocity and to a lesser degree in key zones.

The fusion's sample switching IMHO is blatently obvious - actually I think the real problem is that the holy grail sample set desparately needs a 4th layer to avoid such a drastic jump in sound between the top two velocity layers. I also think the holy grail is EQd very strangely in the preset, but this is trivial to sort out by tweaking the patch.

One little patch trick that is easy to do on the fusion is to map the sustain pedal to uping the reverb/ambience level a little just to add something more when the sustain pedal is down - OK - by no means a substitute for sympathetic resonance, but better than nothing sometimes.

[vnk]

I’m greatly grateful for all your replies. Yesterday, I was sitting for 3 hours in GC by trying different stuff and here’s my observation/conclusions, sorry but in a process I got one more question… ;-). The floor model they have, was connected to two 5” Yamaha monitors, I have no idea which version of OS it was running but I was able freely navigate different settings, try Eq and other adjustments and generally speaking everything was working correctly, no delays whatsoever, and I doubt they would be taking hassle of upgrading for my tests.


1. I don’t like the sound of Motif pianos. To say I like its performance “in general” as it sounded very rounded, but as I played some chords, especially diminished, not standard, the modulation that comes through this overall polished sound is distracting to my ears.
2. I like how Holy Grail cuts trough however, as you take chords between c2 and c1 the sound shows some very rough electronic component in it.
3. I really liked piano sound on some Roland instruments, very rounded, very true to the real thing.

My tests eliminated Yamaha as an option but I really liked both Rolands with their hummer actions and Korg’s Triton Extreme also was impressive.

I do realize that from workflow point of view Fusion offers MUCH more. But I’m looking for great playing experience as much as for production tool. I enjoyed MANY of Fusion’s sounds and in general I liked the keys actions.

I encountered something that I can’t tell what is that as again I’m primarily guitar player, however, as I played Roland Fp-5 or the big “phantom”, when you push deeper the key into bed, in comes back with this very true, expressive piano response that I did not found in Fusion. As Fusion has “after touch” and this Fp-5 is lacking of one, I would be thinking that Fusion actually would have this sound. So why is that? It is because Holy Grail wasn’t sampled for this sound? Are there any other 3rd part piano sound offerings for Fusion? Will it produce this “bed” sound if I will use it as a controller to “Acoustik Piano”?

Oh man, never before I realized how much different keyboards may be in all regards. As you buy guitar, while there’s degree of sophistication involved, but nothing that even remotely comes closer to purchasing a keyboard!

[Hollow Sun]

vnk said:

Oh man, never before I realized how much different keyboards may be in all regards. As you buy guitar, while there's degree of sophistication involved, but nothing that even remotely comes closer to purchasing a keyboard!

Yep!

They all do pretty much the same thing but it IS hard to choose. One has a piano sound you like but you prefer the strings on another whilst another has great organs and brass whilst something else does guitars better than any of them - few (if any) do everything perfectly and to everyone's taste (including Fusion) so you have to weigh up which is the most important thing to you.

For me, the most important aspect is to make synth sounds and use my own samples and combine them and sequence them. If it has on-board presets I can use, all the better. I couldn't care less if the sequencer is a bit fiddly because I find ALL sequencers fiddly to use (and the big DAW computer sequencers are just too damned complex and complicated with features I know I'll never use not to mention all the interfacing, maintenance and upgrading issues - and costs - involved) so FOR ME, Fusion is ideal and a product that *I* have been waiting for - but it's not for everyone depending on what they want.

I still stand by what I suggest in my guidelines about demo'ing a Fusion and which is based on experience - I have bought many products that knocked me out in the shop only to be ultimately disappointing when I got them home and limiting in the long term but Fusion is almost completely the opposite.

But ultimately, I'm afraid only you can make the ultimate decision of which one to buy.

One thing to mention though....

Most places offer a 30-day returns policy (presumably to satisy the 'does not fulfill the task for which is was purchased' clause in trading laws) so you could try a Fusion (or whatever) at home for a while to see how you get on with it.

Just a thought.


Steve

[diznanl]

Another thing to keep in mind is there are many new piano sounds being created as we speak for the Fusion. The KPR Piano pack is pretty good (and free!) ... I really dig it