Product: Generalmusic Pro-1 Expander
Price Paid: 900.00 (Canadian (before tax))
Submitted
12/10/2000
at
04:02pm
by
brian.
Email: none
Ease of Use
:
8
Ease of use:
Two years old - assume ver. 1 of the O/S. (O/S not upgradable).
Some features - like selecting which midi messages to send/block
are a bit hard to sort out.
Use mainly for piano 1 - fairly easy to set & forget.
Features
:
6
64 poly. Since "Layer" of P1 & P2 gives best sound (& 32 poly),
unit should be upgraded to 128 poly (pro-2 engine) for us layer users.
Choose to shut off internal effects & use external Yamaha Pro-R3 reverb.
Internal effects just add sloppiness & phaseyness.
Sensitivity quite realistic, as are long decays in bottom octaves.
No keys (module. Use Peavey C8p vel curve #13).
No sequencer. Has Demo - Demo sounds far superior to main unit.
Expressiveness/Sounds
:
No Opinion
Sympathetic resonance on right track. Very realistic in bottom 2 & top 2 octaves. Silky woody quality up high.
Middle 3 octaves are horrible!! I got a new eprom chip and it's still bad. Volume control knob & any external CV vol. pedals cause strangled phasey sound
in middle registers. Suspect bad pre-amp circuit & will take it back to the shop a SECOND time (may insist on whole new board). Did not
sound so bad in first few months (light home user too). Also in middle 3 octaves, light touch causes only the octave higher to trigger. Maybe the
sympathetic resonance algorims are messed up in the middle - and/or the pre-amp is screwing them.
Fix/re-model the middle octaves and I'd give it a "9".
Right now it gets a "4". It still beats my 1.1 Gig giga Steinway
in terms of inter-string resonance (Giga has none).
Reliability
:
4
The Kawai MP900 sympathetic resonance (only an "effect") at this point
seems to give a better overall sound. I might trade up to one.
Customer Support
:
9
So far, so good. I got a new eprom free under warranty. Very few
technicians at my store or at Peavey/GenMusic seem to know the unit.
Hope I can get a new pre-amp IC in it for free, as right now it's
horrible.
Overall Rating
:
5
I have the Oberheim minigrand as the "warm" piano beside the Pro-1R.
The Oberheim is not phasey, but is inferior in sympathetic resonance and string character.
In summary: The Pro-1R needs the middle octaves fixed (less ringing metal bridge modelling please!!);
It needs 128 poly for 64 poly lush layer; it could use double the amount of sample memory.
It would be a giant killer if so fixed.
Would not buy it again. Need a quality giant like Yamaha to start building physical model pianos.
Sympathetic resonance is the only thing that helps me hear and learn
jazz voicings. Straight samples won't do it.
Wish GenMusic would get their act together and release a Mark2 of this
unit - it's a bit dated, memory is cheap, and others are getting better.
Could use 20-bit converters - things are going this way with cards.
