Kawai GMega

It's easy to use itself, it has a wheel to change values, and parameters are ordered clearly. On the PC though, it does not have any good editor (Direct Edit 2000 is not available at the time of writing). Midiquest's one gave me too many issues. I'm making a Cubase panel though, still pretty hard SysEx implementation, but I think some day I'll finish it.

Good polyphony (32), 16 MIDI channels multitimbral (32 via Host connection).
2 MIDI ins, 2 MIDI outs, 1 thru. Configurable temperaments (55 pesets).
1 GM bank, 1 Sound Palette bank, 1 User bank.

A decent General Midi synth. One LFO (Vibrato), filter, a nice ADS1S2R envelope.
If this is your first hard synth, you will like it.

Sound is ok, in general. Some are good. The piano is decent.
It has 256 waveforms to synthesize, including Sine, 3 Sawtooths, Square, Triangle, Pulse, 3 Rectangles, 1 Random.
Reverb is so so... delay, I haven't tried.
It can fit many styles.
It has velocity and aftertouch but I haven't tried it.

Seems very reliable. I bought it used but mint, and LCD is clear as day one.

It's worht what I paid. IF it got stoled, and I find it again at the same price (or less :P), I may buy it again.
For General Midi, is great.
I wish it had a good editor for PC, anyways I'm making my own Cubase panel which I hope to finish.
It helps to make music, definitevely.

The Gmega isn't difficult to use, even creating own sounds is quite easy. The manual explains the important things and how to realize them. It was the GMega's manual that made me understand what subtractive synthesis is about.

It has 2 MIDI IN, therefore you have 32 midi channels. Wow.
The in-built effects are garbage, there are some few reverbs which all sound like a more or less fast delay.
There are no expansion capabilities.
The GMega supports GM (General MIDI, that is) in a very good way, giving you pitchbend, modulation and everything else you need.
Not bad after all for such a small device.

The sound itself is a big minus. It is rather thin and fat basses or something like that are totally impossible. What it does quite well are percussions, some synth pads and I personally like the 3 E-guitar-leads.
One DCO, one LPF, 3-level-resonance, DCA, LFO...you could think "not bad"...bad the sound is really quite thin...
The filters react on velocity and you can control the LFO by modulation for example.

It's so small, what could go wrong here?
But I think my GMega has some problems with MIDI-through messages ...but I've not yet tried to find out what it is.

No experience yet.

This is a very good and very cheap synthesizer for beginners. If you'd like to start doing midi-music and you want to begin step by step, start with the GMega!
Easy to use, small, can do everything...
On the other hand, it's nothing for a semi-professional; sound is too thin and all in all it's just a GM device...but for a very low price :)

used it mostly in the General Midi mode, that is certainly
easy. The programmable synth features looked pretty easy
from the manual, but I didnt use them that much.

I liked the piano and organ sounds. Though as others have said,
its not that much different from a PC SBlive soundcard or
something, that doesnt really mean much other than all
sound generators these days are of pretty high quality.
Unlike the 80's and the 90's.

I like its design as a stand-alone sound module.
The basic control features are easy to access.
I would prefer it compared to newer modules like the Sound Canvas
8820, due to the rugged case and the clean design.
I purchased a GMega used on Ebay for 140$ Jun 2000,
and a Roland SC-8820 USB GM midi module used on Ebay for 400$
(almost retail, at the time). The application was as a laptop
midi interface and sound generator. I liked the GMega more
than the more expensive SC-8820 for this application.
I sold the GMega reluctantly to a friend, and would certainly
get another one if it shows up on Ebay!

Using the GMega isn't very difficult. Only editing is bit difficult. The manual isn't good enough. It doesn't cover important parts enough.
All and all it's quite simple device.

GMega has polyphony of 32 voices, only couple of reverb effects, it doesn't have any expansion capabilities. GMega receives channel aftertouch. It has 384 patches and 6 drum sets, GM, SP and user banks.(in factory preset mode the user bank is same than the GM bank.)
I don't like any of the preset sounds, can tolerate some of them.

They aren't much better than my sound blaster live's midi sounds, they suck. I think this module does "best" work in orchestral sounds.
I don't actually have anything positive about this thing.

I can't say anything abbout reliability, 'couse I try to avoid using it. Wouldn't gig with it, but becouse of the sounds.

I don't want to have anything to do with Kawai, even customer support.

I would never buy it again! I bought it from discount.Wouldn't bought it at all without that low price. I don't suggest GMega for anyone.

The GMega gets an 8 because it's pretty easy to get around in for a sound module. It has a thumbwheel and buttons, but the thumbwheel is basically flush and isn't as easy to turn as that of an Alesis drum module. The software is typically very modal and will give you clickfinger tendinitis ;) however, the manual is nice and includes a separate wave list. The manual goes pretty deep but also can explain things in _very_ simple terms- they seem to have hired a genuine writer, who explains things with great clarity. Perhaps this rates higher- if I was rating it on sheer newbiefriendliness it'd be a 10.

The GMega is a half-rack unit without mounting hardware (I have it stuck in my rack with double-sided tape). It is a 16-bit synth, which I think runs at 44.1 (It is distinctly smoother and more high resolution than my 32K Proteus/1, albeit a little 'softer'). It is 32-voice polyphonic and 32-sound multitimbral, though to run it this way you need to run it off two MIDI busses simultaneously (it has four separate MIDI jacks- in A, in B, out/thru A, out/thru B). It also has pretty comprehensive temperament options, with 55 distinct 12-tone temperaments (sorry, no Balinese or microtonal) defaulting to your usual equal temperament.
Most patches have two independent waveforms with separate access to all the controls for the waveform. The first waveform gets the 32-voice polyphony. The second waveform gets only 16-voice polyphony. However, for most interesting patches you make you'll be playing with both waveforms.
It has two RCA jacks for audio output, one rotary volume control, no sequencer, and only limited built in effects (which I didn't consider very worthy), in the forms of reverbs 1 to 6. 1 is medium room, broad slapback- 2 is same, tighter slapback echo- 3 is a small hall with some slapback- 4 is big hall with a hallish tone- 5 is a small dry room or closet ;P and 6 is a big hall with a plate reverbish quality. None of these really compare to an outboard reverb of any serious quality, but they are there though they are not terribly easy to use.

Here's where things get interesting. I've found the GMega to be a lot of fun to play with. The default tones seem OK if relentlessly General Midi-ish, but then you copy everything over to the user bank and start playing. Sort of like 2/3s of playing with something really elaborate like a Proteus- for instance, the GMega will give you a filter with a resonance control and a separate envelope to run the filter with separate velocity sensitivity- but you only get 3 levels of resonance. It cuts you off just as you're beginning to spend days aimlessly twiddling little settings. This isn't all bad.
Being able to adjust the velocity sensitivity on each envelope (filter and amplitude) is very nice. You can get a halfdecent piano tone out of the thing given its sample limitations, and a very sweet Rhodes, and a nicely abstract drawbar organ. You can also tell the 'telephone' sound that it is keyboard-tracked when it is not, thus turning most of the sounds range in the upper octaves into the most gruesome industrial digital noise you ever heard :) for this alone I will always love the GMega...
It puts out substantially fuller bass than a Proteus/1, and can be turned into a startlingly close electric bass imitation of several types due to the low-end fullness. This also helps sounds like timpani, though the timpani does dissolve into mush below normal operating range. Finally, you can put together a string sound which I think of as 'Deutsche Grammophon'- dripping with sweetness and with very little definition- that's a nice one to have around.
Oh- forget the drumkits. They are rubbish :) (hey, any drum kits in which the hats are not grouped to cut each other off is rubbish as far as I am concerned). However, they are a sort of rubbish that you could use for techno-y sorts of things- they cannot sound vaguely real and the cymbals suck, but you get the same filters and controls, giving the possibility to make velocity info sweep a filter on a full-but-unconvincing bass drum and producing very synthetic effects- with a _lot_ of work. So far, _not_ something I've been up for, but maybe someday. I don't think drumkit data gets saved with the user bank...
All in all, I do love this teeny box. Interestingly, if you had two, you could run them in parallel for twice the polyphony! Each can be set to play only alternate MIDI note values. This would also thicken up the sound and use the other half of the rack space :) probably never get another one now that I've told everybody how to enjoy these wee creatures ;)

I reserve opinion on this area. I've never seen a software problem with it, but I literally rebuilt mine and changed the electronics around to extend its already-nice bass. At one point, I killed it outright, then after sitting there stunned for a year it decided to work again with a small amount of extra fiddling. So I am the _last_ person to ask about whether they break. "Uhhhh..." *hides soldering iron behind back, whistling* :)

Ditto. I have no clue. Warranty's kind of toast now, I imagine :)

I'd really want another of these if I lost mine. I was sick the whole time it was dead in a corner, and missed its possibilities bitterly. There are certain things it does like that DG-strings tone, drawbar organ tone, and a whole variety of very effective synth basses and unusual sound effects (and the Digital Hell telephone mod!) that I'm just not getting from the Proteus/1 that is my other main synth module. It's a marvellous general purpose synth toy, that coaxes you to cobble together strange and interesting sounds from the filters and waveforms (seems to be sample-based, with several waveforms multisampled, but all the samples rapidly enter loops), and then runs out of steam just about when you think 'Gee, that might be enough'. As such, I like it immensely. :)