Korg EXB-PCM-01

Well, the Triton Classic had to be flipped on its back, and its alitte complicated but not to bad. I'm just afraid I may kill the chip

Well, the polyphony is 62 notes on the Triton so thats what it is on the card. It has 16mb of rom and has 31 multisamples. Sounds good. Totally better than the stock Triton pianos. The organs and electric pianos are generally better

It has instruments suited for all typed of music. And features pianos, organs, clavs, harpsichords, and electric pianos

Very reliable

Korg is good about support, I've emailed them about other questions and they are quick to get back with you

I'd definately replace it, I'd be very very mad if something happened. The pianos are about as good as any other workstation on th market.

plug it and load the sounds.

I have not had to deal with korg but i doubt this board would ever give me any trouble.

It's a pretty good board. the pianos run from dull to bright. I have a triton studio and they don't compare to the concert grand but some are better for rock and roll. some good organs and a good wurly ep. the rhodes are not better than the triton rom versions but they are different. overall a pretty good addition to the triton rom.

To me this board sounds great. It most certainly does not provide the most realistic piano and EP sounds to come out of a synthesizer but the sounds IMHO are extremely useful and a big step up from what is in the Triton's factory ROM (the Triton's acoustic piano sound is utter crap!). Im glad that the other EP sounds are provided and I love the the fact that we get those old SG 'vintage'(!) sounds thrown in and I use them all the time. The organs are a nice compliment to what is already in the Triton's ROM and the clavs are definetly a step above what is already on offer inside the Triton/Karma.

This board does not add polyphony to the actual instrument, nor does it add extra fx or 'features' as such. It contains 16MB of sounds with 32 multisounds (samples) of acoustic and electric pianos, clavs, organs and harpsichord sounds.

I wouldn't say that the acoustic pianos are so realistic that you could fool a serious pianist whose played on a Steinway or Bosendorfer all their lives that they are 'real' sounds! However to the average listeners, these are indeed very nice sounding piano sounds. I particularly like the soft stereo piano, the 'Great Ball of Fire' program and the SG1X programs. I also own a Korg TR Rack which contains an extra 'soft stereo piano' sample and I reckon that the piano sounds in here are better. I like the EP's also and find them much nicer to play than the EP's in my Roland 60&70's board. The selection of organ presets are also very nice IMHO and I say that coming from a predominantly organ background. The harpsochords are ok but I don't really use these sounds. The clavs are definetly better than the stock sounds inside my Triton and I love the way the 'wah' effect is used on some of the programs.

It's an expansion board after all!!! What problems can this give you?????????????? Don't put it on the toaster or microwave! LOL.

Music Link (Korgs Australian distributors) have always provided me with excellent service when Ive contacted them!

If I had to replace this. I would probably get the PCM08 piano expansion board as the piano sounds here are by far superior. However the sounds aren't that much superior that you'll see me taking this board out. I've been playing over 20 years having origionally started on organ and then also learning piano later on. However Im not a strict classical musican by any stretch of the imagination. I am fussy with my piano sounds and yes I could go and dish these sounds for not being 'realistic'! Certainly they are not the most 'realistic' sounds out there when it comes to emulating piano/EP but the sounds certainly are usuable and a big step up from what you'll find in the Triton's onboard ROM. I chose this board as I was certainly not happy with the stock acoustic piano multisamples that Korg put inside the Triton. Korg really shot themselves in the foot by doing that although they redeemed themselves somewhat by incorporating superior piano sounds in the newer Triton Studio. The sounds on this board certainly help me to be creative. They are great 'live' sounds coming through a PA and they cut through a band mix very nicely. I base my final score on the fact that this board has helped me do some good stuff with my music over the last 4 years!

EXB PCM boards are easy to install on the Karma. I have not tried installing them on any Triton model.

I demo'd this expansion and decided not to buy it. Like many others whose opinion's I've read, I was quite unimpressed with this board. That's one purchase I'm glad I didn't make. Here's some info that I haven't seen posted before that may be useful to those who are still considering this expansion:

There are *four* pianos. Don't be misled by Korg's claims that there are seven. There are three mono pianos and one stereo 2-velocity piano, so for the latter, Korg counts both velocities as separate multisamples and the Left and Right sides of each velocity as separate multisamples. True, but misleading.

Descriptions and evalutations of the pianos are as follows:

- Stereo 2-velocity piano: Same stereo 2-velocity piano sound as found in the Korg Trinity's Mega Piano's disks (for its Flash ROM option). I know this because the soft velocity is the same as what I have on my Trinity Rack (which includes data from expansions). In my opinion, this piano may be decent in a mix, but not for soloing - especially with the factory programming, which tend to exaggerate the piano's "bite" at hard velocities. This is particularly problematic because there isn't enough difference between the amplitudes of soft notes and loud notes. (You can tweak this easily, however, but I still didn't get results I was satisfied with, because the samples themselves tend to lack presence in the piano's middle octave or two.)

- Acoustic Piano TR - Trinity piano. Good for recreating the awesome "90's Piano" patch found on the Trinity (which, in my opinion, is far better than the Triton preset with the same name), but it won't help you on your search for a realistic piano. In my opinion, the Triton's factory piano is more realistic.

- Another piano (forgot name) - In the SOS review of this board, this piano is stated to be "darker" than the Trinity piano. This may be true, but what immediately struck me about it is that it is OLD. This is the same piano multisample found in the Korg 01/Wpro and proX keyboards (as well as in the XSC-3S sample / program card set). A good synth-piano alternative, but in my opinion, it's not as realistic as the stock Triton piano.

- SG Piano - Said to be taken from the old SG1D stage piano (which I have not played), this "extra" mutlisample was made by merely adding a few sampled notes in between the M1 piano samples already in the Triton! There is very little difference, to my ears, because so little data was added. By calling this an additional piano multisample, Korg gets away with a deceptive technicality.

Other samples:

Also included on this board are a few electric pianos - at least half of them also inherited from Korg's 01/W series. Can't they give us something *better* than the factory presets, not just different? In general, I don't like Kurzweil's PC2 series, but as a comparison, the 01/W electric pianos don't come close to the realism of those on the PC2. Strangely absent is the Stage Piano Hard velocity that Korg omitted when creating the Triton's factory sample set (from what had been on the Trinity). This would've been useful to recreate the Trinity's Pro Stage EP, which is more responsive than the Triton's patch with the same name because of the Trinity's additional velocity layer. To be fair, there IS one electric piano (that I don't recognise from previous synths) that is of high quality. Only one velocity.

Organs: At least two of the organs present on this board are simply inherited from the Trinity's factory samples: Jazz Organ 2 and Medium B3. I didn't recognise the other organs as "old" samples - a full-ish B3 (no leslie); a generic, resonably bright organ sampled with slow leslie; a great black gospel-ish organ sampled with fast leslie; and a couple organ click sounds.

Sorry, but not being a clav user, I didn't spend time with those sounds.

Harpsicord samples are good, useful, and (again) inherited from the Trinity's factory samples.

Rating is 5 - Ge

I give this board a 5. My disappointment with this board is concerned mainly with *current* standards in sound quality. If you compare this expansion with the sounds of older synths, it sounds very nice. Even today, most of these sounds would be just fine in a mix. However, with *new* gear - even products like this that are 3 years old - I expect continually improved sound quality, not reused samples from previous synths. That said, if you like 01/W piano and EP sounds, or if you miss having Trinity organs and harpsicords on your Triton / Karma, by all means, get this board.