Kurzweil ME-1

It is a dog to use, the interface and midi are like rocket science to figure out but it plugs and plays and boy does it play. Buttons and selection are fiddly, not even as good as MP1.

Manual? What manual? there isn't one. Just a list of sounds and a description of how to press a couple of buttons but no manual.

Polyphony is OK, Effects could be better, midi is a disgrace but it wasn't designed to be the centre of the studio, it is an extention of what you have already got. This is my 3 Kurzweil.

Now this is where this baby sings..................... she sounds sooooooooooo fine, I am talking plucking at heart strings. If I could give it an 11 for Acoustic and Electric Pianos I would. As a hammond player from the gospel arena (COGIC one time), I found organ somewhat lame. Strings are good, brass is a little on the slim side, we want phat real phat to cut across the arena when creating those grooves. Sounds are good.

So far so good but we will see, if she lasts as long as my Micro Piano (9 years) she will be doing real well.

So far no need and but they could do something about improving OS and the none existent manual.................. poor Kurzweil shame on you for this poor manual.

I love my baby and if I lost her, I would buy another one. She sounds that good.

It's a pretty basic sound module (no voice editing, under 300 presets, and only 32 notes of polyphony) so it's not too hard to use, but you kind of have to look to the manual first to walk you how to access all the voices and effects from one knob and two buttons.

Like I stated above, only 32 notes of polyphony on this module, which kind of rules it out for any serious professional gigging, but hey I can't complain at the price. MIDI in and through ports and a 1/4 headphone jack which is welcomed for late night practices.

I only purchased the ME-1 for the piano sound as the main patch on my keyboard (Casio PX400r) sucked pretty badly. I'm coming off having sold my Motif ES rack so I wasn't expecting much at this price point with the Kurweil, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised at the piano! The bass can get quite muddy sometimes, but for the most part the piano sample is pretty well done. This module is only going to be holding me over until I purchase a Kawai MP4, but I couldn't be happier with the ME-1, it does what I wanted, which is gives me an improved piano voice for the time being! Also, I must say, since the Casio Privia's are so cheap ($400-600) and they have pretty decent weighted keybed's, they actually make good standalone midi controllers. I would actually choose say, a Casio CDP-100 before I bought anything from M-Audio for basic MIDI controlling like this.

I've only had it for a couple days, so I can't comment on reliability.

Hopefully I won't ever have to deal with Kurzweil customer service.

I would definitely buy another ME-1 if If this one was lost or stolen.

This unit is easy like no other. Few parameter for setting it. The manual is't a good manual. It's a manual for beginning users, but have no specs about the midi controllers that you can send on every sound. If you want to do this, download the PC2x manual and consult the midi controller section. Sounds and controllers are IDENTICAL to the PC2x: the only thing that you can't have on ME is the organ mode of the PC2. The PC keyboard have sliders and switches that control every sound parameter. You can do the same thing sending the same midi controller to the Micro Ensemble. The manual does not help for this application.

32 note polyphony, reverbs are the top! 16 channel multitimbral, you can select programs for every channel from 256 internal patches. No editing mode for patches. Only one reverb section with 9 variaction and one chorus section. You can't select the efx send for single midi channel. Rev and chorus amount are the same for all 16 part.

The sounds on this unit are very good selection and all category are very very good! Piano is a classic Kurzweil piano, good sound in the mix, but in solo ..mmmmm not so good. Kurzweil team does not creat a good Rhodes sound because the upper notes does not have a "sine bell" sound, is a stretched version of the middle octave. Vote 6 for rhodes. All other sounds are very good. Guitars, Basses, Brass (very good sections) strings, clavi are the best on the market. Organs does not have a good sound until you active the Vast Leslie from a Midi Control Change and switch to fast rotary with Modulation Weel. Drums are not my favourite. At this price the ME is a good device for my rack and my sounds selection.

I sell my ME and buy a Korg TR that have a good selection of sounds. The ME is not a toy. It is one of the few best Quality/price midi device on the market. Kurzweil can do better rhodes sampling, we are in the 2006 era of sampling and tecnology.

Can't go wrong with two knobs and two buttons. Its lack of features contributes to making it easy to use.

Not many features, but it doesn't really need much.

It sounds great. The electrics are very nice, and I bought it for the acoustic piano programs. If you simply play a few notes on the acoustic programs, they may sound rather off at first, but having played with many piano programs I have found that the important thing is how the overall sound comes off when you're actually performing. The chords blend very well and naturally. The upper register sounds great. The harder a note is struck the more it sounds like a real piano. All the other synthy programs sound very nice too, including some very nice organs.

I have used this thing for about an hour. No problems so far.

Compared to an Alesis Nanopiano, the piano sounds are less "full" sounding. They seem to be either a little too bright or too dark. On the plus side, there are a whole bunch of them. The other sounds are very good to excellent (esp the Wurley EP's).

No editing ability (other than effects).

The manual tells me what I need to know.

I use a VK7 as my controller and frankly only need/use this on 5 songs per night. I bot this strictly for live use and wasn't looking for a bunch of features (that I wouldn't use). It has everything I need.

Effects are acceptable; nothing spectacular. Has chorus and reverbs.

Very easy to navigate.

Sounds are as good as I could expect in this price range although I do think the Alesis Nanopiano has better piano sounds. The EP's are very good; Hammonds are passable. Horns are pretty good also. Percussion is great but I don't need it.

Only had it for a few mths.

NA

I would definitely buy this again. The only product that I've used/heard in this price range that even comes close to this quality is the Nanopiano . In fact, the Nanopiano has better sounding pianos but unfortunately suffers from the dreaded CPU glitch, usually in the middle of a song.

Like I said, for live use, for this price, I highly recommend this product. The only room for improvement would be the piano patches (to my ear, anyway).

Quite easy to use for me. I like also the patch numbering - it's easy to access all nice patches from the master even without a bank change. The manual is terrible.

32 voices polyphony is quite good for live performance. I want to stress the hidden (or undocumented) MIDI capabilities. Download the PC1X manual and experiment. If you have a good master keyboard with controllers, you can get much more from the module.

THERE IS A LESLIE! PC1X has a button that switches the "VAST leslie" on/off and you can do the same here with MIDI CC 29, then switch the speed with MW. This makes the organs very usable. You can tweak many parameters for each patch, which are not documented.

No problems

When I bought this module, I was dissapointed. But after reading manuals for other Kurzweil products (especially PC1X) things changed. With a programmable master keyboard the module shows its hidden power.

For simple patch playback, it's pretty straightforward. All patches selectable via front panel, using bank (1-8) and program (1-16) selections. Two knobs and two buttons don't give much fast-access options-you can't change patches quickly in a gig setting, have to use MIDI prog change commands. Patches are organized logically and intuitively, nice job there.

The manual is short, uninformative, full of omissions, and sometimes misleading. BUT! The core patches and electronics are the same as for the PC2, so you can use sections of the PC2 manual to fill in the gaps in this manual-more on this later. The manual, as for all Kurzweil products, can be downloaded from the Kurzweil site-thank you, Kurzweil, for not taking the Roland approach to manuals.

It's hard to integrate this into a MIDI rig. The KME1 is set for Omni, Global; manual does not state how to change this. It receives on all channels all the time, so you can't put other devices into a chain with it and use channels to select the device. I ended up buying a Midi Solutions Router to deal with this, using it to filter which msgs go to the KME.

I bought this to serve as a piano, rhodes, and misc. bread-n-butter sound source to use with an 88-key controller on rock/blues/funk gigs. It works very well for that, once I ironed out the MIDI bugs.

Polyphony is 32, except for a few analog-synth patches which are (realistically) monophonic. I haven't found the polyphony to change with different patches that use more layers. 32 is enough for live rock/blues/funk gigs, but not enough for good solo piano playing.
There is a single global effect setting, can choose 1 out of 9 pre-programmed reverb/chorus combinations, and set levels. I just use the basic reverb. No leslie or overdrive, which really hurts the organ patches. None of the PC2 effects are present on this unit.

It is 16voice multitimbral, accepts program changes on all 16 channels and will play different patches on each one. Channel patches are not saved on power off, but global effects are. No expansion, no sequencer.
For what I wanted, it has all the features I need.

Pianos are good-see other reviews for this.
The main reason I bought this over other modules was for a Rhodes sound. I own a Rhodes Mark V, and have gigged with it for many years, the Rhodes sound is an important part of how and what I play. I'd rather not drag the piano up and down stairs into crowded basement bars. I looked for a long time for a lightweight replacement, finally settled on this one after playing a PC2 in a store.
In that regard, it's pretty darn good. Not the same as playing my Mark V, but comes close enough for me. Plus it is 128lbs lighter, no tines or hammers to break on gigs, and replaceable if I drop it, allowing the Mark V to live in home studio.

Other sounds are pretty good. Drums percussion are decent enough, but I don't use them. Guitars are cheesy, not useful, but only way to get good guitar sound out of a keyboard is to teach the keyboard player to play guitar... Strings are nice, clavs good, organs not useful with no leslie, bells and misc stuff all good, analog synth/synth bass are quite good.

Undocumented feature (thanks to Dmitriy below for pointing this out)-the analog synth and synthbass patches respond to MIDI CC messages to do filter sweeps and resonance. All of this is documented in the PC2 manual-check the list of default PC2 programs and controller assignments in the manual. Many other sounds also respond to CC6, CC13, and C29 (on/off)-for Rhodes, use mod wheel to set trem depth and CC13 to set trem speed, very useful. C29 on Rhodes patches adds extra thumpy hammer sound, making the unit sound more like the normal Mark I rescued from a flooded church basement.

In summary, very good piano, rhodes, and general keyboard sounds all around for playing live. Would also work well as single tonesource for basic home recording. Check out the PC2 manual for undocumented tricks.

Pros: All-metal case, easily mountable on a rack shelf-protects the critical components well. Jacks are solid and well-anchored, not depending on PCB mount alone. Never had a hanging note, patch malfunction, memory problem, unexplained MIDI error, or any other electronic related problem.
Cons: Wall wart power, I don't trust those too much, but they're easily replaceable (compared to built-in supply). Front plastic on readout is very soft-mine's already scratched up. Data entry knobs don't seem too sturdy-mine was skipping a bit when I bought it, lucky I don't use that knob.
Under normal in a rack, I'd expect this unit to last a long while.

Never dealt with Kurzweil support.
Kudos to Kurzweil, though, for keeping a good web site with manuals and information on it.

I like this unit, it gives me all kinds of flexibility for standard kbd player gigs. Good pianos, good Rhodes, and usable other patches. I'd get the same, if I could find a good price. In a few years, there'll be another generation of this module. Like to see that.

Very easy to use as there is little to scratch your head about or to get wrong. Plug it in, play it. A minimum of knob-twiddling and a maximum of playing are what it offers, in my opinion.

The ME1 is a basic sound module with 16MB of sounds which adds up to 256 patches. It can play up to 16 parts over midi with a polyphony of up to 35 notes. On-board effects comprise 9 presets (reverb plus chorus). These are global effects (effecting all midi channels at once) though you can adjust the overall level of reverb and chorus. These specs are not going to please everyone but as my compositions are fairly minimal they suit me fine. There are no controls to speak of on the unit itself apart from on/off/volume and bank menu and a small data wheel. Without a computer's sequencer it is going to be fairly hard to get the most from this product, especially as once you power down it does not remember any of the settings. So if you have spent a happy half hour assigning sixteen instruments to sixteen midi tracks it will not remember them. The best thing to do therefore, is to select instruments from the program change section in your sequencer (this is a doddle in Cubase though I do not know about other sequencers) as well as panning and volume information. That way the ME1 is set up for each song when you load it into your computer. Simple, effective and very little hassle.

This is were the ME1 really comes into its own, for me. I had a Proteus 2000 for two years and tried to like it. I had a JV3080 for five years and it was ok. I've had this for about a year and can honestly say that I love it. The sounds have a finesse and organic warmth that make them immediately usable and easy on the ear.

For many kinds of music they will be, I suppose, fairly ordinary in the sense that what you have are mainly pianos, electric pianos, a smattering of strings and brass, guitars, and a few synth and pad textures. There are, after all, only 256 sounds to begin with and these cannot be tweaked within the unit. For me, however, this very minimalism and the simplicity of the sounds on offer means that I get on with writing rather than endless hours of auditioning patches looking for 'that sound' or tinkering with an LFO to adjust the frequency envelope. It is, perhaps, the kind of music I like (minimal songs and instrumentals) that means this box suits me but I would challenge anyone not to be impressed by the sounds. Where the Proteus was harsh and often grating the ME1 is soft and warm, where the JV3080 was almost cartoon like and swamped in recorded reverb, the ME1 is solid and acoustically honest. In short, the sounds are fantastic, usable, inspiring and mix in wonderfully with 'real' instruments.

It is famous, of course, for its piano sounds but the other sounds in there are wonderful too. Why spend a frustrating couple of hours trying to soup up synth sound on another unit when one of the synth leads from this little box can be dialed up and used straightaway?

All of the sounds have quite a lot of life to them too. You never know what the mod wheel or velocity is going to do (the manual is mute on this) but it is usually something good. Hit one of the electric pianos hard and it starts to distort rather nicely. Use aftertouch on a brass patch and there is a loud attack followed by a quick decrease in volume, ease up on the pressure and the volume creeps back up. Very playable and full of surprises.

This is a class act!

Typical Kurzweil build quality. Switch it on and the little two-didget LED fades up slowly before writing 'Kurzweil Micro Ensemble' in a kind of 'up in lights' fashion. Neat and, again, minimal. As I've only had it a year I can't swear to reliablity but I have faith in Kurzweil as a company.

They have a good website which is useful for checking out their products but I have never contacted them directly.

For the price I paid I'd say it is a bargain. As I say, I tried to like E-mu's Proteus 2000 and stacked it to the gills with expansion cards looking for sounds that pleased me. These were expensive and I ended up selling the box with all the cards at a significant loss. With what I had left, I was able to afford just the diminutive ME1 and it has proved to be one of the best swaps I have made. It won't please everyone because there are not many off-the-wall sounds and no opportunity to tweak them but the sounds that are there are simply stunning, I think. My girlfriend summed it up nicely after I'd been playing on it all evening. 'It seems like a real instrument,' she said, 'that other box you sold was just that - a box.'

I found this unit not easy to use. The banks accessible through front panel are totally different than banks accessible via MIDI. It's a very basic little box and not difficult to set up.

Polyphony was OK for me, The built-in effects are limited, not particularly noteworthy, & cannot be modified. The ME-1 is non-expandable.

A few "fair" acoustic piano sounds. Many many variations on these few basic sounds simply using different EFFX, attack, decay & giving them fancy names. I got the ME-1 mostly because I'd read reviews praising the acoustic piano sounds. I've played other Kurzweil piano sounds and was VERY disappointed with this.

The Rhodes & Whurlitzer E.Piano sounds are pretty good - again - a few basic samples with a variety of EFFX & in some cases layers to make up the large number of named sounds. It's obvious, when switching between acoustic or elec. piano sounds that they come from a few sources. Many are nearly identical.
The samples have ridiculously short loops.

Some strings have slow attacks, some long attacks. Some have a little reverb, others excessive reverb. Some are actually very sweet, but i wouldn't get the module for them.

The basses are good. Not a lot of them but definitely 4-5 useable .
Guitars are TERRIBLE. Cheesy as those under $100 playthings put out by casio.

Drums are pretty much unuseable Not complete kits at all. If you switch between different drums you hear some are exact duplicates of others, but with different EFFX.

Nice percussion - hand drums & pots & pans & whatever, at the very end of the last bank.

I sent it back, after working it for over a week. Very disappointed.

I ordered it online from SameDayMusic - excellent customer support. The guy I spoke with was very courteous, answered many questions, & gave me info on some related subjects. I haven't received credit for the return yet but am not worried .

If I had this unit (which I do not) and it were lost, I would go , ho-hum. This unit (and probably many others) is by Kurzweil, which has been sold to a North Korean firm. The readout is REALLY cheesy. A matrix of lights that display two characters, . A

ME-1 is a small and relatively inexpensive sound module from Kurzweil. I don't know the software version (and don't think software can be upgraded anyway). There's no patch editor.

Front panel user interface is pathetic. I'm not talking about the matrix LED display here -- I actually like it more than those cheesy
backlit LCDs on other sound modules. What I don't like is the fact that the user interface makes me think (or even worse - consult the user manual) when I want to do something more complicated than turning
the unit on or adjusting the volume. Luckily I never really need to
because everything is controlled from the sequencer.

The user manual is not as detailed as it should be. By the way, this is a very common problem with user manuals in general. They are often written by professional technical writers. Consequently the language is impeccable, but there really is not much essence behind the words. After all the technical writer is unlikely to be using the device in question a lot, and even less likely to participate in its development. There are exceptions (very clear Alesis ION manual comes to mind first), but sadly ME-1's manual is not one of those. It has technical trivia like the number of inputs/outputs plus some legalese, but that's it.

This is really sad because ME-1 is capable of doing lots of undocumented tricks. For instance, you can make "73 Doo<>Daa" patch smoothly go from "Doo" to "Daa" and back using channel aftertouch. Or swipe filter on "93 FreeResAhh Notch" using CC 6. Things like that really should be documented.

Polyphony is 32. This is good enough for me since I multitrack anyway. No expansion capabilities.

Inputs/outputs: MIDI in, MIDI thru, 1/4" analog outs (left, right), headphones. That's it. There's no MIDI out. Note that ME-1 forgets
everything when you turn it off. I actually like this -- all settings are in the sequencer anyway, and I don't have to worry about backing up ME-1. Thus no need for a MIDI out.

I would like an S/P-DIF output, though. Or at least a really low-noise analog one. The manual says that the idle channel noise is less than -112 dBA but I think this number is a bit too optimistic. I can hear the noise coming from ME-1 when it's not playing anything.
Now I can live with some noise from mic preamps. After all they work with very weak signals. In fact, my mic preamp is quite bad compared to ME-1. But any DAC produces strong enough signal and it takes a really bad design or component to screw things up at this stage. Oftentimes when recording a quiet passage I feel the urge to open up ME-1, locate its $0.10 output amplifiers and replace them with $2.99 ones. But then in my mind I have a picture of that TV guy saying "Don't try this at home".

You get two banks of 128 patches each. Sounds are excellent. Some people buy ME-1 for piano alone, it's that good. It sounds much better than any SoundFont I've heard. That's quite amazing considering the fact that all ME-1 patches reside in only 16 MB of memory.

In general onboard patches make ME-1 a very well balanced all-around sound module. Note that there's not much to tweak so it is not really suitable for something like techno or new age.

Effects are pretty useless. They are global, meaning that you cannot
set different reverberation parameters for different instruments.

Build quality is good, firmware seems to be quite stable. No complaints. Note that I don't gig.

Can't say anything about the customer support, never used them.

To summarize, I'm surprised how good ME-1 is given its modest price tag. I've been hearing for some time now that virtual instruments and
software (giga)samplers are so good that there's no reason (pun intended) to continue using dedicated hardware. Methinks ME-1 is a good argument to the contrary. Instead of competing with soft synths it complements them nicely.

I'm certainly satisfied with ME-1s overall performance. A digital output and better manual would be nice, but I understand that at this price point there's probably very little incentive for Kurzweil to do it.

If lost or stolen, my action would depend on how much I'm ready to spend. If by that time I still can't afford or justify bigger Kurzweil I'd buy ME-1 again. Note that I'm not a professional musician.