The Fantom G and people moaning about it

Well Im really happy with my FG. I love it.

Sure some things are a bit awkward, but i think I only know maybe 20% of this box, and I have now released two albums on iTunes made solely on the FG ... from start to end. And the sounds this box has inside are amazing, if you know where to find them and make them sound how you want.

ANyhow... Im going to get back to learning more about this board rather than read complaints.

My two bob's worth..

Ted

The car that I do not use does not break down......... :)

tedw wrote:

Well Im really happy with my FG. I love it.

Sure some things are a bit awkward, but i think I only know maybe 20% of this box, and I have now released two albums on iTunes made solely on the FG ... from start to end. And the sounds this box has inside are amazing, if you know where to find them and make them sound how you want.

ANyhow... Im going to get back to learning more about this board rather than read complaints.

My two bob's worth..

Ted

i'd like to listen to some snippets of the albums on iTunes (just to see how you made the Fantom G sound) can you post some info so I know how to find you on iTunes?

Thanks!!

Sure Apex.... Id be happy to... and I would like your (and anyone else's constructive) feedback. Feel free to PM me.

The album was officially available today. Artist Name "Westaway". The album name is "awakening". My prior album is there too titled "Plugged" as in not Un-plugged. lol. You can preview off iTunes 30 seconds per track or so.

I hope you enjoy and welcome some feedback. The new album also has ARX-Drums for nearly all (12 of) 13 tracks, and ARX-03 Brass.

Interested in any one's constructive comments on the material. Do me a favour an preview only on decent speakers please :) which I think everyone on this forum probably has

Cheers
Ted

i very very rarely visit this forum anymore, however as quinnx has said many times, this machine with a laptop, and with software of your choice, there is nothing you cannot create with this combination ..........nothing......... if you have the talent you can create anything to master standard.

i used to play live many years ago and this machine seems superb in that context. yes its a shame that the machine was not developed further, as it had so much potential. but it is what it is and with pretty easy workarounds that come from experiences, its easy to get anything done. i have sonar and many top of the range soft synths, however, i still end up using at least 60 percent of the g's sounds ( my sounds ) in a recording. i also use it exclusively for composition and for most productions.

somebody has said in this thread that the g's screen is unnecessary and expensive. well one of the best things about the g is the screen ! everything is well laid out and crystal clear. expensive? it costs next to nothing. any £300 laptop has a better screen and more expensive hardware inside. if i was buying a keyboard today, i would still buy the G. motif xf still has a screen from a £15 pound chinese space invader game and a crap operating system. kronos, 16 mono audio tracks and apparently you need a pin to use the touch screen.

if your using your keyboard live, 99.9 % of the audience wouldn't notice or care if your using the latest va technology for your string sound or a pcm sample. the jupiter 80 has a great piano sound, as the super natural acoustic pianos are excellent. however i have a gem rpx which is just as good. all the other sounds it produces i have as good or better in software. so unfortunately for all the manufactures, i wont be buying anything for many years to come, if ever again. i have enough capabilities in what i already have to last a lifetime and more. all you need to add is some musical talent, and not more stuff.

johnc wrote:

i very very rarely visit this forum anymore, however as quinnx has said many times, this machine with a laptop, and with software of your choice, there is nothing you cannot create with this combination ..........nothing......... if you have the talent you can create anything to master standard.

i used to play live many years ago and this machine seems superb in that context. yes its a shame that the machine was not developed further, as it had so much potential. but it is what it is and with pretty easy workarounds that come from experiences, its easy to get anything done. i have sonar and many top of the range soft synths, however, i still end up using at least 60 percent of the g's sounds ( my sounds ) in a recording. i also use it exclusively for composition and for most productions.

somebody has said in this thread that the g's screen is unnecessary and expensive. well one of the best things about the g is the screen ! everything is well laid out and crystal clear. expensive? it costs next to nothing. any £300 laptop has a better screen and more expensive hardware inside. if i was buying a keyboard today, i would still buy the G. motif xf still has a screen from a £15 pound chinese space invader game and a crap operating system. kronos, 16 mono audio tracks and apparently you need a pin to use the touch screen.

if your using your keyboard live, 99.9 % of the audience wouldn't notice or care if your using the latest va technology for your string sound or a pcm sample. the jupiter 80 has a great piano sound, as the super natural acoustic pianos are excellent. however i have a gem rpx which is just as good. all the other sounds it produces i have as good or better in software. so unfortunately for all the manufactures, i wont be buying anything for many years to come, if ever again. i have enough capabilities in what i already have to last a lifetime and more. all you need to add is some musical talent, and not more stuff.

well put... but it's TONS easier said than done...

You can't make comparisions between MI component prices and consumer laptops ... apples and onions ... Even small things can have a big impact on the final price you pay ... The LCD is probably one of the most expensive "decisions" they made re: Fan-G ... and the uncompetitive price of Fan-G never helped it in the marketplace ... and I also disagree on its functionaly ... My Fan-X display works just fine ... Sure it could be higher resolution, but it needen't be any bigger ...

Hi

My Fantom G is here to stay with me....a bit longer then i expected after testing the next big thing!

I tested the mighty "Kronos" yesterday after a call from my musicstore and was surprised that :
- the touchview display is really bad, even annoying, you have to use a stylus or your nails, trial & error over & over & over, feels like windows mobile 6.5 :-) aaahh good times!

- the software user interface is from old age!
--> mixer - page is clutter-galore, no way to see fast which part is playing, unusable....
--> the piano-roll page is.....non-existent, it's all midi in list-views aaaaargghhh
--> layering & mapping sounds seemed to take ages for the demo guy

- the hardware & build quality & GUI is flawed too!
--> the traditional "transport" buttons are....some random buttons, same size as the rest, no led-colouring like on the G, or any effort to make it just fun and fast to use.
- Korg thinks it can charge 4400 euro's for 9 plugins (really nice sounding & looking i admit) in a box and 88 weighted keys

So, my G, Walgrafix, ARX-01 & ARX-02 & my Vienna Imperial Bösendorfer = still....Magic :-)

Mnoizz

http://www.soundcloud.com/mnoizz

Hi Mnoizz,
thank's for sharing your personal experience with the Kronos in the store.
I'd just add a few comments to some of your observations.

Mnoizz wrote:

--> layering & mapping sounds seemed to take ages for the demo guy

It doesn't really take ages, it's pretty much because the guy at the store doesn't know his way around the Kronos.

Mnoizz wrote:

--> the traditional "transport" buttons are....some random buttons, same size as the rest, no led-colouring like on the G, or any effort to make it just fun and fast to use.

I don't really understand what you mean here. The sequencer transport buttons are certainly not some random buttons. There are clearly dedicated buttons on the right size of the keyboard surface. Why should they be of a different size? Korg never used different sized buttons and nobody really complained ever about it. They are clearly labeled and they have a led blinking when they are in use. All the common transport buttons are there, so I have no idea what would prevent you to use them fast. The fan factor you mentioned, certainly doesn't come from a different button size, does it?

Mnoizz wrote:

- Korg thinks it can charge 4400 euro's for 9 plugins (really nice sounding & looking i admit) in a box and 88 weighted keys

Prices vary in Europe but I have looked at a price comparing site and there I see that the Fantom G8 costs between 3399 and 3477 Euros, while the Kronos 88 goes for 3699 Euros!
So, with your words, if Roland thinks that they can charge for one plug in 3477 Euros, then I think that Korg certainly can charge 200 Euros more for nine plugins.

diametro. the display in the g costs roland about £2.75. its exactly the same display as on many £69.99 portable dvd players. on a machine that costs over £2000, that is not expensive. everybody to there own, but i had a fantom x and then purchased a g. after 6 months i sold the x as i never used any more.

You don't understand ... It doesn't work the same way in the musical instrument industry where the volumes are much, much smaller ... Its not a consumer item sold in the tens or hundreds of thousands ... Why do you think Apple is so dominant .... VOLUME ... We're talking millions here ... Not maybe one or two thousand units for Fan-G ... Sorry, bud ... Ask someone who knows; they will tell you ...

If you don't think the screen was expensive to the total cost, then tell me what other new components in Fan-G do you think cost more to source? (SOMETHING had to make it so bloody expensive, and the screen was part of that ... I'm sure Roland would have priced it lower if they could ... ) of course, there's much more that added to the total cost ... But one of the reasons I bring it up is because I was never convinced the giant screen was particularly useful ... especially considering all the limitations to the sequencer/audio tracks ... It's like, why even bother ... ??? Not to mention, it's just too big and looks ugly ... I'm playing a keyboard not a television ...

BTW ... How many SRX cards did you have? Because I'll be the first to admit a barebones X vs. G isn't much of a contest ... Serve up four tasty SRX cards in the X and its a very different story imo ...

When I was demoing the Fantom-G I decided I was either going to buy that and sell the X ... Or keep the X and get a Jupiter-8 ... What do you think I did ;) ... ??? One is a classic that doubled in price in a couple of years ... The other has lost value quicker than just about any workstation other than Alesis Fusion (if you bought at the original laughable price ... )

There are clearly dedicated buttons on the right size of the keyboard surface. Why should they be of a different size?

One of very first things that really annoyed me when I tested the first one. They didn't need to be of different size but they sure needed to be bigger. The transport buttons not only are too small but they also are too close from each other. You can miss touch the one you want. Not to mention that at right you have a Sampling button named.... Start/Stop just like the one on the Sequencer. Very bad design in my opinion.

about the Korg Kronos, Mnoizz wrote:

--> the traditional "transport" buttons are....some random buttons, same size as the rest, no led-colouring like on the G, or any effort to make it just fun and fast to use.

in reply, mojkarma wrote:

…The fan factor you mentioned…

Was that a Kronos fan Freudian slip?

i understand fully diametro. its my business. roland brought an of the shelf product that is produced in tens of millions so it costs next nothing to buy. the screen in the g would cost less than the one in the x due to the massive volumes produced and technological advances. the software to drive it is written by roland, so you can count the man hours in that, about the same cost as the x screen programming. the kronos has atom cpu which costs about £8.00 and its touch screen, about £3.60. so to conclude, all the parts cost next to nothing in all the keyboards. what you are paying for is the programming and product development and the limited sales volume. not the internal parts. if your happy with the keyboard you have, good for you. personally i have never wanted my laptop to have a 3 inch super low resolution screen rather than the large ugly crystal clear screen it has. same with my keyboards. but each to there own.

V-CeeOh wrote:

One of very first things that really annoyed me when I tested the first one. They didn't need to be of different size but they sure needed to be bigger. The transport buttons not only are too small but they also are too close from each other. You can miss touch the one you want. Not to mention that at right you have a Sampling button named.... Start/Stop just like the one on the Sequencer. Very bad design in my opinion.

Point taken, everybody has slightly different opinions about the size or the placement of the buttons. Sure, they could be bigger, but they don't seem to be that smaller as for example the buttons for fast forward/back on the FG.
In any case: they have leds and they blink when they are running (record and play).

Regarding a very bad design:
Talking generally, there are very bad designs on every keyboard. For me, it's a very bad design on the FG that I have to move the cursor back and forward on the screen to make something so simple as is the switch between user and preset patches, while I have two dedicated buttons for accessing the arx patches, and the arx is an option. So, no buttons for a standard factory provided function, but dedicated buttons for accessing something which is not there and most users obviously don't even have or use arx cards.