NativeAngels wrote:I’m sure it’s not that difficult to adapt the os next for Pa1000 and Pa700 owners. ..... like the absence of Bonusware styles, I bet if and when they release new sets they will be only of the Pa5x
Equipping the mid-range arranger Pa1000/700 with os-next is certainly no greater effort than with the Pa4x.
Korg had plenty of time to do it, but still didn't do it.
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The reasons for this are unknown - and unfortunately, KORG does not discuss it with its customers.
The distributors also have - with a few exceptions such as ev Korg UK - nothing left over an exchange of interests with customers.
That's a bad sign, because Korg also dissolved the Korg Forum (GER), Korg Italy seems dead, and User "Biggles" (GB) postet: "One thing that did come up during the Crowdcast was that all the prior ones are no longer available. Also the korgworld website is no more. There also seems to be Management and organisational changes that have taken place."
It is also believable that "korgworld may have been initiated by a staff member of Korg UK and that said person is now no longer a member of staff".
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If we hope that Korg will not disband with their "Pa-Arrangers" product line,
but will deploy a crew of programmers who can deal with development tools for ARM-A15, DSP instruction set (C66x compat. C67x/64x), C compiler and debugging of its source code, the continuation of the Pa-Arranger product line should be possible.
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neverkorgagain wrote:.. quite sure that Korg doesnt give a damn about "old" keyboard users.... as it was until now.....
If the product line Pa-Arrangers is continued, the mid-range models Pa1000/700 are not "old" keyboards, because due to the serial numbers used from 40,000 its Hardware (SoC AM571x) is at the same technological level as the Pa5x (SoC AM572x).
The Pa5x and Pa1000/700 SoCs only differ in terms of dual-core/single-core subsystems, with the Pa5x's dual-core system being twice as powerful - but it does not differ on a technological level which
both last was revised in November 2019.
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It would be illogical to expect a successor to the midrange series if they are equipped with the same technology as the prof series.
The mid-range models were equipped with software migrated from the predecessors with a low performance untypical for the used hardware. In the initially delivered Pa5x, only the optical possibilities of the display were implemented in the program. The functionality was limited to the essentials, again the performance of the hardware was not taken into account.
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Korg has made good use of proprietary tone generator/DSP chips in the past, but may not (yet) be able to harness the power of the current ARM Cortex-A15 based SoCs (system-on-chip architecture). These offer excellent development platforms, hardware, open source software and tools to simplify design and development processes in order to quickly bring even complexly developed products to market.
The SoC (AM572x/AM571x) used in Pa5x/1000/700 are powerful, suitable for real-time applications and to run with Linux or Win10. They are specially optimized for multimedia applications and for the calculation of audio data (advantageous for MP3 decoding, for example) and can process multiple data in parallel while also having computing time available for other tasks.
So that there is no loss of performance when calculating audio data (or graphics), the programmer must of course know the command sets for instructions (e.g. for vector calculations) and also use them. It is therefore important for them to use the existing integrated DSP extensions and use them to increase performance for multimedia applications.
neverkorgagain wrote:Do you people really believe in "global chip shortage" ..
The recent dilemna with the Pa-arrangers is not the hardware of the Pa-arrangers - and probably not due to supply bottlenecks, which according to cautious forecasts will disappear again - but in how application software for the hardware is programmed.
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Korg should therefore strive to raise the Pa5x to a performance level with software that corresponds to the hardware used.
It shouldn't be difficult to do this also with the mid-range models based on the experience they hopefully can acquire from the applications of the Pa5x.
If there are troubles with development departments in the EU or US, then it would be wise for KORG to set up a department somewhere else (Japan) with programming staff worthy of the name, rather than dubbing their distributors "SalesManager" or illegal price monitoring techniques to use!