Groove X-R Keyboard Expander for Pa2x and Pa800 customers

[Rob Sherratt]

OK this is an advertisement - but it is with the blessing of the forum owner (sharp) and it is directly relevant to Korg Pa800 and Pa2x owners. For my past efforts over 3 years on this forum, I hope readers will agree that I've earned the right to post an advertisement that I believe will be of general interest.

The Groove X-R expander

A new sound expander module for the Pa800 and Pa2x is now available as a third party product, supported by this forum's owner (sharp) and by me and by our manufacturing partner, Lionstracs. In fact sharp has designed all the fantastic sounds on the Groove X-R expander, and he's done a fantastic job, just listen to the demos.

http://corcyraglobal.com/mp3/ls-library.mp3

How do I use it as an expander for my Pa800/ Pa2x?

Use your Pa800 or Pa2x as a master controller keyboard and use the Groove X-R as a hugely expanded sound engine for styles and solo sounds. Just connect the two units together using a MIDI-USB cable plugged into the "Host" port on your Pa800 or Pa2x, and the other end into one of the six USB ports on the Groove X-R and then you would use either of the two pairs of stereo output sockets from the Groove X-R as your sound output to a separate amplifier/ loudspeaker system. We provide the equivalent of 1,000 Gigabytes sound capacity as opposed to 64 Mbytes sound capacity on the Pa800 and 128 Mbytes or 256 Mbytes on the Pa2x.



How many keyboards can I plug in?

Hey, why stop at plugging just one Pa800 or Pa2x into the Groove X-R? You can plug six MIDI-USB keyboards and controllers such as the Korg Nano series into it and six different musicians can play and control different sounds from the Groove X-R at the same time. Or you can have a 6-manual keyboard setup with a huge bank of Korg nano-controllers to impress your fans. The polyphony, sound expansion and control capability is virtually limitless.

How easy is it to use?

The Groove X-R features an all-new touch operating system accessed through a touch screen display on the front panel. And if that's not big enough for your fingers, just plug a high-res monitor into the VGA port, and a USB mouse into a USB port, and you have a full screen graphical editing environment with world class audio editing and sample sound expansion production tools.

Is it upgradeable? Where can I get spare parts?

The Groove X-R uses a standard PC-based internal motherboard, processor and RAM, so those parts can be purchased almost anywhere and you are not locked into to us as a single source supplier for spare parts. See our web site http://corcyraglobal.com for details. You can download the specification sheet from the Home page, and you can join our user forum if you register on the User Forum part of the web site. We would love to talk with you about it in more detail on that user forum.

Is my Korg Pa800/ Pa2x obsolete?

No, it is not. Our message is "do not throw away or replace your Korg keyboards, even if the sound output and sampling system on those keyboards fails to satisfy you". Instead MIDI up your Korg keyboard to a Groove X-R "Keyboard Expander" and you will be amazed by the 1 Terabyte sound expansion our solution gives you, and may you live long and prosper

I want demos and I want them now!

There are lots of video films, and sound demonstrations on the "Demonstration" section of our web site, http://corcyraglobal.com. The units will be shipping soon. Get your orders in now, so you are not disappointed when the first batch sells out and we have to manufacture some more!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrwHeSDWL_w

Where can I get it?

The USA distributor is AudioWorks CT, and we have distributors in place for Australia, UK, Ireland and Canada as well. Shipment will be via local postal service in those countries. We can also help arrange a full warranty and support solution via Lionstracs' other distributors, if you live elsewhere and if your native language is not English.

Just join the user forum on our web site if you want to place an order. And if you don't want to place an order that's fine as well, you can join the forum anyway and get to know everyone.

Best regards,
Rob

[thomasteele]

Hi Rob
cannot seem to download brochure
what samples are in the expander and can you add your own samples from elsewhere

[Rob Sherratt]

Hi Rob
cannot seem to download brochure
what samples are in the expander and can you add your own samples from elsewhere

Hi Thomas,

I checked just now using both IE and Firefox browsers. When you click the Groove X-R image on the home page, a .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) document is downloaded into your browser window, it might take 60 seconds. Have you got .pdf document reader support installed on your computer? The free .pdf file reader is here:

http://get.adobe.com/reader/

Would you like to register on our forum? ... if so, just go to the "User Forum" page, then click on the "Register" button. You will be able to create a user account and you can post as many questions as you like, and James and I will answer them in more detail there.

Briefly, we provide 3 Gbytes of sampled sounds which have been constructed by Sharp/ James, and the samples span 1,200 different sounds including the complete set of all sounds for Pa2x and M3 from Irish Acts studios. Each multisample is typically a 4 or 5-layer sound which is velocity triggered between layers, and the multisample size is about 200 Mbytes for each sound. There is storage capacity for 1 Terabyte, so the 3 Gbytes that we provide is less than 1% of the total space available.

Sounds inside the Groove X-R are streamed into memory directly from the 1 TB hard disk "on demand" using a very fast DMA controller. You do not have a system initialization/ multisample load process like on the Pa800/ Pa2x/ M3. There is an internal playback buffer which is 4 Gbytes in size and which can be expanded by the user to 16 Gbytes, but we do not think that is necessary. The 4 Gbyte playback buffer is not a limitation because sounds are loaded and unloaded dynamically, the user is not normally aware that it is going on. You would only run out of buffer space if you tried playing a combination of say 400 different sounds simultaneously. Our Combis and Presets are user-defined ways to load multiple layered sounds simultaneously ready for particular performances.

You can import sounds in SF2 format, or in the format of WAV files for individual samples. We use a commercial program called Extreme Sample Converter (ESC) to prepare our sounds, then import them to the Groove X-R as SF2 files. There is also a simple multisample editor application provided with the Groove X-R but it does not have the capabilities of ESC.

The sounds can be remapped (an automatic operation) in many different ways to achieve compatibility with say the standard sound set on say a Pa2x, or on a Tyros 3 or on a Fantom. We supply GM/ GM2/ GS/ XG/ XS/ Korg compatible sound maps, so by plugging the Groove X-R into those keyboards, and routing everything to external USB MIDI, the standard Korg/ Yamaha/ Roland sounds are completely remapped onto those of the Groove X-R and you can instantly hear what a huge difference it makes. Also it means that users familiar with the key and function and controller layout on those keyboards, can continue to use them with the Groove X-R.

As well as the sampled sounds, there is a Lionstracs synth engine with about 400 synth sounds, and we provide as standard the Sonic Projects OP-X Pro II Oberheim synth plug-in. You can add your own Plug-ins, and the list of supported plug-ins is on our web site in the user forum area.

The tools to manage sound libraries, merging and deleting your own preferred sounds, adding and subtracting them from the user menus etc were written by Sharp/ James. The program that does this is called "LSCPGen". The file formats are open and are well documented, and any third parties can develop "librarian" applications, and we will help them and encourage them.

As you know from earlier correspondence, my motivation for all this was my frustration with other workstations which have closed file formats preventing 3rd party developments.

Best regards,
Rob

[BasariStudios]