korg pa800

 

Korg PA800 Professional Arranger Keyboard

 

Pa800 History

The Korg Pa80 is the most successful Professional Arranger keyboard ever produced. Used by tens of thousands of musical professionals in every country of the world, the Pa80 is the industry standard. So, developing the next generation of Arranger from Korg - the Pa800 - required we understand the needs of the modern musical professional whilst respecting the technology chosen by so many musicians worldwide.

After countless interviews from musicians in dozens of countries, we knew what we needed to do to develop the complete professional Arranger keyboard - the new Pa800!

RX Technology

First used on the Pa1X, the most powerful Arranger around, RX Technology is the guiding philosophy behind the Pa800. RX - Real eXperience - guided all our design and sound decisions. When the Pa800 performs, we want the audience to listen - and believe.

TC Helicon inside

To be sure that the vocal processing and harmonies of the Pa800 were the best possible, we worked with a recognised world leader in audio technology, TC Electronic.

The Pa800 includes as standard the world acclaimed TC Helicon Voice Processor. This features EQ and professional quality effects (Compressor, Reverb, Delay), designed and shaped specifically for vocals. These effects, combined with the built in 3 voice harmonizer and dedicated high quality mic preamp, ensure your vocals have the highest possible sound quality.

The most important controls to keep your voice under control are available in the panel and in the display's main page. Simply connect your microphone and start performing!

Easy to use

With all the technological power packed inside, it was vital that we also made the Pa800 easy to understand and easy to use. But even more, we wanted the whole way you use the Pa800 to be an intuitive, musical, fast, foolproof experience. Our graphical user interface uses an amazing Graphical Colour Touch Screen so you simply think, point and click for easy and intuitive use - RX Technology at work for you!

With one of the 7 different background colors in the Graphical User Interface, you can be sure the display can be read in all lighting and performing conditions, a truly professional feature

So that musicians of all levels can make great music quickly, there are two interface modes: Easy and Expert.

















The Easy mode shows only the most important controls while keeping a clean and straightforward interface, useful for beginners or playing live, while in Expert mode you have full editing control. Nothing stands between you and your professional performance.

Switches and sliders are assignable so your live performances work the way you want.

And when you need more information? Check out the multilingual contextual Help System that is standard on board!

Quality Sound

Of course, having power and ease of use means nothing without great sound and the stunning high quality sound performance of the Pa800 will impress any audience. The Pa800 delivers sound that makes it seem like you have the coolest band available on stage - all working under your control.

Korg sound quality is universally recognized as superior, and relied on by musicians everywhere. For the Pa800, we redesigned what was already the most powerful synth sound engine available to give you an even richer, more detailed, sophisticated natural sound than ever before with musical instruments from almost every genre exploding with depth, nuance, subtlety, accuracy and richness. We even used several sounds from OASYS (the most powerful synthesizer ever made) helping the Pa800 set a new standard for arranger keyboards. And the DNC (Defined Nuance Control) system introduced with OS2 adds finer control to all that.

The sound memory of the Pa800 has been largely increased to achieve the best sound quality possible boasting all new multi level samples of the instruments you know and love. Many of these also include also various levels of articulation so the polyphony has been also expanded to 120 notes to cover even busy passages.

There are more than 950 ROM sounds, including a new amazing multilayer stereo acoustic piano accurately sampled from a Concert Grand (and including String and Damper pedal Resonance!), plus an extra 64 drum kits. In addition, the User area contains up to 256 user sounds and 64 drum kits and of course, there is full on board sound editing.

Sound Expansion

Still not enough sounds? Many professional musicians choose to add their own sounds and because the Pa800 is dedicated to professional musicians, you can load Wave, AIFF, Korg format files and of course the incredible Akai sample library - about the largest sample library available - into the standard 64MB of added memory.

The Pa800 also features professional editing facilities such as loop, cut, normalize and cropping of samples. A special "Time Slice" feature allows you to slice audio grooves and import the audio data into a Style so you can create some of the coolest rhythms imaginable.

Effects

But great sound is more than instruments. For many years, Korg has produced outstanding studio quality effects that are simply breathtaking. The Pa800 has 4 Stereo Master Effects processors with 125 of these effects from the standards such as Reverb, Delay and Chorus through to specialised effects such as a fantastic Vocoder and some of the universally acclaimed REMS guitar based effects for authentic guitar tones. The TC Helicon vocal effects are separate and completely independently controlled.

Each Track features EQ with Low, Mid and High controls. A custom track EQ can be memorized in the general preferences for the Song Play mode. This will help adapting the sound to personal taste for any MIDIfile you play. Need a lighter Bass track? Save the right equalization, and the Bass will stay light with all the subsequent Songs.
A final semi-parametric EQ, with Low, Mid (with adjustable frequency) and High controls, is added to the sound output of the Pa800. Everything can be processed by this powerful and musically refined EQ, easily adapting the sound to your musical taste or correcting a problematic live context.

Styles

Matching this high sound quality the Pa800 delivers a new set of deluxe styles, programmed by some of the leading arrangers in the world each of whom worked according to their musical strengths. The result is hundreds of preloaded Styles that provide unparalleled realism and detail. Covering an expanded range of musical genres, the Pa800 gives you styles for almost every important occasion.

If you require a special Style Collection simply record and edit your own styles on board. We add further realism to your performance with Fill 3/Break, Intro 3/Count In and Ending 3 Style Elements. More flexibility is added by the choice of different transposition tables, and the new Guitar Mode adds a totally new perspective to how you play Guitar tracks.

And if you are looking for more pre-written styles, you will be pleased at the exciting future for the Pa800 with many new styles to be produced by both Korg and also independent 3rd party companies. Keep checking www.korgpa.com for more details!

Guitar Track and Fixed NTT for Styles

Guitar Mode allows any musician to easily create realistic guitar parts using real guitar neck positions. Guitar tracks are usually a challenge for every Style and Song writer (possibly even more than the Drums track!). Mostly, the results of guitar tracks entered into Styles and MIDI songs are artificial, unmusical playing, often in need of deep editing. The Pa800, however, offers a unique and powerful approach to program and play realistic guitar performances! The Pa800 arranger include also the Fixed NTT, a feature that moves as few notes as possible while creating the style backing tracks, making legato lines and chord changes far more natural for instruments like strings, piano, mute guitar, etc. RX Technology at work: Listen - and Believe.

View your Songs as traditonal music notation

The Score Viewer displays the lead track (or any other track) as clear and plain traditional musical notations with notes or chords, together with lyrics and chord abbreviations. Chord names can also be seen in different languages (English and Italian). For music learners, we also added a function to show note names next to each note. The Score Viewer automatically adapts the score display to the track's key and clef, with automatic beaming, spacing and bar placement. Triplets and accidentals are automatically recognized. A sophisticated interpretation algorithm cleans up the score display, to allow for easy reading even with rubato (non-quantized) playing.

Powerful Technology

Korg Pa80 introduced the world's first Arranger keyboard with two separate MIDIfile players in the legendary Pa80 and our Pa800 showcases these double sequencer features working at an all new power level. In addition, the Pa800 supports the main musical formats such as SMF (Standard Midi File), Karaoke files, GM (General MIDI) and MP3 (with "Dual MP3 Expansion Board" option installed) and of course is able to display lyrics in most popular karaoke formats.

There is also a practical Marker function to allow you to jump directly to a given position in the song: you can fix the markers using the internal sequencer (or using a computer based one - the marker format is standard) and then remix your favourite songs during a live performance for added spontaneity.

Sequencer & Backing Sequence

Along with a powerful and fully programmable multi track sequencer, you can use Backing Sequences to create songs based over styles - quickly and easily. You don't need to be a master programmer - you can write your own song in minutes: even beginners can easily create songs using the step edit feature. This approach to quick programming is also useful for studio use when you want to create great sounding professional backing music for films, video, multimedia or internet applications very quickly.

SongBook

This exciting feature was developed to make your life easier while playing live. The SongBook is a Musical Database, completely user programmable, containing all the settings needed to play a particular song. You have only to search the title of the song you would like to play, select it and hit "Play". The SongBook can use styles, mid files or MP3 (with "Dual MP3 Expansion Board" option installed) and immediately recall settings such as Song Title, Genre, Artist, Tempo, Volumes, Sounds, Muted Tracks, FX settings, Easy Edit, 4 STS*, Master Transpose and more. Everything you need to play your song back perfectly is in the SongBook, a useful musical feature that is unique to Korg - the only Arranger keyboards available with all these sophisticated controls.

(*STS - Single Touch Settings is a memory that recalls sounds for all the real time tracks (upper1, 2, 3 & lower).)

Configurable

You can configure and edit almost anything in the Pa800. You can modify and save Styles, Performances, Sounds, Settings for Sliders, Switches, Pads, Global (Midi channels, output routings, etc.) and more for both internal and external control. Scales are fully programmable and include quarter tone settings (4 memories for instant recall) and a programmable Arabic Scale.

With all of this control, the Pa800 also functions as a superb MIDI controller (Master Keyboard).

Connectivity

Naturally, the Pa800 has all the connectivity you need including 4 separate audio outputs, 2 mic/line inputs with separate gain, 2 USB Host connections and 1 USB (Device) connection. The optional VIF4 graphic video interface (available in PAL or NTSC standard formats) can display on an external TV monitor either just the lyrics (useful for Karaoke) or if you want it to clone the on board display.

USB

The Pa800 has two USB Host connections available to connect standard pen drives, external hard drives, CD-ROM or even a floppy disk. One Host is to connect other USB devices from the front panel for quick access in real time, while the second Host is on the back panel. A further USB Device connection is available for the Pa800 to connect with a PC for fast exchange of large amounts of data or as a MIDI connection without the need for extra MIDI computer interfaces.

Amplification

The custom designed amplification system is exceptionally high quality. The 2 x 22 Watt amplifiers drive the 2 tweeters and the 2 x 10" woofers in a bass-reflex box to generate a powerful listening experience. Loudness and Fixed EQ boost the overall volume to deliver a big sound!

Keyboard

The keybed is unique to Korg, feels great and naturally has aftertouch as well as being velocity sensitive.

Compatibility

And if you have been one of the many longstanding Korg Arranger users you will be happy to know that even though the Pa800 is all new, it is also compatible with the Korg i-series style format and with all Pa50, Pa60, Pa80, Pa1X files. This means your Pa50, Pa60, Pa80 and Pa1X Sounds and Styles work in the Pa800 as well so you can keep your favourite sounds and styles while benefiting from a cutting edge keyboard.

Expandable & Updatable

Even though it comes with almost every features you could want, the Pa800 has many useful expansion options:

• EXBP-Dual MP3 - Dual MP3 Expansion Board: Dual MP3 Player - Mp3 Recorder. Reads MP3 audio files in any format, including MP3 with Lyrics. Records (with optional Hard Disk or Pen Drive installed) entire performances, including sounds and vocals, in MP3 format.
• VIF4 Graphic Video Interface: to display lyrics or the on board TouchView display on an external monitor or TV (PAL or NTSC formats).
• Hard disk installing kit for standard 2.5" ATA hard disk drive (not included) with a capacity of up to 2 terabytes.

Not only you can expand your Pa800, you can also easily keep it new with operating system updates. These updates are available as free downloads from www.korgpa.com and will ensure your investment is protected!

Please note: Cosmetic and Technical specifications are subject to change without notice