From rohanbaker@rabbit.com.au Tue Mar 13 22:29:41 2001
Subject:Re(4) Tweaking the XK-2

G'day list,

I think Bruce has hit the nail on the head with his post. Developing a product such as a Hammond clone is an extreamly complicated process, especially when you're considering very tight performance, features, reliability, and economic constraints. I am also an Engineer, though a Chemical Engineer rather that Electrical/Computer Engineer, and everything is a trade off. Even a supposedly simple project can easily get off the rails very quickly, when you dive in and find that there are more issues present than when you first started. This has recently happened to myself, when a supposedly simple but critical project I was involved with, should have only cost A$8k max. I unearthed several major OH&S, environmental and process conflicts with this project, and now the project could cost as much as A$100k. Oh boy, was my boss happy, but the thing is the future of the plant hinges on the ability to get this project up and running. To get things back on topic a bit, the Hammond organ is just one major trade off, with major design faults, and inferior components. It just happened by accident, that this conglomeration of bean counter driven components, resulted in "The Sound". Any new keyboard product will also have problems.

I also own a Kawai K5000W, a brilliant and unique instrument. Its additive sound engine is capable of some trully amaising timbres, including some decent Hammond sounds and brilliant pipe organ sounds. All this capabillity (but its a bitch to program), and Kawai didn't design the LFO's to be synced to midi!!!! :-(

On a slightly differant note, the differance in what people like to (or prefer to) hear in the clones sound will always vary. I notice that a lot of people prefer this quality of say leslie sim from clone A over that of clone B, and is purely subjective to ones opinion. For instance, when I went and purchased my XB-1, I was lucky, in that I could A/B it with a VK-7, both running into a Jade keyboard combo amp (locally made), and a C-3/760. To my ears, the VK was very good, except I thought the XB's leslie sim was better, and that the upper register was more authentic and life like. Given that and the VK was second hand, and the same price as a new XB-1.......Sold. I've been very happy with the XB-1, and except for a strange glitch where the digital overdrive played up and I had to reset/reboot the machine to fix, it has worked just fine.

Just my A$0.02, (which is now worth US$0.01)

Rohan

[This is a long post -- and not directed at any member's comments. I'm
just trying to offer another perspective on the issues. If you don't want
to read it, here's a synopsis: Bruce defends the performance of two of the
leading clones, and attempts to describe his miles walked in the moccasins
of a design engineer and program manager.]