I remember the 2500. I worked for a NY studio instrument rental and they went out everyday. Took two guys to load it in and out of the truck because of the weight the road case. Even when other keyboard brands became popular the 2500 still rented. That keyboard has toured around the world with the biggest bands in music history. It wasn’t one of my favorites but it was mandatory for top keyboard players. You name them. They played it. Rock solid on the road. We almost never had to check them when they returned. No broken keys? No liquid damage? Back on the shelf for the next rental. It was the ONLY keyboard that went out everyday. World tour? 2500. Large rental? Two or 3 2500s. One small group that needed a one night rental? 2500. It was a keyboard players go to keyboard FOR YEARS! We had Korgs Rolands every keyboard you can name. Trust me, multi million dollar top tier recording artist demanded the Kurzweil 2500. The 2700 will never be more popular.
Very nice video. I love It.❤ I was one of the first programmers to have the K2700 and I programmed many sound libraries for Kurzweil too. What I regret is seeing people criticize such a powerful keyboard, without knowing anything about it. The K2700 is a very powerfull Synth/Workstation
Indeed: 30 years after V.A.S.T. was released, there are people still criticising this Platforms. As someone with quite a deep knowledge of V.A.S.T. - I used to write Advanced Programming Tutorials for the K2000 - I can assure everyone that 99% of these criticisms stem from not knowing the whole capabilities of V.A.S.T. and what is around it in the workstations.🙂
In the K2500, the Digitech chip is the default for effects. To mitigate the noise, here's what you can do: internal to the effect you are using, there is a Wet Gain and Dry Gain or Mix (I forget the real name of it as I use KDFX with my K2500 but you'll know on editing the effect). Set that to Max for the Wet one. Save the effect. After you do that, you can then use a smaller Wet % outside the effect. This reduces the noise. A KDFX can also be installed, but it's rare to find a separate one nowadays. So what you can do, since you also have the K2700 and the latter has KDFX internally as well as audio input to it, is to set the K2700 effects as AUX Sends in your Mixer. Then you can disable the Digitech on the K2500 and route the K2500 to your mixer and make it benefit of KDFX too.
I agree with everyone that's been saying that you should offer these sounds for sale. You could call them Grim25 or something. This is your work! YOU have painstakingly recreated these sounds from a vintage instrument. People do this all the time. I would buy them for sure. And now a question, have you converted the sound Alaska? I used to use that quite alot back in the day. ❤ Keep up the good work! 💪😎👍
I see some bad comment, critisizing... Thank you for comparing them 2 synths and showing that they sound verry verry close... I totally feel you as I had different versions of the same synthesis (like Z1 and moss card, or other hardware vs software...) its verry interesting and long work. I had a K2500 with KDFX and today im hesitating between which one I should get back : K2661, PC3 are more in my budget. from all demos i saw, i found the PC3 to be a bit too clean, having less depth in sound, less low frequencies... But your video is making me considering the K2700. Unfortunately its a bit to big for me and also a bit too expensive. Also i'm a huge fan of the old digital synths (i mean old convertors, old PCM...). Also there is the edition facility to must be taken in account.
About minute 7:00, you compare both keyboards' effects in terms of noise, which is of course very notorious on the older K. The K2000/K2500 Digitech FX chip was always criticized for its noise level. Did you run the test using that stock chip or with the KDFX option? Thanks.
Yes partially, with some difficulties. The K700 can load .K25 files. But you often need to manually go and edit the parameters, change samples to correct ones, etc. I have demoed this in several of my previous videos.
That Moog saw sound sounds noticeably different to me. It has more balls on the 2500 (despite the fact that he played the right hand in different octaves).
That patch is very velocity sensitive and I did not play consistently between the K27 and K25. For a very accurate comparison one should record the notes to a MIDI sequencer /DAW and play back same MIDI data to each of them. But for a quick test this is sufficient to show that my fixes improved the K27 patch to be very close to the K25. I should have included a version of what K27 was before improvement, but my time is limited and also I don't want to make too long videos.
Thanks for your video. Do you think the same sound quality issu happens with PC 3 vs PC4? I saw a video of a PC3 demo in Brazil and I was blown away with the quality of the pianos of the PC3 vs PC4...
You can remove the rubberized coating from the plastic using acetone or IPA. If you don't and don't keep that rubber lubricated, eventually the rubber will start to melt and become sticky.
Yes. I have one of the very first GoPro HD camera models, which had that annoying sticky stuff. I think I used IPA to take it off. Acetone can be a bit radical because is melts some plastics, at least ABS plastic. Of course, if you quickly wipe off the surface coating without applying too much of it, it could be useful.
On the 2500 does the sliders normally assign themselves for sound editing ie filter cutoff resonance etc ? Or do you have to assign it yourself each time for each patch ? Im looking into a k2600 and unlike the 2700 and other synths ie yamaha where you can with one button change what the faders do, so go from editing to sound levels to midi.
When you make a patch yourself, you start by loading another patch and modify that. So it depends what patch you use as a starting point. There is an "Editor template" patch in the factory patches. If you use that as a starting point, the slider 1 is cutoff, slider 2 is resonance, etc. It is very easy to change slider assignments. You just go to Params page in edit mode and select the Control you want to change. While holding Enter key pressed you can move the slider or knob to assign it.
Checking a K2600 Keyboard: there is a more compact material than chipboard under the actual KB assembly, around 70mm thick. It should be a similar thing in the K2500. The whole MB assembly including this does make for a quite heavy object.
@@GrimVoxTech Actually, you may even be right: I am not a woodworking/material expert, I know Systems Engineering and V.A.S.T. and Synthesis :D Hope you're well. I am sort of eyeing getting a new K, maybe the forthcoming K2061. Exciting times, my friend.
not saying it's never correct, but there are always people who will say old stuff is better and new stuff sucks. No matter if they hear it or not, their mind already said it is the case.
In this case, it is real but reality in more nuanced than that: some things are better in old V.A.S.T. in K2500S and K2600S: Live Mode and all it allows, as well as Vocoder Mode. These two don't exist in newer V.A.S.T but the latter does have several advantages too and is generally more powerful DSP-wise both in the synth side and in the effects side.
Lots of poor choices. Did they not learn that the rubberized coating always fails? And why not keep the exact same keymaps for backward compatibility? And those rubber keys will eventually fail as well. Sheesh. The K2500 with the KDFX upgrade is superb. No noise.
The big problem the K2700 has isn’t how it compares the K2500. It’s how it compares to the Fantom, Nautilus, and Montage. Those boards have modern, larger touch screen interfaces. The K2700 is stuck in the past with a smaller, non touch interface. Those who cross shop find it harder to take this older design seriously. Also, the soft touch plastic elastomer materials aren’t durable and should’ve been abandoned years ago. Yamaha, Korg, and Roland aren’t building their keyboards with a built in failure point like this. The K2700 would be great if it had a more competitive interface.
@@matthewgaines10 Yikes. A large touchscreen would certainly keep me away. That would be too close to using plugins on a computer. And I don't like fingerprints on my screens.
That's really the wrong way of comparing Synth platforms: it should be about the sound, and eventually the live performance abilities. You can read the comments in the various YT comparison videos to see which one people prefer by a large amount. If you want a large screen, you can use the external software Editor on an iPad or a desktop and project the latter on a huge 100" surface.
Probably one of only few. The sax actually now sounds like a sax instead of a trumpet. A trumpet would be extremely different. There are slight differences, but nothing that could prevent me to continue my projects when replacing the K25 with the K27. The parameters could be tweaked more to get them more close. But it would not be worth the money. My demo is not very accurate because I failed to play the K25 and K27 with same velocity. For that one should record the MIDI notes and play the same MIDI data on each of the synths. Also, I made a mistake and the effects was turned on (by accidental patch change) on the K27. Did not hear that during filming because I only had very bad computer monitor speakers on the floor.
Short answer: you can do a lot more with a K2700. You can make it sound just like the K2000-K2500-K2600-PC3K..., and better. I've done that. This guy doesn't have much knowledge-skills of using the Kurzweil system and that's why he can't make it sound the same. That's all.
@ARGProjects Not sure what question you answered, but yes, K2700 has more features. What guy are you talking about? The Kurzweils can be made sound the same except the missing LPGATE algorithm can not be accurately reproduced because the filter attack envelope can not be programmed accurately enough. The only problem is that the K25 file import function is so buggy that I had to spend work hours worth thousands of $ to manually correct the imported K25 factory patches to be able to continue my projects on the K2700.
Sorry, you focus on what you may use/need, not in the apples to apples, like you did with the noise. But if you play the Pink Panther like you did .... man ..... stop doing this
@@GrimVoxTech well, I saw several of your Kurzweil 2700 videos, and I saw you playing. I am so sorry for the perfectionist ... but.... the Pink Panther theme is not like that. I am so sorry, I am 61, and in the 70s the Pink Panther cartoon in the TV was .... every single day the 30 minutes disconnection. So ... I have that melody so stick in my head, that when someone doesnt play it right .... About the apples to apples, sorry you dont know that expression, but you did the comparison about the noise in both units, great. You compares apples to apples. But then you started to compare based on what you use .... well, your videos never told me if I can make my drum's kit the way I want/need/desire/expect/prefer/etc, with the K2700 (that no, you cannot, then I got a Fantom 8), and OK!! is my way. But when you compare two things, you have to compare apples to apples. Like what you did with the noise, or spurious in the sine waves ... that was fantastic. Thank you
@@marianosanchez3209 I don't know the Pink Panther theme and I have no desire to play it. In this video I demonstrated that you can replace the sax sample that was wrongly chosen by the import function by the correct one and then this factory patch will sound correct. "But then you started to compare based on what you use": I can not compare anything without using it. Comparing by reading manual or specification would not be interesting to anyone I believe.
@@marianosanchez3209Sorry but the Fantom-8 douldn't sound any better than an 0rig K2000¡! So u can take your🍎's & compare'm all ya want tooo other 🍎's bcos as the folk's @Kurz say 'It's the Sound' that matters in the end thanx dude(s)
I remember the 2500.
I worked for a NY studio instrument rental and they went out everyday.
Took two guys to load it in and out of the truck because of the weight the road case.
Even when other keyboard brands became popular the 2500 still rented.
That keyboard has toured around the world with the biggest bands in music history.
It wasn’t one of my favorites but it was mandatory for top keyboard players.
You name them. They played it.
Rock solid on the road.
We almost never had to check them when they returned.
No broken keys? No liquid damage? Back on the shelf for the next rental.
It was the ONLY keyboard that went out everyday.
World tour? 2500.
Large rental? Two or 3 2500s.
One small group that needed a one night rental? 2500.
It was a keyboard players go to keyboard FOR YEARS!
We had Korgs Rolands every keyboard you can name.
Trust me, multi million dollar top tier recording artist demanded the Kurzweil 2500.
The 2700 will never be more popular.
Very nice video. I love It.❤ I was one of the first programmers to have the K2700 and I programmed many sound libraries for Kurzweil too. What I regret is seeing people criticize such a powerful keyboard, without knowing anything about it. The K2700 is a very powerfull Synth/Workstation
Indeed: 30 years after V.A.S.T. was released, there are people still criticising this Platforms. As someone with quite a deep knowledge of V.A.S.T. - I used to write Advanced Programming Tutorials for the K2000 - I can assure everyone that 99% of these criticisms stem from not knowing the whole capabilities of V.A.S.T. and what is around it in the workstations.🙂
The John Carpenter theme alone is worth a like
THEY LIVE ❤ NICE MOVIE.
1999 fuga da new york@@Philip-ck5if
Thank you very much för this helpfull video. Please continue to make more ones...
In the K2500, the Digitech chip is the default for effects. To mitigate the noise, here's what you can do: internal to the effect you are using, there is a Wet Gain and Dry Gain or Mix (I forget the real name of it as I use KDFX with my K2500 but you'll know on editing the effect). Set that to Max for the Wet one. Save the effect. After you do that, you can then use a smaller Wet % outside the effect. This reduces the noise.
A KDFX can also be installed, but it's rare to find a separate one nowadays. So what you can do, since you also have the K2700 and the latter has KDFX internally as well as audio input to it, is to set the K2700 effects as AUX Sends in your Mixer. Then you can disable the Digitech on the K2500 and route the K2500 to your mixer and make it benefit of KDFX too.
I agree with everyone that's been saying that you should offer these sounds for sale.
You could call them Grim25 or something.
This is your work!
YOU have painstakingly recreated these sounds from a vintage instrument.
People do this all the time.
I would buy them for sure.
And now a question, have you converted the sound Alaska? I used to use that quite alot back in the day. ❤
Keep up the good work!
💪😎👍
I see some bad comment, critisizing... Thank you for comparing them 2 synths and showing that they sound verry verry close... I totally feel you as I had different versions of the same synthesis (like Z1 and moss card, or other hardware vs software...) its verry interesting and long work.
I had a K2500 with KDFX and today im hesitating between which one I should get back : K2661, PC3 are more in my budget. from all demos i saw, i found the PC3 to be a bit too clean, having less depth in sound, less low frequencies... But your video is making me considering the K2700. Unfortunately its a bit to big for me and also a bit too expensive. Also i'm a huge fan of the old digital synths (i mean old convertors, old PCM...). Also there is the edition facility to must be taken in account.
Something is likely wrong with that K2500 keybed. Mine is not noisy like that. Maybe it needs a new felt strip.
OK good to know. I'll take a look and open it when I have time.
Thank you! Very helpful! Please, continue the comparison and the demonstration k2700 videos! Very useful and highly appreciated!!! Cheers 😉
Great job! 🎹
About minute 7:00, you compare both keyboards' effects in terms of noise, which is of course very notorious on the older K. The K2000/K2500 Digitech FX chip was always criticized for its noise level. Did you run the test using that stock chip or with the KDFX option? Thanks.
Yes I used the normal effects, not KDFX.
There is an editing trick that I shared above to reduce the noise of the Digitech Effects. It works.
SUPER !!!
is the k2700 backward compatible with k2500 sound sets and son files? Will it play k2500 sounds??
Yes partially, with some difficulties. The K700 can load .K25 files. But you often need to manually go and edit the parameters, change samples to correct ones, etc. I have demoed this in several of my previous videos.
What are you doing to get that sound? Love the John Carpenter vibes!
He literally shows the ALG at around 9:35
That Moog saw sound sounds noticeably different to me. It has more balls on the 2500 (despite the fact that he played the right hand in different octaves).
That patch is very velocity sensitive and I did not play consistently between the K27 and K25. For a very accurate comparison one should record the notes to a MIDI sequencer /DAW and play back same MIDI data to each of them. But for a quick test this is sufficient to show that my fixes improved the K27 patch to be very close to the K25. I should have included a version of what K27 was before improvement, but my time is limited and also I don't want to make too long videos.
Thanks for your video. Do you think the same sound quality issu happens with PC 3 vs PC4? I saw a video of a PC3 demo in Brazil and I was blown away with the quality of the pianos of the PC3 vs PC4...
Thanks! Unfortunately I don't know anything about the PC series.
You can remove the rubberized coating from the plastic using acetone or IPA. If you don't and don't keep that rubber lubricated, eventually the rubber will start to melt and become sticky.
Yes. I have one of the very first GoPro HD camera models, which had that annoying sticky stuff. I think I used IPA to take it off. Acetone can be a bit radical because is melts some plastics, at least ABS plastic. Of course, if you quickly wipe off the surface coating without applying too much of it, it could be useful.
On the 2500 does the sliders normally assign themselves for sound editing ie filter cutoff resonance etc ? Or do you have to assign it yourself each time for each patch ? Im looking into a k2600 and unlike the 2700 and other synths ie yamaha where you can with one button change what the faders do, so go from editing to sound levels to midi.
When you make a patch yourself, you start by loading another patch and modify that. So it depends what patch you use as a starting point. There is an "Editor template" patch in the factory patches. If you use that as a starting point, the slider 1 is cutoff, slider 2 is resonance, etc. It is very easy to change slider assignments. You just go to Params page in edit mode and select the Control you want to change. While holding Enter key pressed you can move the slider or knob to assign it.
As far as I can remember, I haven't seen any chipboard in my K2500XS. There is, however, a long metal bar all along the board.
Checking a K2600 Keyboard: there is a more compact material than chipboard under the actual KB assembly, around 70mm thick. It should be a similar thing in the K2500. The whole MB assembly including this does make for a quite heavy object.
@@yashnu OK I might remember the material wrong. Maybe it was MDF. But that is also heavy.
@@GrimVoxTech Actually, you may even be right: I am not a woodworking/material expert, I know Systems Engineering and V.A.S.T. and Synthesis :D Hope you're well. I am sort of eyeing getting a new K, maybe the forthcoming K2061. Exciting times, my friend.
not saying it's never correct, but there are always people who will say old stuff is better and new stuff sucks. No matter if they hear it or not, their mind already said it is the case.
In this case, it is real but reality in more nuanced than that: some things are better in old V.A.S.T. in K2500S and K2600S: Live Mode and all it allows, as well as Vocoder Mode. These two don't exist in newer V.A.S.T but the latter does have several advantages too and is generally more powerful DSP-wise both in the synth side and in the effects side.
Lots of poor choices. Did they not learn that the rubberized coating always fails? And why not keep the exact same keymaps for backward compatibility? And those rubber keys will eventually fail as well. Sheesh. The K2500 with the KDFX upgrade is superb. No noise.
The big problem the K2700 has isn’t how it compares the K2500. It’s how it compares to the Fantom, Nautilus, and Montage. Those boards have modern, larger touch screen interfaces. The K2700 is stuck in the past with a smaller, non touch interface. Those who cross shop find it harder to take this older design seriously.
Also, the soft touch plastic elastomer materials aren’t durable and should’ve been abandoned years ago. Yamaha, Korg, and Roland aren’t building their keyboards with a built in failure point like this.
The K2700 would be great if it had a more competitive interface.
@@matthewgaines10 Yikes. A large touchscreen would certainly keep me away. That would be too close to using plugins on a computer. And I don't like fingerprints on my screens.
That's really the wrong way of comparing Synth platforms: it should be about the sound, and eventually the live performance abilities. You can read the comments in the various YT comparison videos to see which one people prefer by a large amount.
If you want a large screen, you can use the external software Editor on an iPad or a desktop and project the latter on a huge 100" surface.
Kurzweil it s hi sound .
@@sofienkesraouikhayel
Kurzweil is the
Highest Fi¡! thanx dude(s)
They sound EXTREMELY different. Am I the only one who can hear it?!
It's not surprising: very different effects, different converters, upgraded anti-aliased oscillators, enhanced 4-pole lowpass model, etc.., etc..
Probably one of only few. The sax actually now sounds like a sax instead of a trumpet. A trumpet would be extremely different. There are slight differences, but nothing that could prevent me to continue my projects when replacing the K25 with the K27. The parameters could be tweaked more to get them more close. But it would not be worth the money. My demo is not very accurate because I failed to play the K25 and K27 with same velocity. For that one should record the MIDI notes and play the same MIDI data on each of the synths. Also, I made a mistake and the effects was turned on (by accidental patch change) on the K27. Did not hear that during filming because I only had very bad computer monitor speakers on the floor.
LOL extremly different ... dude, be serious
please finish your songs friend
2700 sounds better.
🥱🥱🥱
Short answer: you can do a lot more with a K2700. You can make it sound just like the K2000-K2500-K2600-PC3K..., and better. I've done that.
This guy doesn't have much knowledge-skills of using the Kurzweil system and that's why he can't make it sound the same. That's all.
@ARGProjects Not sure what question you answered, but yes, K2700 has more features. What guy are you talking about? The Kurzweils can be made sound the same except the missing LPGATE algorithm can not be accurately reproduced because the filter attack envelope can not be programmed accurately enough. The only problem is that the K25 file import function is so buggy that I had to spend work hours worth thousands of $ to manually correct the imported K25 factory patches to be able to continue my projects on the K2700.
Sorry, you focus on what you may use/need, not in the apples to apples, like you did with the noise. But if you play the Pink Panther like you did .... man ..... stop doing this
@@marianosanchez3209 What apples? What is a pink panther?
@@GrimVoxTech well, I saw several of your Kurzweil 2700 videos, and I saw you playing. I am so sorry for the perfectionist ... but.... the Pink Panther theme is not like that. I am so sorry, I am 61, and in the 70s the Pink Panther cartoon in the TV was .... every single day the 30 minutes disconnection. So ... I have that melody so stick in my head, that when someone doesnt play it right .... About the apples to apples, sorry you dont know that expression, but you did the comparison about the noise in both units, great. You compares apples to apples. But then you started to compare based on what you use .... well, your videos never told me if I can make my drum's kit the way I want/need/desire/expect/prefer/etc, with the K2700 (that no, you cannot, then I got a Fantom 8), and OK!! is my way. But when you compare two things, you have to compare apples to apples. Like what you did with the noise, or spurious in the sine waves ... that was fantastic. Thank you
@@marianosanchez3209 I don't know the Pink Panther theme and I have no desire to play it. In this video I demonstrated that you can replace the sax sample that was wrongly chosen by the import function by the correct one and then this factory patch will sound correct. "But then you started to compare based on what you use": I can not compare anything without using it. Comparing by reading manual or specification would not be interesting to anyone I believe.
@@marianosanchez3209Sorry but the Fantom-8 douldn't sound any better than an 0rig K2000¡! So u can take your🍎's & compare'm all ya want tooo other 🍎's bcos as the folk's @Kurz say 'It's the Sound' that matters in the end thanx dude(s)
CHICK COREA ❤ & KEITH EMERSON ❤ , NICE SOUNDS ❤