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KURZWEIL K2661 SYNTHESISER |
KURZWEIL K2661 SYNTHESISER
If you've never placed your hands on a Kurzweil synth... then you probably should! After all, you've had about 21 years to do so since they began releasing keyboards in 1983. The K2661 synthesizer is the culmination of a number of Kurzweil technologies including KB3, VAST and KDFX; and I was keen to spend some time exploring its possibilities. The K2661 has evolved from Kurzweil's K2600, but with the a number of improvements; 24-bit ADAT-Optical input/output, a Smart Media card slot, the inclusion of Orchestral and Contemporary ROM blocks, and as you may have guessed, it comes in 61-keys.
The K2661 has a no-frills appearance but one that is really designed for the working musician. Kurzweil founder Ray Kurzweil was involved with Stevie Wonder through another creation of his; a text to speech reader for the blind. Through conversing with Stevie, Ray Kurzweil became determined to develop an acoustic sounding digital instrument in which the sounds could still be molded and edited creatively.
Kurzweil's piano programs are still some of the smoothest sounding to date, and are pretty hard to fault. This goes for the electric pianos, strings, and other organic sounds; there were no areas of their range that I found nasty, or that sounded thin as is exhibited by plenty of other keyboard models. The Contemporary and Orchestral ROM blocks are a welcome inclusion. I was quickly hooked on a luscious evolving pad sound called 'Mandala' (Contemporary Block, Program # 894), although the range of sounds here also covers guitars/ basses/ keyboards/ percussion etc. The Orchestral sounds are some of the best I have heard in a conventional synthesizer and are well suited to film-scoring and studio use.
Many real-time controls were already set up here so that I could alter the sounds dynamically i.e. levels of instruments, effect depths, vibrato amount.
KB3 is a very cool part of the K2661 and is a way of emulating tone-wheel organs. The sliders on the K2661 become harmonic partials allowing you to produce various combinations of sounds, as per a Hammond B3 organ. In case you're a die-hard organ user, I'll mention now that the Mod-Wheel acts as the ninth-drawbar that is available on tone-wheel organs. Kurzweil have modeled everything right down to key-click, rotary-speaker simulation, and capacitor leakage…yes capacitor leakage. This function is adjustable and adds more (or less) grit to the sound; different types of leakage can be selected for varying results. Choose how best you would like your organ to decay! When KB3 sounds are active a completely different set of editing options become available to the standard VAST set; options specific to organs.
So what is VAST? It is Variable Architecture Synthesis Technology, the underlying means that is available to process sounds (other than KB3 sounds) in the K2661. VAST allows you to choose up to five blocks which can be pieced together to alter the sound. Blocks may be changed from one function to another i.e. a 'Bandpass Filter' may be changed to a 'Notch Filter' or '2 Parameter Shaper' etc. Each block then contains its own set of editing parameters. Kurzweil have also included Triple Modular Processing; a feature that was introduced into Kurzweil synths with the version 2 OS update for the K2600. It basically allows three VAST algorithms to be placed together in series for crazier editing of sounds. Kurzweil claim that this gives you around 30 billion possible combinations by which to mangle your sound. I won't argue with them but I do have a suggestion; give us a software editor! At this point I had editing power spanned across several K2661-screens and would have loved to view my options on computer screen, preferably showing the direction of signal flow. In any case you get the idea that there is a lot of sound screwability at your fingertips.
I can't finish this review without mentioning that a comprehensive sequencer is included, as is the option of adding a sample board (SMP-2X). The sample board serves multiple purposes; apart from the sampling it allows you to run external signals through the KDFX (Kurzweil Digital Effects) engine in real-time, and allows you to make use of the inbuilt vocoder. I didn't have this option for review so I won't elaborate further, although apparently the K2661 now comes with 128MB of sample RAM as standard. The inclusion of a Smart Media card slot is a great benefit for storing samples and songs, and means that you won't have to search far corners of the globe for SCSI peripherals (a SCSI port is still present if you're into that sort of thing).
I could easily carry on but I realise that I'm only scratching the surface; the K2661 is a powerful machine and it represents the pinnacle of Kurzweil's achievements. What I would recommend is that you go and give one a test-drive yourself, but take your time! You won't hit a KB3 organ sound until you scroll to program number 751. Likewise you'll need to have some patience if you expect to unlock the secrets of VAST in a single sitting. Thankfully though you'll know that if you fork out for a K2661 (The RRP of the K2661 is $4999) you'll be content for some time!