Sounds on FA 08 vs. XV 88

[Bloomstomb]

Hello, new to forum.

I am sorry for the long post but I wanted to be descriptive as possible.

I have just purchased a new FA 08 and found some of the exact same sound sets that were on my XV 88, however they do not sound the quite same.

For example I had a piano sound NewAge which when on the XV 88 I would select Effects buttons called "Reverb" , "Chorus" and "Multi" (they were three buttons right next to each other and would light up when pressed) would make what in my opinion is an otherwise bland sound into something that sounded pretty cool!.

I can get the bland sound on the FA 08 exactly like it was on the XV 88 but I am having a hard time replicating the effects like I had it on the previous keyboard. Can anyone direct on how I can do this? I have played around with maximizing chorus, reverb and clicking on multi but it just doesnt sound like it did to me.

Also there was a feature button that had some really nice sounds on it. For example I have yet to find a strings sound like the one that was on feature (I forget what exactly it was called) but again, this was with the 3 effect buttons pressed.

I also remember being blown away by the XV 88 like 10 years ago when I got it. The FA 08 is like blah so far and I am thinking about returning it. Am missing something?

[Bloomstomb]

Hello does anyone have any input on this question?

[Joe P]

Bloom,
I'll try to help. It may have to do with the FA08 signal path logic.

For your New Age piano sound, you want to apply reverb and chorus which is of course do-able. Going by memory, In Shift+Tone Edit---> MFX you can set the chorus and reverb levels 0 - 127, but these are only the send levels, the total effect is found elsewhere. One place is the Sound Modify knobs on the left. Put the Sound Modify row selector so it activates the bottom row and increase the reverb and chorus. This is a Global Setting, then you fine-tune the reverb and chorus for the sound in the Effects Edit (MFX Edit).

Then save the tone if you want to use it later. It will be saved into the same bank it came from but it will be identified as a USER tone. You also re-name it in the save process. But remember if you zero out the Global chorus and reverb it will sound blah again!

See how you make out with this then we can tackle the other problem. The FA08 is an amazing instrument and easy to learn, I'm sure you will come to love it.

[stevel]

Hello, new to forum.

For example I had a piano sound NewAge which when on the XV 88 I would select Effects buttons called "Reverb" , "Chorus" and "Multi" (they were three buttons right next to each other and would light up when pressed) would make what in my opinion is an otherwise bland sound into something that sounded pretty cool!.

From what you describe, it sounds like the NewAge patch was "raw" and that pressing these buttons would add Reverb, Chorus, and/or a "Multi-Effect" that could be anything as far as we know, but it may have been something like a combination of Chorus and Reverb and others (Roland has called effects "multis" for decades now when it combines more than one type of effect such as Delay AND Chorus in a single effect block).

I'm going to give you a long, detailed example, so hopefully this will help you understand the FA's architecture and compare it to the XV:

1. Turn on your FA. If you haven't done anything so far, it probably starts with PRST 001, FA Preview loaded up.

2. Highlight PRST 001 and use the dial to scroll to the USER banks (should be past #64 or so depending on your software version. If you haven't done anything yet, these are going to say "USER 001 INIT STUDIO.

3. Select the first one you've not modified. The Sound in Part 1 will probably be 0001 Full Grand. Up at the top left it should say "Studio Set Play". If you look under this you will see Master, EQ etc. and right below that Studio FX, MFX, etc. - on that row on mine, MFX, CHO, and REV are all "highlighted" telling you they're on. This is "multi-fx", Chorus, and Reverb.

4. Press and hold Shift and you'll see "Part View" over button #4 (guitar/plucked). Press it. It will take you to a screen where 8 parts are listed, probably on the "Level/Pan" tab if you haven't scrolled elsewhere.

5. Scroll over to the "Output/EFX" tan (two tabs to the right) and you'll see a list of the insruments (all probably 0001 Full Grand at this point) and "Main" "0" and "20".

"0" is the Chorus Send Level (you can see it at the top of that column).
"20" is the Reverb Send Level.

Take note of this.

6. Now just press exit to take you back to the main screen (either button 7 or the exit button beside shift).

7. If you haven't played the sound yet, do. Thus far we've only LOOKED at a couple of parameters, not changed anything. Take note of the sound.

8. Now in the Sound Modify area with the 6 knobs, use the "select" button to go to the 4th row, where Chorus and Reverb are on knobs 3 and 4.

9. Play, and turn knob #3. You will see on-screen that the Chorus Level is being adjusted - it will go from 0-127. But you SHOULD NOT HEAR any change in the sound. The reason why is, becuase that "Send Level" on the previous screen you looked at is set to "0" (zero).

Note: If you move the knob all the way to 0, you'll notice that the "CHO" indicator at the top of the screen goes off - no worries as long as you don't save the patch or something - it will reset if you change the sound and come back to it.

10. Play again and turn knob # for reverb. This will also display but now you SHOULD hear a change in sound. ANd that is because that Reverb Send Level on the other screen we visited is set to "20" (it may not be really noticeable until you turn it all the way to 127, and it's still pretty subtle, because the Send is on 20).

11. So let's try this experiment - press and hold shift again and press part view again. If you haven't done anything else it should return to the same screen (Output/EFX) we looked at before.

12. Scroll down and over to the "0" for Part 1, and crank it up to 127. You don't need to exit the screen yet.

13. Now go back and turn knob #3 for chorus. As you turn the chorus knob up, you should hear a much more noticeable change in the sound since the chorus send level is now up.

14. Try the same experiment with the Reverb Send Level - take that 20 and crank it to 127 and then move the reverb knob again and see what happens. It should be much more noticeable than last time.

15. Take now of where you leave those two numbers - you can put them back to 0 and 20, or leave them both at 127 or whatever.

16. Press exit to go back out to the main screen again.

17. Now press and hold shift and this time pick "Effects Edit" over button 3 (Bass/SynthBass). On this screen you'll see in the top left corner "Part 1" MFX. It probably says 01: Equalizer. To the right you should see two rectangles - one for Chorus and one for Reverb - and between them and the MFX box they will display what value you left on that other screen (so had you visited this screen first initially, it would say "0" and "20" here.

You can highlight them and adjust them here as well (it was less confusing to do them first on the other screen which is why I did it there).

18. Now, go to the right until you highlight either the Chorus or Reverb which should both be "01". If you increment (button or dial) you can go to 02: Delay in the CHorus box (it's a nice ping pong delay - try it!) and then 03 is GM2 Chorus. It can also be set to 00: Off. Reverb has 6 different Reverbs - room, hall, plate and a couple of some.

19. Scroll over left to the MFX box, highlight the EQ, and see what's there. There's a crapload. Have fun over the next 2 days playing with them all :-).

These effects are "Multi-Fx" and are on a Part-by=part basis. There is Chorus (and Hexa-Chorus) and other effects here, but no Reverb becuase you generally don't feed reverberated sound into other effects.

There's no "send" level, only a "mix" (or depth, intensity, etc.) level in another window you can edit. But generally speaking, if you turn these on, they're on (the little green "light" can be highlighted to turn the MFX on or off on this screen, and if you press "MFX" at the bottom it will take you to yet another screen where there's an "MFX Switch" button you can turn on and off there.

In a sense, the Chorus and Reverb work like Effects Sends (Auxes) on a Mixing Console that are then Returned into the master buss, while the MFX work more like "Channel Effects" (so they work like insert effects but are not called that).

Now BIG DEAL here - these MFX ettings are stored WITH THE TONE. So that means, if you change them, then change the sound, you lose them. You'd have to save a version of the tone in a user slot to save them - otherwise you'd make setting and knob changes every time you want to use the sound.

20. I want you to try one more experiment for grins here - exit out to the main screen and select your Part 1 Full Grand sound and change it. Go to any other tone but I'm going to go to 0513 Grand XV for grins.

Now the effects at this point will stay the same.

But go up to the USER 001 INIT Studio and change that to #2. All the changes you made will be gone. Even if you return to #1, it will not be the XV Grand nor will the effects be there.

Even if you were to Write the Studio set, it would ask you if you want to write the changes to the tone for the MFX settings.

So you can store the Chorus and Send Levels, and the knob settings for the Studio Set, but you can't save the MFX settings without writing it to the tone itself.

21. Now that you're back to the default, scroll through the piano sounds until you get to the GM2 sounds - you should notice the MFX indicator at the top go off - see - it's stored with those tones in the "off" position.

22. Get yourself back to your default screen and piano sound. Press and hold shift and do Effects Edit again, but this time look at the bottom right of the screen. You'll see a box for "TFX" (there's a button for it too, but I'm talking about the box). It's little green indicator may be off, and/or it may be set to 00 Thru.

23. Turn on the "button" (green "light") and choose an effect there - there is Reverb here as well, and many other things. You should hear the effects - something like "Wah" should be pretty noticeable.

If you exit out, you'll notice that the TFX indicator is now on at the top.

24. Now you can either stay on this screen or go back into the Effects Edit screen. But use the select button in the Sound Modify area to get back to the 4th row (probably changed when you changed Studio Sets) and Knobs #5 and #6 you'll see "TFX Select" and "TRX Control".

Turn # 6 and see what happens - adjusts the wah speed, no?

Turn #5 and it will change what the TFX effect is. Turn it to Pitch Shifter, adjust the pitch with knob #6, and have fun for the next couple of hours :-)

If you're on the Effects Edit Screen, you can see the type change when you turn knob #5 (so you can change it either place, but you can't adjust the other parameter that's on knob #6 without going another screen deeper).

Now, WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?

TFX is "Total Effects". If you turn that Wah on, EVERY PART in the Studio Set will have Wah on it.

This is great if have 2 sounds like Piano and Strings layered, but want the same effect on both of them - otherwise you'd have to set up the MFX on each part to be identical (twice as much work - more if you're layering more parts).

MFX is "Multi Effects" but "multi" here really refers to the idea that you can have multiple different ones for each Part - one effect on each part. This would be great if you had Piano and Strings layered, and wanted Chorus on the Piano sound, but Phaser on the Strings - MFX allows you to independently assign an effect to a single Part.

Of course, you can have both TFX and MFX on if you wanted the Strings to have Phaser, the Piano to have Chorus, but BOTH of them to have the same Delay on them.

Where the "master" Chorus and Reverb differ is, it's like TFX where it affects all the sounds, but you can control HOW MUCH of the signal of each sound gets sent to those effects. So it's kind of like a combination of the two ideas, except that the only effects you get are Chorus and Reverb.

Another thing to note is, TFX and Reverb and Chorus (at least the return level) can be controlled with the Sound Modify Knobs.

MFX can not be controlled by them, or assigned to anywhere else.

You can assign Reverb and Chorus and TFX (assuming you've set the levels where you want them and stored those settings) to the S1 and S2 buttons, so they could work just like the Knobs.

But you can't assign the MFX this way (this is my one major complaint about this instrument).

Also there was a feature button that had some really nice sounds on it. For example I have yet to find a strings sound like the one that was on feature (I forget what exactly it was called) but again, this was with the 3 effect buttons pressed.

If you go to the first Supernatural Strings sound, and press (and hold) S1 or S2 while playing, it will change the sound to S1="Marcato" (which is like bowing hard "marked bowing") or S2="Pizzicato" (plucked).

There's actually a "Tremolando" variation available as well, it's just not assigned to the two buttons.

The Mod Lever is assigned to "Expression" and although it seems like it just makes it louder, it's designed so you can do "swells" which increase not only in volume, but intensity of sound.

The Mod Lever and S1 and S2 functions vary with each sound. If you pick the first Acoustic Guitar sound (Classical guitar) S1 does Muted Notes and S2 does Harmonics.

I also remember being blown away by the XV 88 like 10 years ago when I got it. The FA 08 is like blah so far and I am thinking about returning it. Am missing something?

Well, this is only the effects I've discussed here. There are many more features.

But since I took the time to write all that out above, if you find it helpful, I'd love to hear from you as to whether the patches in the FA labelled "XV" actually sound like (at least in their raw form) sounds from your XV.

And if you'd like, I'd be happy to help you assign Chorus and Reverb to the S1 and S2 buttons so you have it work sort of like your older keyboard where you just press a button to add them.

It sounds like to me though that those were just simple "on/off" switches and while there may have been more power under the editing screens for controlling them, the FA takes that and adds it in the form of Knobs instead of buttons (at least by default).

But I think you can get it to do the same things. Just a matter of form factor and getting used to how they're implemented.