This review is from: 88-KEY Portable Educational KeyboardGreat value, and a marked improvement over the old 500 and 505 models. The speakers produce a richer sound tone, and the display window is much clearer and easier to read. Additional features over the 505 include one-touch "auto-accompaniment", where you can try different background rhythms to your recorded notes (jazz, rock, salsa, etc) at a single touch of a button. There are a few more voices to choose from, and the "sweet" sounds are more realistic than on the old models. The unit looks better as a whole, being a sleek silver instead of a dull plastic beige. Also, the controls are a lot more "touch friendly", especially the selection "spin wheel" that lets you choose features much faster than the older models did.Connectivity is much simpler than on the 500, requiring only a simple USB cord instead of a special MIDI cord. The one downside of this keyboard is that a USB drive is the only portable media compatible with this unit, and unfortunately they place the plug-in port in the back, which make it somewhat difficult to reach over and plug the drive in while you're trying to play and select. Because of this, I take away a star, and hope that in their next model, Yamaha will put the USB port somewhere in FRONT where it's easy to reach and plug the drive.I actually recommend this unit over the DGX 620 (Yamaha's highest available model at the time of this review). All features are exactly the same on the two models, except the keys in the 620 are weighted to as close to a real piano as you'll get. Yamaha calls them 'Graded Hammer Standard' keys.The 520 does not have the GHS keys, but the trade-off (besides a considerably lower cost than the 620) is a lot of weight...the 620 unit as a whole weighs 19 lbs more than the 520 unit. So if you're a traveling musician like me and have to load and unload your keyboard all the time carrying your instrument to your gigs, you're actually much better off with the 520. Get the 620 only if you want a more realistic feel and don't want to move the keyboard a lot.Overall, an excellent instrument...and if you have any of the older models, I highly recommend an upgrade!...
This review is from: 88-KEY Portable Educational KeyboardThis keyboard is great for amateur musiocians, beginners, or those who like to play for fun. I'm more in the latter, but I hope that my son will take a liking to playing. This full size keyboard has so many great features and provides a fairly easy to use interface for the basic functions. The advanced features are just amazing. Such as the ability to show the score and lyrics. Also the PAT function allows anyone to play along with a song, even if you have no idea what the notes are. It will always stay in pitch.Although the interface is easy for basic functions, the advanced functions will definitely require the user to read the manual. I'm not known for doing that, so I struggled a little. The good news is that I learned so much more by reading the manual that it was a good thing.Pros- Great price for a great keyboard- Superior advanced functions for those wanting to learn how to play- Nice feel keyboard, doesn't provide exact weighted keys, but provides nice feedback- Terrific interface with nice screen- Easy to load songs from USB and/or computerCons- Advanced features difficult to pickup without reading manual- Had trouble with some USB memory sticks. Had to find one that worked. Took a few different types before I got it to work. There's a write up on this in teh manual. They suggested to call an authorized Yamaha dealer. Which I did. But they wanted to sell me a 256MB USB stick for $100. I ended up finding a 512MB stick on Amazon for <$20 that worked.Overall, I would highly recommend. The upgraded DGX-620 provides better weighted keys and nicer looks, but that's about it. Unless you need the weighted keys, I would save your money....
This review is from: 88-KEY Portable Educational KeyboardI was looking at "workstations" but couldn't figure out why they were called workstations, I was wondering if they were something that I could compose on; then I notice the entry-level workstation was three times the cost of this keyboard, and my wife saw this at BJ's Wholesale Club and offered it to me as a Christmas present... so... I listened to some samples online and liked the keyboard sound- better than my old PSR-292- so I said with a sigh, OK...This DGX doesn't have all the voices the cheaper PSR had, and the ones it does have are same old ones, the guitars are better, but still 60's 70's; its pianos are better sounding, the 292's really couldn't stand alone; but it did have something unexpected, something I've been going crazy with and which was worth sacrificing the workstation all by itself- the pitch bender! Now I can do wild vibratos and bendings, which gives me much more expressive creations...It has 5 5-track user songs to record original works with, just like the old 292; and just like the old 292, the memory gets full long before that! I save the keyboard's user and midi files of my creations on a budget USB drive, no problems... for mp3 files I record directly into my laptop's microphone jack from the keyboard's headphone jack (with some level adjusting) and lay down an additional track while recording, making 6 tracks, with the one live... so I create decent mp3 files to upload to tne Internet and entertain my micro-audiences...It has a thousand features I may never explore; I've experimented with many of the settings such as pitch-bend range, reverb, and touch-sensitivity, and have discovered and used some of its unintended quirks to creative advantage......
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