Tapas Das Selling your i30 is a bad idea Fri Jun 28 02:53:17 2002 12.83.65.187 Hi, I see a lot of posts here from folks wanting to sell their Korg i30 keyboard. I would like to make a few points that may make them reconsider their decision. Feel free to add your thoughts as well. I bought the i30 several years back after I was amazed with the possibilities of this keyboard demoed at the NAMM show in Anaheim California. When introduced as the original i3, it was way ahead of its time. The touch screen on the new i30 and the simplicity of its user interface won me over. I was a long fan of arranger keyboards having gone through the Technics KN600, KN800, KN1000, KN2000, Roland G800 and several Yamaha PSR keyboards. Ten years ago, if you wanted to have a professional arranger keyboard, Technics was the only game in town. Korg came in as a newcomer in this arena and made its mark with the i3 and then pretty much demolished the competition with the i30. With the help of Ralf's fantastic discussion board and its members, I have added a hard disk to my i30 and purchased the USB CD. I have several other keyboards/modules, but the Korg i30 is the one that is the most useful and versatile. I use the i30 as a musical scratch pad. I have instant access to well over 7000 styles courtesy of Frank's tireless work on his USB product. If I want to lay a composition based on a ballad theme, I simply play back several ballad styles, four to 16 measures long and fly them via MIDI to a Dell laptop running Logic Audio. Once the MIDI snippets are in Logic, I could slice and dice, copy and paste, arrange/mute/transpose these MIDI streams any way my heart desires and then assign instruments and program/bank changes to play back the sounds through a family of keyboards/modules. Working this way, using the i30 with the 7000 plus USB styles, cuts down heavily on production time while keeping the inspiration and interest level high. Imagine how time consuming and boring it would be to lay down a drum track, bass tracks and accompanyment tracks from scratch! You would be hard pressed to come up with anything that matches the professionally arranged styles on the i30. I agree the i30 has its drawbacks. Its internal sounds do not measure up to todays standards. I would compare its internal sounds to be in the same league as the Korg N1R GM/GS/XG module. It cannot hold a candle to the exquisite sounds of professional Korg gear like the 01/W, Trinity, Triton, SG Grand or a Roland XV-5080, or a Yamaha Motif synth. But with so many rack modules available at dirt cheap prices, this does not matter! You can buy a new Roland XV-5050 for less than $800. You can buy a used Korg TR-rack for even less. Nothing out there matches the flexibility and quality of styles and ease of editing when it comes to arranger functions. Even the mighty Yamaha Pro9000 cannot match its styles. I have played around with a lot of sample drums and loop CDs and all of them pale in comparison with what you can get with the i30 styles played back through good sound modules. Nothing matches the functionality of MIDI when it comes to editing. The audio loops just don't cut it. I am extremely happy with the i30. It has become my favorite master keyboard. I love the feel of its synth keys - only matched by the 01/W. This is one keyboard I will never part with. I would say, if you have one, buy the USB CD and stick with it. You can expand your studio around it as your needs grow while enjoying its forte - making professional backing tracks on the fly. Tapas.