Kurzweil K2000/2500

Paul Ward looks at two third‑party sound collections designed to give your K2000 or 2500 a different voice...

Despite the fact that many modern synths are more programmable than ever before, there's still a healthy market for third‑party sounds for those who haven't the time or the inclination to do their own programming. Even if you do program your own sounds, ready‑made sets can still add a different element to your music, or provide an inspiring starting point for your own experimentation. Here I'm looking at two sets for the Kurzweil K2000 and 2500, one from Voice Crystal and one from Sounds OK.

Voice Crystal K2000 VC1/2/3/4/5

The 100 programs on each of these disks are very much aimed at providing a pick 'n' mix toolbox for keyboard players who want to spend less time programming and more time playing. With one or two minor exceptions, I think that Voice Crystal, surely one of the best‑known and longest established third‑party sound producers, have succeeded in this aim.

Disk 1 consists of a solid collection of workhorse sounds, including various acoustic and electric pianos, organs, guitars, basses, brass, synth and vocal patches. I found the high spots to be among the guitars, all of which are eminently usable and inspiring to play. The weakest sounds are the synth leads, which suffer from odd portamento timings and the infamous clicks caused by portamento glides crossing multisamples. There's little to get really excited about here, but for a consistent supply of bread‑and‑butter sounds you won't go far wrong.

Disk 2 follows up with a varied collection of synth sounds, touching on samples of the JD800, some reasonably convincing PPG emulations, and several mediocre dance basses. This is the least successful of the Voice Crystal disks. I can't imagine what style of music would encompass such a strange palette of patches, but most of it is rather uninspiring in any case.

Disk 3 is another odd collection, dipping into a whole variety of material that crosses the boundary between techno and trance, whilst featuring some patches that wouldn't be out of place in a New Age composer's grab‑bag. Some of the sounds here are shaky, and many are just downright odd, but if you want something a little out of the ordinary, this disk could come up trumps. The documentation supplied was rather inaccurate in some respects and, despite what the notes say, no sample memory is necessary.

We're back on the dance bandwagon with Disk 4, which offers a delightfully programmed range of pseudo‑analogue sounds to bend minds and rattle subwoofers. The TB303 emulations are not the best I've heard from the K2000, but are perfectly adequate for most situations. The sub‑basses and Moog patches steal the scene, lending plenty of power and character to a typical mix. Like disk 3, disk 4 does not require any sample RAM.

The last sound set, VC5, actually consists of two disks, although the number of programs remains at 100 (the second disk being required to hold almost 2Mb of sample data). If there are any funk, jazz or rock keyboard players still out there, this collection could well be for you. There's a little of everything here that you've heard from the worst of 'elevator' jazz‑funk to the best of American West Coast jazz‑rock. A particular highlight for me was the superb 'Anapadstring', with which you'd be capable of convincing anyone that you'd just bought a Jupiter 8! Generally this is the most competently programmed of the Voice Crystal disks, although I'd steer well clear if you've never heard of Toto.

There's enough quality and variety in this collection to satisfy just about anybody, despite the odd group of duffers. Modulation sources are used inventively, and the effects are thoughtfully programmed to complement the patches to which they are assigned. If your K2000 is sounding a little stale, these disks might just perk it — and you — up again.

Sounds Ok K2000/2500 Volume 3 Analogue Dance

This disk presents 100 programs aimed at musicians and producers of dance music looking for analogue‑type sounds. You need 2Mb of sample RAM to load the volume, which features samples of the legendary Oberheim Matrix 12; documentation is sparse, but it does include a list of all the programs you can expect to find after loading. Notes tell you where a sound can be altered by way of the mod wheel, data slider, or aftertouch, but I found several of these to be inaccurate — if you buy this collection I'd suggest you twiddle everything just to make sure.

Some of the sounds on this disk have been ported over directly from Sounds OK's Volume 1 Matrix 12 collection. Unfortunately the samples are just as bad here as they were on the original, with the same nasty loop clicks and low‑frequency noise that I noted in my review of that collection (see SOS March 1996). This is a shame, because with a little work and some high‑pass filtration the samples become much more usable — but I don't expect to have to do this when I'm buying ready‑built sounds.

As a group of inherently analogue sounds, this collection isn't bad, but it is certainly patchy. 'Session Brass', for instance, is a rather bland stab at a realistic brass sound, which wouldn't realistically be mistaken for an analogue synth. On the other hand, some of the sounds should move feet on the dancefloor: 'modwhlBASS', 'Ana Dnc Bass', and 'aka multi' all have that indefinable something that instantly makes you want to try them over a TR909 drum groove, but these are in the minority. Many of the programs are left/right keyboard splits, which pleases some people and annoys the hell out of others. Certain sounds crop up several times in the split programs, leading me to wonder how many of them are added in merely to fill up the 100‑program allocation.

Overall, I really have to give this volume a thumbs‑down. There are quite a few good sounds in there, but nothing that's much better than many that are freely available from the Internet. If you don't have access to another source of analogue‑type sounds for your K2000/2500, this collection might be a good starting point. But my advice would be to learn sufficient programming skills to be able to customise these sounds to your exact requirements.