ACTION
I’m no stranger to the RH3 action found on the C-520 and other Korg pianos, and I like it very much. Meaty and substantial, it really empowered me to explore the piano sound’s dynamic range. And on the C-520, you’ve got a lot of range: It’s hard find a piano where you can get natural, musical results from playing ppp, fff, and everywhere in between, but the C-520 delivers. This is high-end feel, indeed. The action is graded, with the key resistance moving from heavier to lighter as you move up the keyboard. A choice of eight response curves further optimizes the C-520 for how heavily or lightly you play in general.
MAIN PIANO SOUND
The C-520’s centerpiece is has four velocity layers, with added damper pedal resonance and hammer-return sounds as you release keys. You can add either or both of these as a subtle effect, or make them more pronounced. The samples are long, with very smooth looping. I found this to be an engaging, enjoyable sound that fit into a wide range of styles quite well.
NON-PIANO SOUNDS
The C-520’s roster of 31 non-piano sounds covers the main bases: electric pianos, harpsichords, clavinet, drawbar and pipe organs, strings, vibes, choir, and acoustic guitars. Care was taken to make these sounds as expressive as the pianos, with multiple velocity layers evident on the electric pianos in particular. I’m thrilled by the addition of bass sounds — available neither on the SP-250 nor C-320 — which come in very handy for splitting the keyboard to play, say, jazz standards. A curious synth-like feature is that if you set the soft pedal to “glide,” the pitch will bend up to whatever note you play with the pedal down.
The effects section is full-featured; comprising eight reverb types, six choruses, and insert effects including EQ, delay, rotary, exciter, an amp simulator (which adds needed grunge to the C-520’s electric pianos and organs), compressor, wah, tremolo, and “brilliance,” which adds a different sort of air and shimmer to the piano sound than the treble EQ.
EDUCATION AND ENTERTAINMENT FEATURES
The metronome on the C-520 can be a drum pattern in addition to a basic click. A two-track MIDI recorder is implemented with education in mind: built into it are 185 classical “studies,” which are pieces with the left and right hand parts recorded on separate tracks. In addition, 35 of the pieces are printed in an included songbook. Ranging from Bach’s “Invention No. 1” to Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” they’re a great selection of the classics a student would take on during the first two years of study. By muting one pre-recorded track, you can learn one part while the C-520 accompanies you with the other. Kudos to Korg for such a simple yet effective idea!
SOUND SYSTEM
An advantage of making an unabashedly furniture-like home instrument is that you have room for a beefy built-in speaker system. The C-520’s contains four speakers, and puts out copious low end. Woofers mounted underneath the keyboard and firing downward lend some sense of bass welling up around you from the bottom of the soundboard, as it would on an upright acoustic piano. Korg also sent a C-520 to Keyboard Central, which tech editor Stephen Fortner auditioned through external ADAM studio monitors; you can read his comments on page 36.
CONCLUSIONS
After playing the C-520, I think it’s the best digital piano Korg has made to date. I’m always happy when any manufacturer pays attention to details like sympathetic string resonance (when the damper pedal is pressed) that make for a more realistic playing experience, and the C-520’s is even tweakable: you can disable it altogether, or make it subtle, or not-so-subtle. At a list price of $3,200, it’s certainly no impulse purchase. Is it worth it? By one argument, a similar commitment gets you an entry-level acoustic upright. By another, those require periodic tuning, and don’t come with other sounds, a metronome, or recording features for practice.
In fact, “acoustic piano alternative” describes the C-520’s niche to a tee. It has beautiful sound, an understated visual presence, and technological features that serve traditional learning and practice very well, without coming off as too . . . technological. These virtues add up to make it the digital piano for buyers who might otherwise ignore anything with a power cord.
Computer Connectivity
In addition to MIDI ports, the C-520 has a USB connector and comes with a driver for Windows XP and Mac OS X. Via USB, you can use the C-520 as a MIDI controller, or access its onboard sounds as though it were a multitimbral sound module.
A very cool pro feature is that the C-520’s internal memory will appear as a USB hard drive icon on your computer, so you can shuttle files to and from the piano, including your split and layering setups, songs you create in the onboard MIDI recorder, or song files in Standard MIDI format. If you step through the C-520’s sounds, they’re in General MIDI-like order, but there isn’t a complete GM bank. Given its goals, this is no strike against it, but know that if you load in a complex, 16-part MIDI file, you won’t hear every part the same way you would as on, say, an arranger keyboard.
发表于 2007-4-12 21:48:49
QQ好友和群
QQ空间
腾讯微博
腾讯朋友
收藏
分享
支持
反对
发表于 2007-4-13 03:01:12
楼主
楼上看的懂？
/1 
