All numbers are the uncompressed sound ROM size, i.e. The official specifications never talk about the sound ROM size.
*These numbers are from various sources on the internet - mostly promotional material from third parties.
This compares well with the current high end arrangers: With 120 mb sound ROM we should expect around 240 mb uncompressed samples. The algorihtms used are secrets of the various synth manufactureres and the compression ratio varies a lot depending on the actual sound, but on average you can expect a 2:1 compression ratio. The compression method usually used in synths is "lossless compression" which means that the actual sound is not changed by the compression/decompression. This I take as an indication that the samples are compressed. A few samples could be heard - mostly drum sounds that probably have been left uncompressed becuase they compress poorly - but most of it was high pitched sounds with a lot of random noise. Not all synth engines use compression - the Korg Triton is a notatable example - but I think it is fair to assume the sound data in the Pa800 is compressed because:ġ) The sound engine on the Pa800 is based on the same sound engine as the new Korg M3 workstation and the M3 uses compression as can be read from the specifications: "256 Mbyte (when converted to 16-bit linear format)".Ģ) I have tried to load the Pa800_os_res_v100.pkg file into an audio editor (Wavelab) as raw 16-bit data. However we also need to take into account that the big sound manufactureres - Korg, Roland, and Yamaha - often compress the sound data. The difference between these two is the size of the sound ROM, i.e. It contains two different versions of the OS - one with and one without the sound ROM: The size of the sound ROM can actually be deduced from the cdrom that comes with the Pa800. Things like sample interpolation and loop crossfading also has a big influence on how much ROM is needed to get a good sound. There can be numerous reasons for this - one of them probably that the sound ROM size does not say that much about the sound quality. It is not something that Korg normally publishes for its arranger keyboards. I have wondered how big the sound ROM is on the Pa800. This really has nothing to do with making music and may be of little interest to most of the members on this forum Naturally its all speculation but interesting nonetheless I hope u enjoy reading it as much as i did. Guys I came across some interesting theories on about the wave rom size of these arrangers.