But the good news, previous readers - I have the drum pads triggering patch changes on the B4 II. So one generic organ patch has 8 presets - and this of course can be done with any synth or sampler that responds to patch changes on the fly, without reloading two gigs of piano library...
But why did it not work before? The manual is in error - it calls for you to put the patch into data 2. But if you read the screen on the Axiom, it wants data 1=patch, data 2=bamk LSB and data 3=bank MSB. Another example of real-world mods not making it to the printer.
But I absolutely love this thing for its power and flexibility. Combined with the Receptor, it' is a killer rig!!!
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ORIGINAL REVIEW BEGINS HERE FOR FIRST-TIME READERS
I have now spent almost ten whole minutes with the Axiom 61 attached to the Receptor's USB port, and a Prokeys88sx attached to the midi port. I brought up the multi that I had created for the 88sx and Roland XP30 with the Voce drawbar controller (expecting that it would not properly control any of the ancillary functions, they are not mapped into the Axiom.)
I used the Axiom's own B4 preset (#13) so the drawbars would work, and brought up the channel for lower manual on the prokeys (lower) manual.
It works GREAT! I will have to map the controllers on the Axiom, but it's pretty straightforward, and you can do just about anything you could think of with every control. It ships with no AC adapter so the USB port was the power source. No problem sourcing from the Receptor. Controls feel ok for what they are - knobs on the encoders are small, but the knurls make it easy to feel secure turning them, and the controls are stepped, so it's very comfortable feeling. It feels strange pulling drawbars on those sliders, but a LOT better than the CME sliders (opinions may vary, but this is arguably closer to the "Hammond Experience" and they're fine for synth performance sliders, if you aren't a linebacker for the Rams. A really nice feature is that the display shows you the controller's exact value when you move it, so repeating a value is easier.
Everything so far seems to be a carefully considered tradeoff between price and usability, and usability won most of the time. There is a very solid feel to it, the keyboard feels pretty good for this type of instrument. Fit and finish was not as good as the one on display at NAMM, and are obviously minor casualties in the cost/feature/pricepoint wars, but I believe they have chosen pretty wisely in general.
I have only one very real issue with it for live performance. But it IS a very real potential problem, and I'm hoping one of you knows a way to solve it.. The Store button is right next to the Recall button, and the process is like this - press Store (or Recall) and then a 2-key selection between 1 and 20 on the number pad. That's it. There is no 'Are You Sure' prompt for the store finction, and here is my nightmare scenario - on stage in front of a couple thousand fans, in the middle of a screaming solo, you reach for a preset change. You press Recall, then 1 and 4 to call up your main solo patch, but a moment later realize you pressed Store, not Recall - and wiped out your complex solo patch!!!
You can save the Axiom's presets to disk, as a Sysex dump, so the presets can be restored. Anybody know of a sysex player that could play the file from the Receptor into the Axiom via the USB port? Can Kontact 2? I own it, but only have used it to play the Garritan Strad violin, but not yet on Receptor.
In the meanwhile, I will use this as a one-song-per-preset rig, or more likely, one setup per preset, as the pressure pads can be used to call up patch changes. So I only need one BN4 setup, then i can use the pads for presets, the zone/Group buttons for switch-type parameters like the B4 percussion settings - you can even specify the two values to toggle between, not just 0 or 127, so I can use 40 and 68 for percussion harmonic 2nd and 3rd.
Most of the references in this review are organ-centric, because that is the primary driving force behind my creating this rig - I need a B3 on the gig, but will not carry one. But i also have Colossus, Silver, JABB, and FM7, and I'd like to have had the horsepower to add Slayer2 and virtual Piano, but they both are total hogs.
But even with the one glaring flaw, I love it! It is a great piece of gear, and the combination of Axiom 61, Prokeys88sx and Receptor is a match made in Taiwan...
UPDATE:
After spending time programming the unit, I have found a couple more odd things - the Zone/Group switches act as toggles, so you can switch on and off things like percussion or vibrato - but they do not have a toggle mode for press once on, press again for off. In theory, the pressure pads DO have this capability - but I cannot get it to work. I can set up the Transport buttons for this function and it works, but does not latch, so the change is only active while you are holding down the button. I have Overdrive, Hum/Leakage and Keyclick working perfectly, but the toggles are not functioning for some reason. I'll update as I learn more.
FURTHER UPDATE - the manual clearly states the assignable buttons ARE supposed to function as binary toggles, it appears they are not doing this. I will contct the manufacturer and see what they say.
FINAL UPDATE ON THIS ISSUE - IMPORTAN!!!
This is a Receptor memory issue - when I went through it with M-Audio tech support, I tried it with a less-busy multi, and it works perfectly. It appears that if ssomething is not functioning as it should, this should be the first test - open a blank multi and try it by itself.
So now I need a 4G RAM machine - when's Rev D coming out?
