It's been 17 years since Kurzweil dropped one of the first large-screen workstations, the K2000, which introduced the company's Variable Architecture Synthesis Technology (VAST). And although VAST lives on in instruments such as the PC3, Artis and Forte, this new 88-note flagship is a whole new animal with massive sound design potential.
A 4.3" widescreen colour display makes navigating the K2700's extensive feature set a breeze. There's a 16-track internal sequencer with a fully functional step sequencer and a full complement of arpeggiators. It's also loaded with a raft of built-in effects, including the KDFX digital reverb.
On the hardware front, the K2700's 88-note fully weighted keyboard has aftertouch and offers a fourx4 bank of velocity-sensitive pads that can function as a drum pad sequencer or be switched to keypad mode. Other hardware highlights include 9 physical sliders that also act as organ drawbars, each backed by a rotary encoder and an on/off button; the Kurzweil ribbon, which acts like a huge touch-sensitive instant-access slider; a massive entry wheel; and a bunch of program category buttons.
The K2700 ships with a staggering 4.5GB of factory sounds organized into 13 instrument categories. Pianos include optimized unlooped German D, Japanese C7 and Triple Strike pianos plus Classic Tine EPs ('73 & '77). There are also superb acoustic organs from the KB3 library along with a selection of pipe organ ranks based upon sample-based and FM synthesis. Strings and brass/wind also shine thanks to a wealth of patches that exploit VAST's modular DSP tools. And if that isn't enough, you can add 3.5GB of your own custom samples to non-volatile flash memory.
