“The keyboard workstation has finally come of age.” This phrase has been used and abused since the dawn of the keyboard workstation, but now it’s finally a reality. The Fantom-X series was already regarded as one of the best workstations on the market, but with the 2.0 software upgrade, well, let’s just say wow.

Audio Tracks
This new 2.0 upgrade opens a new world of possibilities to the X series. One of the most significant updates is the addition of audio tracks, which gives you eight stereo audio tracks complete with real-time time-stretching functionality. This is an amazing addition to the X line of workstation keyboards. Imagine — you’re working on a song and you want to add a guitar or a vocal track. You can plug into the inputs of the Fantom-X, use the built-in COSM® effects to sweeten your tone, and play or sing along. But wait, if you find that the track doesn’t quite fit into the groove you had in mind, simply change the tempo. Magically all of the audio you recorded will stay in perfect sync with the MIDI tracks, and the pitch will not change. Pretty cool. And it doesn’t stop there; you still have seven more stereo audio tracks available. These are real audio tracks too; there‘s no sample-triggering gimmicks going on, so the audio tracks can be played back from any point in the song. You don’t have to give up any of the 16 tracks of the sequencer either.

Skip Back Sampling (another Fantom first) can also be used to bounce down entire mixes to a single stereo audio track. Keep this in mind — with a feature like this you can have a full 16-track sequence and eight stereo audio tracks going, then, by pressing the big blue Skip Back button, you can combine it all to a single stereo audio track. This will free up all of the MIDI tracks and seven audio tracks. Then you can keep adding to your music. This is also a great tool when working with vocals, making it easy to create some very cool vocal layering tricks. Just copy the chorus of your song to a new Audio track, add some new COSM effects, press Skip Back sampling, and presto! You have instant Def Leopard style choruses. Let’s not forget about a few great features the X series already has, like the mastering processor. All of the Skip Back samples run through the multiband-mastering compressor to ensure the best sound possible. These audio tracks can be fully edited, chopped up, moved around, and reconstructed any way you see fit — just like any other dedicated digital audio workstation or DAW. With the USB file transfer and the WAV and AIFF file support, the X is still all about integration and flexibility.

Multi-Sample Editing
The new Multi-Sampling page makes short work of creating heavy sample based patches and performances. This gives you the ability to “zone” different samples across the keyboard with ease. With this in mind, one could have multiple loops mapped onto specific keys and “jam” with audio loops to help spark a creative idea or use for live performances. This also makes life much easier when creating complex acoustic instrument patches like pianos or guitars.

Auto-Patch
Talk about a time saving feature — the new Bank in the Version 2 software will automatically create a patch from the samples that are loaded into RAM. This gives you the ability to audition sound in a patch without having to manually go through the steps of making a patch to see if it will work in your song.

Beat Calculator
This new feature always makes sure that your samples are at the correct tempo. In the Sample Parameters page, simply press Beat Calculator, and the Fantom-X will automatically figure out the sample’s BPM. This is a very welcome feature and a huge time saver.

So now the picture becomes more complete. With features such as eight stereo audio tracks, real-time time stretch, COSM effects, a 16-track sequencer, and mastering, the phrase “keyboard workstation has finally come of age” rings very true.