Keys, keys, keys!!! I always thought there could be no better distinction: white or black. There's nothing in between, and the note right next to the one you are playing may well be the farthest away. Today we venture into the world of keyboards with the company DEXIBELL, an Italian company that, after 25 years of development and innovation, finds itself in a competitive position.
It works through three product lines: Home, Portable and Stage. The first group consists of pianos designed for playing at home, and the difference compared to the other two categories is that the latter is more geared toward live performance: no speakers, connectivity, pitch and modulation wheels, etc.
It is this last category we are going to dive into, venturing into the brand's most advanced section, designed to meet any need on stage.
Features
As we said at the beginning of the article, VIVO STAGE is a line of keyboards designed for live use, and of course from a digital point of view. In any of them you will find many sounds that will be very useful at any gig. This does not come at the expense of quality, since they provide sounds of up to 24 bits/48 kHz, with a 32-bit DSP for whatever processing is needed at the moment.
The two keyboards that make up this VIVO line are the S7 and the S3. Although they are very close, they show differences such as the number of keys, weighted of course: 88 for the S7 and 73 for the S3.
It has 80 sounds that can be combined with each other in different ways. At the same time, the result of that combination can be processed with effects. The 24/48 implementation comes with 320 oscillators, from which all the sounds it offers are built. 24 types of reverb, 6 types of effects, digital EQ, etc.
Operation
Let's describe how it works and how you can interact with the star of the article. Navigating the menus and knowing what kind of accessibility we will have is very important when deciding on a keyboard. In some adverse situation, it may happen that its ease of use saves us. In today's case, it has the following elements for setup and performance:
1) We have 9 PRESET buttons to access the sounds we have programmed.
2) In terms of SOUND, we can explore the different voices using the "Sound" buttons. Here we choose among: Piano, Electric Piano, Organ, Strings, Pads, Brass, Guitars and Basses, and Percussion. Within each option we can season the sound until we find the one we want.
SPLIT/LAYER and OCTAVE are controls that help us build our sound so we can then save it to a preset. 3) It has a central display where you can see the parameter values, as well as the "Setting" options and the T2L Edit, which lets you modify the sounds you are going to use in greater depth.
4) The powerful TRANSPOSE button, which has brought so much joy. As we well know, it is related to the Octave button, giving us the option to choose which range we want on the keys.
5) CHORD ENHANCER: This is quite a useful option on certain sounds, such as Strings, Pad, Choir, etc. This option provides tensions; it serves to harmonize the chord we are playing.
6) FREEZE is an option that lets you store a chord in a button and call it up whenever you want. Also, if it is a complex chord, things are greatly simplified, since you only need to press that button.
7) MASTER EQ: This lets us control the overall equalization. This control is associated with the LOW/HI/MID knobs.
8) Two control WHEELS, which by default are Modulation and Pitch, although you can assign which effects you want to control with these two wheels.
Connectivity
And what does it give us in terms of connectivity? Here we have several options to make our keyboard work in any situation:
• On the front you have the option of feeding in any audio via the AUDIO IN, on a stereo mini jack.
• And two headphone outputs. On the back we find the following connections:
• Two Master Output (L/R) outputs, on jack connectors.
• 3 pedal inputs. The first is the well-known sustain pedal input, and the other two are options for connecting expression pedals that can be assigned to whatever we want for each preset.
• 3 MIDI connections: the IN/OUT and THRU we all know.
• A USB input for inserting any kind of memory (a flash drive) to load previously saved sounds, assignments, etc.
• USB computer port: lets you connect to your computer.
It offers the option of connecting the keyboard to any computer, tablet, etc. via Bluetooth, freeing us from using cables.
Sound
So far we have described what it offers and how we can interact with the keyboard. But much of the reason we are talking about our star is its sound. The great quality it provides, without driving us crazy with menus, connections, etc., makes playing it very appealing. Let's describe how each of the keyboard's components sounds:
• PIANOS: you have a large number of piano samples. They all sound especially beautiful: very sweet, with mids and highs that are not harsh at all.
• ELECTRIC PIANOS: Very sweet sounds, with lots of options for the tails of the tone. Dynamics that are more than responsive, with a very fast response.
• ORGANS: Their presence is more than necessary in many styles, which makes their sound very important. In this case it has Hammonds of all kinds, and you can alter any parameter to find the sound you were looking for.
• PAD: Pads are an essential element of any keyboard. In our case they are very crystalline sounds, but immersive at the same time. Very easy to combine, and they also have the virtue of blending with the rest of the band.
• STRINGS: How useful keyboard strings are! They have let us hear strings in every way without breaking the bank. In the VIVO line, the strings sound very smooth, organic and sweet. A lot of care has been taken with the higher frequencies, making the sound much more believable.
Of course, all these voices can be combined to create new presets, giving us a wider palette of sounds. With that you can start building your bag of tricks, which you will use in whatever repertoires you want to play. Accessing those sounds is really easy, since we have a row of buttons to assign each one the combination we have chosen.
All the types of effects available can be applied to each sound, giving us a wide range of options and taking us into an even bigger dimension
Conclusion
To close this session, I would like to mention the good value for money Dexibell offers, providing a very well built product of unquestionable quality. If your budget is under €2,000 and over €1,000, you should try this keyboard, because whatever happens, it will give you something to think about.
