The DGX 305 Portable Grand is a 76-key keyboard from Yamaha. It comes with a user manual, accessory CD-ROM, and music rest but I bought mine from a music store that gave me a free keyboard stand and a Yamaha power supply which is good considering that the DGX 305 did not originally come with a stand unlike its bigger brother the 88-key DGX 505 which comes with a keyboard stand and a footswitch. The DGX 305 has 121 panel voices, 12 drumkits, 359 XG Lite voices, and 2 XG Lite optional voices. It has 32 polyphony and dual and split voice features. It has 135 Preset styles and one user style file. It also has an external Smart Media Card slot, two speakers, and a pitch bend wheel but no modulation wheel though. Function includes adjustments for main, dual, and spit voices; volume; effect which includes reverb type, chorus type, and panel sustain; harmony; metronome; PC sends; midi; and score. It also has 30 preset songs plus 5 user songs with 70 more songs on the CD-ROM included as accessory. These voices are a lot for a keyboard of this class so I don’t have any problems with the number of voices it has.

The DGX 305 also has a feature called Performance Assistant, which allows you to play any notes and still sound good, a very useful function to get kids interested in playing piano. I have a 10-year old niece who just plays whatever on the keyboards and the Performance Assistant adjusts the backing tracks such that the music still sounds good and in key no matter what’s being hammered on the keyboard! It also has a function called Repeat and Learn wherein playback will continue up to the point at which the Repeat and Learn button is pressed then playback would jump back 4-10 measures depending on the user’s setting and begin again after a count-in, and this process is repeated until it’s stopped, which is a very handy tool for learning especially if you want to learn a certain section of a song.

The DGX 305 has really good-sounding voices. It’s main piano voice called portable grand sounds excellent. It has a button of it on the front panel so you can easily get back to it after selecting another voice, a very handy feature indeed. Its display panel is big enough for you to see what voice or style you’re using. It has a Touch button that allows you to adjust the touch sensitivity of the keys. I find this very useful since I’m used to playing acoustic piano where the keyboard is not as sensitive as an electronic keyboard. Voice presets can easily be accessed via a dial, up/down buttons, or through a numbers button. The over-all layout of the keyboard’s panel is easy enough for anyone to know his way around the keyboard. The DGX 305, however, allows you to record only five songs total, which makes recording your songs very limited. You can, however, connect the DGX 305 to a PC via usb so you can always record your songs directly to PC with your favorite recording software but still it would have been better if it were able to record more songs since sometimes, I’m just too lazy to connect the DGX 305 to the PC! The main problem with the DGX 305 is its external memory storage. It uses Smart Media, which is already obsolete. I could no longer find one to buy in my area and even on ebay, there are only a few vendors selling it. This problem can be solved by just storing and accessing midi files directly to and from the PC. Again, the downside to this is you have to be connected with the PC all the time. Another problem with the DGX 305 is that its speakers’ volume is too low even if it’s already cranked up. It also doesn’t have a mid-thru port which means you can’t connect other midi devices to it, and it only has one output jack which also serves as output for headphones so you can’t connect to an amplifier while using its internal speakers or headphones as monitors.

Overall, the DGX 305 is a really nice instrument. Its voices sound good and the keyboard is easy to play and use. Its lack of a midi port, and a separate output jack for headphones can easily be forgiven because of its very good sounding voices. I knew I was going to get a Yamaha when I decided to buy a keyboard since I knew they make good instruments and I was right. There are other keyboards out there that are cheaper with the same or even more features than the DGX 305 but the extra price paid is definitely worth it.

Rating: 9