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I apologize for my late reply on this topic, but I am a new member
I have been around in the Korg Forums for quite a while and own a PA700, as well and different workstations from Korg, namely the M50 and Kross workstations (and I have 4 of the Kross 1 workstations). I also have a number of other Korg synths in my studio that are used for studio and live work.Workstations and Arrangers are different instruments, although they share similar features between them.
At the heart of the PA series keyboards from Korg, they are arrangers. This means that they offer backing tracks of different music styles across many different genres. They feature advanced chord recognition, so you can play a chord (either a chord with your left hand or across the entire keyboard) and the 'backing band' will follow your chord playing (as long as the chord is in the chord table that Korg has put into the keyboard). The arranger also features intros/endings/fills/breaks for each style. If you think of a very advanced version of the older home organs that our grandmothers had, you would not be terribly far off.
The PA series are, in its core, designed to provide a backing band for your music compositions, whether they are new creations or renditions of songs already written by others. In fact, many of the styles, by a strategic naming convention, are actually versions of popular or standard songs already done throughout history. They do not name the styles with the specific titles of songs likely due to copyright issues with the original writers of said songs.
For example, Maneater Pop is a style in the format of Maneater from Hall & Oates. There is another for Ride Like the Wind from Christopher Cross. There are others for Lynyrd Skynyrd songs Sweet Home Alabama and Call Me the Breeze, although they are not specifically named for those songs. There is even a style in there for playing Highway to Hell from AC/DC.
You can create and download different additional styles to load into the PA series. The PA700 is the 'entry-level' offering from Korgm but it shares the same styles and many of the functions that the PA1000 and PA4X have. The PA700 does not have the vocal harmonizer and has a lower amount of user sample RAM available, but any style for the higher level entries can be loaded into the PA700.
Upon checking the manual, I found the following with regard to sampling on the PA700:
"You can load samples (mono or stereo) in a 8 or 16-bit resolution, and a
sampling frequency rate from 11,025 to 48,000Hz. Loaded samples always
preserve their original resolution."
I do not sample to my PA700 because it pretty much has what I need in it already. The only exception is with a good solo piano, and in this case, I loaded a sample set that a Korg Forum user made available for free, that features a Yamaha C5 Grand piano. I loaded that and it is my main piano sound for everything I do with piano on the PA700.
Whilst the offerings in Korg's current PA series do not offer WAV file audio recording, they do offer MP3 recording with rates from 'lowest to highest'. In reality, the resolution on the MP3 can range from 128k to 192k, to 256k.
The PA series also feature a full MIDI sequencer with up to 16 tracks of recording. There is no audio recording that can be done in the sequencer; it is MIDI only.
The audio recording is when you create an MP3 of your file created in the sequencer. With recording an audio file, you can not only play the song in the sequencer, but you can play over the sequence AND/OR record any audio coming into the keyboard whilst recording the audio file. You can also create an MP3 file of a style, being played in real time and you can play over the top of that as well wilst recording.
Now that I have covered some of the PA Series functions (and wrote a lot to do it), the 'Workstations' from Korg are usually pretty different. They do NOT feature backing tracks in the same way as the arrangers might. Most workstations today offer at least dual arpeggiators that simulate a backing track of sorts. Many, including Korg, also feature a Drum Track. The Drum Track is exactly what its name implies. It is a drum pattern, in whatever length and it plays along or apart from the Arps. While this is good in practice, and some are really advanced, they do not offer intro/endings/fills/breaks natively. I will not speak deeply of the KARMA engine in the Kronos, but that system has different elements in the KARMA engine that can be similar to what an arranger might do, but with KARMA (which is only currently features on the Kronos) you can get very close to most elements of what an arranger might do more easily.
The Kross/Krome/Nautilus workstations offer dual arps and drum tracks for generating patterns that might sound like a band, but nothing like what the PA series offer.
The arrangers and workstations do share similar synth engines though and just about any sound I can program on my workstations, I can also program on the PA700. The dual oscillator setup on the workstations is also featured on my arranger. The sequencer is similar in fuction but the arranger only allows for one sequence to be in memory at any given time. All of the editing tools in the sequencers are pretty much the same as well.
The EFX on the synths are a bit more versatile than on the arranger, but as you go up higher in the arranger line, more insert EFX are available. The PA700 I have has dual EFX engines with two EFX per engine and I can have up to 3 insert EFX, but they are arranged where two insert EFX are reserved for EFX block 'A' and the last insert effect is reserved for EFX block 'B'. This increases as you go up to the PA1000 and the PA4X.
With my workstations, I have up to 7 EFX available, but this too increases as you go up the line.
To focus specifically on the Nautilus (as was your last query in your post), the Nautilus is a new offering from Korg and has many of the features from the Kronos, including the sequencer and audio recording in the sequencer. It has the different synth engines and offers new samples as well. It is not an arranger, but does feature advance dual arps. It can sound a bit like you have a backing band, but it is nothing like what an arranger can do in that regard. The Nautilus is a synth. It is not an arranger.
You also talked a bit about the new i3. I have one of those as well. They claim it to be a workstation. It is not a true workstation, because it lacks the editing features for the sequenced tracks that you play. It has a real-time MIDI recorder that you can do on a track by track basis. It also features arranger elements, because it does have backing styles with intros/endings/fills/breaks. It features many different style genres and you also have the ability to have three sounds layered together in an Upper config and 1 voice in the Lower config. This is like programming a Combi with up to 3 sounds and then programming a split with another sound on that split point. You can also record MP3 files and I also belive it allows for WAV recording as well. you cannot program sounds on it, but I believe that you can adjust things with SYSEx, but it would require an external DAW to do it. It also only have two dual EFX engines; one for the Upper/Lower and the other for the backing tracks.
The i3 is an entry-level unit that features a dated synth engine (Triton-era) and is the same engine as on the EK-50. It also features much lower polyphony (64) and its features are pretty limited. I mainly use mine as a bottom keyboard in a live rig where I want to control many different external synths AND have the ability to create presets that have piano and strings and something else in the Upper layer and to be able to turn them on/off on demand. I do not use the backing style features on the i3. It is very lightweight though and can run on batteries.
I apologize for the length of my post, but I wanted to provide information as I could on this. I hope this helps
Grace,
Harry
