Kara-Moon Forum

It's about Godd**n time Korg got off of their cellulite-ridden butts & manufactured their next flagship workstation-as it's been nearly 5 years in the making!  >:( ;D
The new slogan from Korg now reads; "get ready to be amazed",but I think the price of this new workstation will set the tone for the level of amazement,if there is any feeling of amazement to be had at all(in terms of sheer overall sound quality in contrast to the competition).

There are of course,some amazing features of the Kronos,which are the 9 sound engines,a maximum of 400 note polyphony,16 audio tracks(in addition to the 16 midi tracks),the built in 30GB SSD,the 8" touch screen display,the expansion options and the 12 insert effects(16 in total,with 4 master effects).

After having heard the demos,the Kronos just seems to be a regurgitated version of the M3,as the electric guitar sounds & guitar effects are gravely disappointing as usual,in contrast to what can be had with computer software.

Equally disappointing,is the amount of PCM data of the Kronos-which is just over 300MB of ROM,which is less than half of what the Yamaha Motif XF offers.

In conclusion,I believe that the Kronos will be indeed be amazing,provided that they keep it well under the cost of the Motif XF.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1o2Woa8PBk



-Thom

  

Funny, I was thinking ... hmmm ... if gets down to the price of the WK-7500 THEN I will be amazed :)

I guess the launch price will be in the order of the launch price of the OASYS, which was around 5.000 $ !  ::)

k
 

Actually,the Oasys prices were around $7500 for the 76 key & $8500 for the 88 key(USD).

As for the Kronos,there are no U.S. prices as of yet,but here are the euro prices;

Kronos 61 - $2,999.00
Kronos 73 - $3,499.00
Kronos 88 - $3,799.00

The Kronos isn't quite the equivalent of the Oasys,but it seems they did a good job making a reasonable facsimile of the Oasys....so the price isn't all that astronomical....but all I can think about,is the monster computer I could buy with that money!! ;D



-Thom 

Oh sh*t.....I am officially amazed,bewitched,bewildered,dumbfounded & flabbergasted by the Korg Kronos now.....BEHOLD...this incredible video demo from Korg!!!!   :- :; :- :;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHV3rnkGt3E



-Thom

That is one hell of a beast O0

Edit:
Did you notice that where many artists would use an arpeggiator Jordan was playing the notes real-time!
Kudos

If buying the Kronos would result in me playing like Jordan, I'd shell out $3,500 in a second ..... unfortunately, hell would have frozen over before that happened :)

If you were aware of the Korg Kronos's potential & it's infinite possibilities,you would realize what a great buy the Kronos really is....especially so,when you consider that it's nearly a mirror image of the Oasys workstation-which for the 73 key,was going for $7500!! :o :P ;D

The best part about the Kronos,is that it functions just like a computer workstation,but it will NEVER catch a virus and it will NEVER crash! :;


-Thom

I want me one of those!

I'm sure its great .... but I'm equally sure nothing will have me playing like him, irrespective of cost! :)

A real beast ! Great sounds, great workstation, great all
If i would have the money to buy one, which I don't, I would buy one

What surprised me the most, is that Korg finally managed to make a grand piano which sounds as a real grand, which is a real breakthrough for them.

When the Oasys came out, I was invited by my music shop to play a couple hours with it. And I was disappointed by the piano sounds.
My brother has the M3, and I was disappointed by the piano sounds...
But that new grand on the Kronos sounds great !

k

Kara,

The grand piano of the expansion set of the M3 is actually impressive sounding-that is,very authentic in most aspects,but there was still that trademark "metallic klinky-ness" to the sample.
That being said,I assume(or rather hope),that this artifact of the that piano sound was corrected in the Kronos.If by chance the Korg piano is not quite up to par,there's always the option for adding a 3rd party piano sound-set and the Kronos has all the room one could need to expand!! :-

The thing is though,is that the subtleties of a piano sample-that is the unwanted sample flaws rarely ever present themselves in an online demo,so one needs to demo the Kronos in person & really study the piano programs.


-Thom

The Kronos promises to be an amazingly powerful workstation. I love the big demo event (the link Thom posted) and aside from the wonderful sound and the great flexibility of the sound engines, I love the little details like how easy the performances are switched, how intuitive the display GUI is and most of all, the fact that it integrates with a DAW so well. I'm very, very tempted!

You will be able to play one very soon Marc.... Moon will order one  ;D

k

Somehow I already suspected that! ;)

The sound of the piano is always the make-it/break-it for me. But I'll start saving my pennies just in case it's as good as it sounds in the demos. I've always been a Korg guy, but have gone Yamaha lately for the piano and feel of the board. Hopefully, this effort brings me back. 

Same here! Only trouble is, even if I had the money to buy one, I'd probably be quite daunted by all the possibilities and end up achieving less that I do now ::)

OK, still waiting for the mighty Kronos. I read somewhere that shipping is posponed untill somewhere near the end of July. So it might be after the summer before I'll get mine...

Patience...


Patience...

Will be the title of the first song I'll make with this one   :D

I hope you'll get it as soon as possible! And once you've got it, I'm of course expecting a demo of it! ;)

Still waiting too. Originally supposed to ship the first week of June. Haven't heard about the delay yet. Guess we'll just have to wait till it shows up.

OK, deal ! You'll get a personal invite !  8)

Moon

Well, I'm not in a hurry. Summer is comming anyway. And besides: you need patience for good thing to come  ;)

Moon

 :-

Received an email today from zzounds...my Kronos has been shipped. It's about time. I'm pretty excited :)

So that's you totally useless at work for the next few days then ;D

A few days?!  I shelled out the cash for a Yamaha Motif XF8 about a month ago and I'm still totally useless, not just at work, but at EVERYthing since.  Even missed the KVR contest last month!  Granted, I've got a ton of other stuff going on right now too.  Getting that keyboard was in many ways a childhood dream come true.  Have fun with the Kronos, Fred S!  Let us know how you like it.

When I think about it,it is so ironic that despite the fact that the Kronos is the most exciting hardware workstation Korg has ever conceived to date,in terms of functionality for the price,I have to decline from buying one myself-which is a bit difficult,since I have been such a tremendous Korg fan for so many years.

Korg has finally come up with something that can compete with PC software-as in essence,it is a PC itself,but the thing that keeps me from buying one is not only is it out of my budget,but the thought of losing all that software that's inside of it once the keyboard finally burns out,is a scenario & a loss that I am not willing to deal with.

It's just as well for me though,as I am not a live performer any longer & haven't been for a long while....but I still harbor that hardware gear lust in my soul though,so I am very envious! ;D

Anyhow,do enjoy your new toy to the full and apprise us with an in depth review,if you would be so kind as to do so! 8)


-Thom

Certainly will, Thom.

Nothing much has changed at work however, I've been totally useless for years  :)

XF8?  Nice purchase!

Yes, it's really very very nice.

It'll be keeping me busy for a good long while.  :)

My current main board is a Yamaha S90es. First Yamaha I've owned. Have to say, there's a lot to like about Yamaha boards...especially the key action.

The Kronos has arrived. Haven't turned it on yet. Read through the "quick start" guide last night...details exceeded that of the full manual of my XK1!!

It's heavy...over 50 pounds. Fits nicely in my road case, so won't have to buy a new one :). It's an attractive package. Plastic ends, but the gloss black looks great against a medium grey brushed metal looking body. The touch screen is large, but smudges easily. Think I'm going to try fitting an IPad screen protector as  I don't think a misplaced fingernail now and then will be a happy circumstance. Screen menus seem well thought out. There's an initialized, but empty, user program bank. However, you can only use created HD-1 engine patches in that bank. So, if you want to write new patches for the other 8 engines, you have to over-write an existing patch, which in turn, will effect the combination patches using those programs. Unless I'm mis-understanding, I'm not happy with that.

More later.   

Very cool Fred S.!  Looking forward to hearing more.

I love the Yamaha XF8's key action.  I tried MANY keyboards over a few months before I finally settled on the motif.  It's key action is the balanced hammer effect, which is a perfect compromise between a true piano feel and a synthesizer.  It lacks the heavier action in the bass notes like a piano would have, but because the weighted action is uniform across the full keyboard, it makes playing synth sounds a little easier than a true piano feel would.

That and the motif's downright jaw-dropping integration with Cubase is almost mindblowing (particularly when you have the firewire card installed, that is).  It's really something else. 

One thing that you mentioned that I'm still foggy on with my motif, though, is user storage.  When to store, what it stores, and where it stores it... especially when it comes to storing offset parameters that don't change the parameters of the original voice.  That whole architecture is still a bit bewildering to me.  I'll figure it out eventually.  :)

It takes a bit of time to get used to the way Yamaha does things; counter-intuitive in spots. Once you get used to it, you'll be fine. The motif probably doesn't have any open slots for new patches. Once you edit or create something you want to keep, you may have to overwrite another patch. You can only overwrite the "user" patches. What I did is listen to all the reg patches and combos and listed those I didn't care for. Gotta be careful though, as you could overwrite a patch that's used in one of your favorite combos. Of course, this all comes from my familiarity with the S90es. The XF could be a lot different. I did have a motif ES7 for awhile, and the architecture was nearly identical to the S90 (sans the sequencer).

Fred,
 
Yes, I'm getting there.  Apparently the XF8 uses the user bank 1 to store the new XF only voices, but user banks 2-4 are all duplicates of preset voices, so it's safe to overwrite them.  I'm figuring the whole thing out, slowly but surely.  :)

Not a lot to report yet...early impressions.

I've been through most of the manual. A few sections including sampling to go.

The acoustic pianos are good, not super great, but good...marginally better than those on the S90es...probably the best hardware samples I've heard.

I've been through quite a bit of the rest of the sounds. Some surprises and some disappointments. For example, I was expecting more out of the e-pianos. That said, they may just need a little sorting out to taste.

Sound editing is exceptional....the flexibility and depth is amazing. And, the menu structures are well thought out and intuitive. I did some editing today and I was getting to what I wanted in a hurry. The Set List and Smooth Sound Transition functions are very slick. Buiding combination patches is a gas!! 

I'm going to like this board a lot. I'm having second thoughts about gigging with it. It's a very attractive package I'd hate to scratch up....probably not for awhile anyway :). 

And, Karma is a gas!!!

Glad to hear you like your new material!

Soundwise, Korg is different than Yamaha. Yamaha is well known for it's acoustic sounds. So it doesn't surprise me you make the comparison.

Soundwise the Kronos is 9 sound engines... so I'm realy curious to hear what you think of the 'electronical'-sounds.


Moon

I'll report more once I'm confident in my impressions. I've been playing with Karma all day today. What fun! I'm not much into electronica, but the sounds and Karma seem to do well in that area. Wish I knew more about sampling. Going to be working on that. I would like to be able to load a few of mine in. My S90es can write combinations (performances) with up to 4 programs (voices), while the Korg takes up to 16, so many of the combinations are beautifully deep. I'm assuming most of my writing will be in combinations. The pads are very good.

If I were to compare my S90es to my Korg at this point, I would probably say that overall, the individual patches in the Yamaha are slightly better/richer, but the Korg is better in just about every other category.....especially editing and creating (extreemly deep and intuitive). For a solo performer, it's heads and shoulders above the S90es.

That's it for now.

Yeah... that's where I'm at with the Motif.  I don't want to say too much until I know more about what I'm talking about and how _I_ want to work with the instrument.  :)  There's far more I don't know about the Motif than I DO know, so writing impressions now would be more of a "I don't know how to do this yet, but it sounds pretty cool!" kinda thing.  :)


I'm enjoying your thoughts on the Kronos, though.

I like the comparison and fully agree: it's amazing what a solo artist can do with only one keyboard. This goes not only for the Kronos, but also goes for the M3.

Only when comparing Korg to Motifs, the build quality of the Motifs (or S serie) seems more reliable if you plan to go on stage. I hated to put my M3 on the stage and would have the same feeling when owing a Kronos.

Moon

Oh great, now you tell me! ;)

Well... it doesn't mean the Kronos or M3 are that fragile, only that the Yamaha's look more rugadized. Perhaps Korgs are made for the more "gentle" musicians  ;)

Moon

Ah ok, I wasn't planning to crowd surf with it anyway... :)

No, of course: you'll have to use the flightcase for that!  ;D