Korg Forums

[PGV]

hey, folks. new to the board and have been reading a lot of posts lately in preparation for buying my first synth. the R3 price is the upper limit of what i can spend. the synth would be for experimenting at home. no plans to use it live in the immediate future.

i looked at specs for both the R3 and micron. i must admit, some of it is confusing. i understand that the R3 seems easier to manipulate than the micron, but i'm willing to take the time and learn the more difficult interface of the micron if it means i can produce better sounds/ reap more benefits from all it has to offer.

i've read you can use the micron like a drum machine... is this also possible with the R3? say, if you want to just lay down rhythm and play other instruments over it for practicing, etc.?

are the overrall possibilites for tweaking sounds/creating sounds and layering greater with the R3? sorry if these questions are naive, i just don't understand a lot of the technical jargon when you're looking at the specs for these synths.

any help is appreciated. anyone with both a micron and an R3 care to give an analysis?

these boards have a wealth of info and i look forward to digging in! glad i found this place.

[nemmo]

I've had the Microkorg, the Radias and the Micron. Not the R3.

The Micron sounds great and indeed, it can act as a drum machine. However, programming it is a pain in the ass. I just tweak the presets. The R3 seems a lot more accesable than the Micron.

[xmlguy]

If you want drum kits and simultaneous midi playback, you should be looking at the MicroX and the X-50 instead. In general, I think the X-50 is a better choice than the R3 if for a first/only purchase, unless you really need the vocoder. The X-50 can use tons of existing Triton patches, while the Radias/R3 is still new. The MicroX/X-50 are also highly portable.

I seriously considered the Micron too, but I eliminated it due to the large number of reports of quality control problems on Harmony-Central, the apparent lack of continued support by Alesis, and the lack of a editor/librarian software or VST from Alesis. Many people report that the outputs of the Ion/Micron going out, possibly due to static discharge that fries the FET component. Look it up over there. The R3 has also had some problems with the program selector knob, but I haven't heard of any problems with Korg fixing such problems. I have the R3 and X-50 and I haven't had any problems with them.