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JimH
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Joined: 19 Jan 2011
Posts: 179
Location: San Jose, CA

PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 9:29 pm    Post subject: Random first comments Reply with quote

I've had my Kronos61 for a couple of days and can throw out a comment or two rather than a review. Not only have there been enough reviews by now (seems like everyone here has a Kronos now anyway) but I think this thing is complicated enough that it takes more than a couple days to do a full review.

If you look at my sig you can see where I'm coming from. I haven't been in KorgWorld for a while. (I hate silver.) So some of these things commonly expected by you guys may be new to me.

Some not-so-great things:
- The data wheel feels cheap. That's the way it is. Though, I haven't problems with it otherwise. It's probably the best control for when you need to scroll through something, or when you need to adjust a number by seven or eight clicks accurately. All other controllers are fine to me.
- I wish the fan were quieter, or that they figured out how to use passive cooling. It's not greatly bad, not obnoxiously loud. I'm sure most people won't mind it. But if I were going to spend a few bucks to improve my Kronos somewhere, this is the first place I'd spend it.


Some good things:
- There is a LOT to explore in this box. It will take me a while to ever get into the details of everything.
- Headphone output is on the FRONT. Nice touch. I like it.
- For some reason, I really love the portamento on this. Not only on the AL-1 but it's just as good on HD-1.
- Keyboard. The black keys have a matte finish which makes them seem more piano-y. So although it is still a light synth touch I think it lends itself to playing piano sounds a little better than your typical synth keyboard. It's not quite feather-light like my K2000, but still nice for strings and synth stuff.
- Just getting around the O/S interface is petty easy. More so to me than my Yamaha. But then again, I've never had a display nearly this big and maybe that's why.
- At first I was using the aftertouch and thinking that it required too much pressure. Then I found that there's actually an aftertouch calibration to adjust the max pressure. Awesome! And different aftertouch curves. After calibration it was more to my liking. I don't know if this is a typical Korg thing, but it's the first keyboard of mine that has it.


Other neutral comments:

Remember to calibrate your half-damper pedal. I was noticing that there wasn't much range between full on and full off. Then I found it needed to be calibrated and after doing that it got better.

SGX-1 acoustic piano. Ok, I'm coming from the S90ES with the S700 piano which even after five years I still love. So maybe I still just need to get used to the Korg pianos which are different. At high velocity levels some keys sound somewhat damped to me, such as the D above middle C. Like the hammer is staying against the string a bit. I am mostly listening through monitors (Mackie HR824mk2) and I also tried QSC K10. But strangely, I don't here it so much through headphones and the pianos do sound fantastic through them. (The S90ES sounds better through headphones, too, btw.) It may be that my speakers/mixer are accentuating certain frequencies, or it may be that I'm just used to the sound of the S90ES. I had a similar sort of experience going from the Kurz PC88 to the S90ES, but after a while the S90ES sounded great. In any case, the Korg pianos are clearly more detailed and you don't get the static loop. The S90ES is warmer and darker, but not as much as Dark Japanese Grand on the Kronos. What I'd love to have is a 4.7 GB S700 piano on the Kronos, although that's just dreaming. Smile I'd be interested to hear any comments from anyone else who has both S90ES and Kronos.

It goes without saying that the synth sounds are really nice. I've only had the chance to play with a couple engines a little so far, AL-1 and MOD-7. The AL-1 is a bit more than just your basic 2-OSC subtractive synth. When you start messing with the FM/Sync/RingMod you get a lot more tones. And I especially like being able to adjust the different EG curves (like Camel Alchemy). In MOD-7, I thought I'd try modulating an operator with external audio, which is a cool thing to be able to do. Took me a little time to get the audio input working because I didn't know to go into the Common area to enable it.

I have a simple sound on my S90ES that I wanted to duplicate on the Kronos. It's just the HardCP80 patch mixed with some acoustic piano. Fortunately Kronos has a CP80 sample. But none of the programs sounded as good as the Yamaha HardCP80. I thought maybe I just need to make a better program, assuming the sample sounds OK. I compared the two raw samples. They actually sound about the same in the lower register. But in the higher notes, the Kronos loops are not too good whereas the Yamaha's are nice. I found some CP80 samples on the internet and I think I'm going to try to make something with those instead and see how it goes.

Why are functions of the first four realtime knobs fixed? Why can't I define all eight myself? Actually, maybe this is possible, I haven't looked closely for that yet. A lot of the realtime controllers are taken up by Karma, which I don't really use. But I guess I can use Tone Adjust as realtime controllers.
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Korg Kronos 61, DSS-1, EX-8000
VAX77; John Bowen Solaris; Yamaha S90ES, TX81Z; Hammond XK3c; Kurzweil K2000S, PC88mx; Minimoog (orig)


Last edited by JimH on Mon Jun 27, 2011 5:25 pm; edited 4 times in total
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Randelph
Platinum Member


Joined: 18 Oct 2008
Posts: 604
Location: San Francisco, CA

PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very interesting! Keep your comments coming...
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Keyboards: Kawai ES920 / Casio CT-X5000
Instruments: Keys / Alto Recorder and Melodica
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