Korg Forums

[Kim]

The wait has been long in the northern parts of Europe... It has been a mental struggle to wait for my own 88-key version of Kronos while reading reports from other fresh owners who got their gear in the past few weeks. Last Friday Finland received it's first demo workstation, the 88-key version.Finally I'm one important step closer: to actually get to play one and form my own opinions. And in 6 weeks, I should be able to pick my own 88-key Kronos (and I'm at the top of the waiting list!).

Anyway, my main aim was to make sure, if the Kronos was worth the wait. I've always been a Yamaha fan, and before I heard of the Kronos (as late as May), I was ready to invest in a 88-key Motif XF.

Anyway, after playing for 2 hours straight, here are my thoughts:

After finding a chair and sitting in front of the Kronos, I understood some of the hype. The 88-key version was visually beautiful to look at. Stylish, with it's brushed, dark grey metal and led-lights, the screen being crisp and clear. I loaded the German grand piano and played just one key with the pedal down. Wow... Absolutely no looping. The sound decays beautifully like no other digital piano I've ever played. It was even better than the Steinway I've played in East West's VST-instrument Goliath.

Then I started to play some Tori Amos: Cornflake Girl. I was astonished by the German Grand. Fantastic sound! My search for the perfect piano sound was finally over. And believe me, I've been searching for it for a long time, owning Yamaha and Roland stage pianos and even the GEM's Promega 1 in the past.

Then I tried the Japanese grand by playing some classical music, Beethovens's Moonlight Sonata. Ok, maybe the German Grand would have been better for this soft music, but I didn't care. Again, the sound was wonderfully realistic and I found myself playing the grands for about 30 minutes before moving on the the next sounds.

I usually don't use EPs or organs very much, so I'll just say they sounded really nice to my ears. The way you could alter the sound to fit your own needs seemed amazing. Does everybody really need this much tweak-ability? I guess if you're on the look for the perfect Rhodes/Hammond sound, you have to have access to the all sound parameters to match the sound you imagine to be perfect.

Then on to the acoustic sounds: many users have complained about the acoustic and electronic guitar sounds. I've tried the Motif XF next to the Kronos and honestly, I don't see much difference here. Both have great sounding guitars. Where the Yamaha might excel, is in the plethora of different articulations. In expert hands, the Yamaha may sound more realistic. But I really liked the sounds of Kronos as well, and there were even some nice extra clicks and string slides to fool the audience

The orchestra sounds were very nice as well, especially the string-sections. I wish I had tried them out more, but time was sparse. All in all, there were some very average sounding patches in there as well, but from every major instrument sections I could always find a usable one. Some were even outstanding.

Well, then I tried the synth sounds. Lush pad sounds filled my ears. There were many "classic analogue" sounds, that were very adjustable and even some really fresh sounding patches as well, which reminded me of Spectrasonic's wonderful VST instrument Omnisphere. I really wanted to continue playing in the store for a longer time, but alas, they had to close. So instead of getting through all the sounds deeply and profound, I was forced to skim them through way too fast.

In the end I was leaving the store with a positive feeling. My main worries about the RH3-keybed and sounds in general were gone. The keybed was really nice to play (there were no clicks, or other abnormal observations) and in general the acoustic sounds were decent in my opinion. Many of my fears were gone, yet some persevered:

1. The fan. Yes, to some people this is no problem, but for me it just might be. In the store I couldn't here it from where I was playing, but the store had some ambient noise already present. I hope, that the noisiness of the fan is more a problem of the smaller Kronos-workstations, like the 61-key version. At least the biggest complaints have come from owners that own that version. Maybe the bigger case of a 88-key version has more air to move around, so the fan doesn't run as fast/noisy? I hope mine will be a quiet one, since I do acoustic recordings in my studio, about 2 meters away from the Kronos.

2. The good ol' data wheel. I must say, that this piece of plastic didn't seem to be in the right company. The Kronos is a very polished looking piece of equipment, and it astonishes me, why no one got to the idea of replacing this cheap looking wheel with a better one. Of course I didn't try to yank it off, but even turning the wheel made it "wobble" around it's own axis. It was clearly not completely straight, since one end was higher than the other. That was a turn off and I wish Korg would do something about the design.

3. The screen. I wish Kronos would have tilted it a bit towards the player, and made the fonts bigger. I have pretty good vision, but even for me it was sometimes hard to see the different texts. I found myself moving forwards to see the text better, and after 2 hours my back was getting a bit sore. Please, Korg, make an OS update to correct this as soon as possible. I can imagine, that people with poorer eyes will shy away from Kronos because of this.

4. I really wish Korg had extended the RAM memory to 4 Gb. Memory isn't that expensive anymore, and there ARE two memory slots already inside the machine. Why not take advantage of it? You could build a mighty software biosphere around the Kronos: new sound libraries (especially to replace some of the weaker sounds, like horns) to be downloaded and played for a reasonable fee. Yamaha's motivation-webportal has really done this part well. I hope Korg will do something similar soon. Anyway, the extra memory would raise more interest in Kronos users to buy these libraries. Now they must make silly decisions whether to load all of the HD1-samples or not.

Okay, that's it. Now I'm just waiting for my own Kronos and hoping that the build quality is ok (very little/none fan noise and that the keys and data wheel are fine). I must admit, that after the great (almost Apple-like) hype I felt skeptical. Could this piece of gear be as good and revolutionary as everyone is talking about? How is it, that people are willing to pay in advance when reserving their own Kronos without ever trying it out themselves first? It boggled my mind. But now, I have faith. I believe that in 6 weeks I'll be a happy owner of one of the most powerful and inspirational synthesizers ever made. And I wish to be having many interesting discussions with the people here at Korg Forums

[michelkeijzers]

Nice review!

I'm going to listen to a Kronos out in the Netherlands on Saturday.
_________________

Developer of the free PCG file managing application for most Korg workstations: PCG Tools, see https://www.kronoshaven.com/pcgtools/

[Neko]

Tervetuloa Kim

I'm getting mine this week. It's the 61 keys, i tried it in the shop but didn't pay attention to the fan. Hope it won't be "that" noisy.

I was surprised by the whell also, it looks damn cheap for a keyboard like that, but I really needed to get rid of my M3. I'm more interested in the new features than the sounds (sst and set list mainly).

Anyway i guess kronos from Suomi might sound better than anywhere else

[Kim]

[Kim]

[dregsor]

Hi Kim,

[Kim]

[dregsor]