Korg Forums

[brad arant]

Love my Kronos. Been using it for about 5 years now. Over the years I have tried using the USB only and recording to Cubase and Reaper. The issue is that I would like to use the headphone jack on the Kronos as my 'monitor' because of the extremely low latency while playing a new track. However, to hear the existing tracks so that I may play to them, I need to route the audio back into the Kronos via the USB and that causes the entire mix to reroute out through the USB and I get the old re-recording of the mix combined with my new track audio.

I currently bypass the problem by using an A/D converter like everyone probably does but I find this extremely disappointing as I would like to keep everything completely digital. Just sounds better to my sensitive ears.

I understand that the headphones are used to monitor the output of the Kronos audio path but... what would be super cool would be some way of having the headphones be able to monitor the USB inputs through the Kronos mixers but not route the USB input back to the output. I have read through message boards over the years on this issue but there seems to be no resolution. Only workarounds. Perhaps I am missing something but I have studied the audio path flows and looked low and high for a solution.

My thoughts are that a function on the USB in to 'monitor only' would allow me to use the Kronos as my sound card and maintain the cleanest connection possible.

Any thoughts on this issue?

[Gunnar]

Hi Brad,

There is to my knowledge no way to do this as the headphones are tied directly to the L/R bus, which is the same as the L/R analog and USB outputs.

However, there is one solution (to use an external mixer) and a few hacks which can be made to work if you can live with the limitations :)

If you have an external mixer with at least 4 channels, plug Kronos L/R into Mixer 1/2 and Kronos 1/2 outputs into Mixer 3/4. Then under Global/Audio, route USB input to Output 1/2 (not L/R). I ran with this for a good while (while USB on OSX was still working) and it works wonderfully, and has the benefit of being a global setting, so it works regardless of which PROG/COMBI you are in. In the mixer you get both the sound from the computer and direct output from the Kronos into the mixer and from the mixer into headphones and/or to the speakers. And you still maintain a pure digital path from Kronos into the DAW which is the path that matters.

If you don't have an external mixer, it is going to be a bit less awesome, but you do the same as above, route USB Input into Kronos 1/2. Then plug your headphones into the Kronos 1/2 outputs. I did this only once, and I seem to recall the signal strength is on the weak side, so this is part of the lack of awesomness.. 1 and 2 are also mono outputs, so you need a cable to combine the signal into a stereo plug that matches the headset. Now, you'll hear the DAW playing back, but you have no monitoring of your own playing, because your own playing is going to L/R. You can fix this on a per PROG/COMBI/SEQ basis using some custom routing.
Say you are plaing PROG A000: KRONOS German Grand:
- Go to the Play->Common->IFX->Routing tab and set the FX Control Bus to "FX Ctrl 1"
- Under Play->Common->IFX->Insert FX, assign a "Stereo Limiter" to IFX 12, and change IFX 12's "bus select" from "L/R" to "1/2". This will change the limiter from going to L/R to instead go to 1/2.
- Under Play->Common->IFX->IFX 1-12, pick IFX 12 (which is your "Stereo Limiter") and set Source in the top-left corner to "FX Control 1" and check the "side chain monitor" checkbox. The wet/dry mix should be "wet".
You have now routed the piano into the effects bus (in addition to L/R) and picked that up with the limiter and re-routed it onto the 1/2 outputs, which gets mixed with the USB input. Downside is that this is now a per-program setting so it is quite tedious to work with, and IFX 12 might not always be available for use. And you have less control over the volume as the volume knob is bypassed.

Final option I can think of is to put cables from L/R into the analog inputs on the Kronos, then under Global/Audio route the analog inputs to 1/2 same as you did with the with USB input. This gives you DA and AD conversion for the monitoring path, but you still maintain a pure digital path from Kronos into the DAW which is that path that really matters.

Good luck :)
_________________
Gear: Korg Kronos 2 73, Arturia Microbrute & MiniBrute 2, Moog Mother-32, Ibanez RG320DXFM Guitar, ESP Viper 254FM Bass, Blackstar HT-1
Software: Reaper, EZ Drummer
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/gunnarsletta

[brad arant]

So you are indicating that the headphone outputs are physically connected to L/R output or is it a software routing issue? Was wondering if the engineers are listening as I see this as a design oversight for us small studio guys.

I have work around it with the mixer and all is fine but I do notice a drop in quality. I hear it as flatness whenever I go to analog and back to digital. Being able to stop this feedback in software and still use the monitoring headphones would solve many problems I have read about similar to this on the boards.

Thanks for the response. Jam on.

[Gunnar]

[fomalhaut]

I also assumed there was some way to make the USB audio input going through the headphones *not* go to the USB audio output with the Kronos, this resulting in double-recording of the backing tracks.

After some trial and errors I have solved a similar situation by using IK Multimedia's iLoud Micro Monitors, as they can act as a poor man's mixer if you use the Bluetooth connection at the same time as its RCA inputs.

So in the Kronos I have L/R to the audio RCA inputs and in the DAW (Logic) I set the project audio output to Bluetooth input on the iLoud MM.
This way I can recard myself with zero latency playing with the tracks sent from the DAW and at the same time have the DAW only recording the audio from the program I have selected on the Kronos.

Drawbacks:

Of course there is Latency in the recorded track (as the sound path going through bluetooth gives around 112ms roundtrip time on a 2018 MBP). But it does not matter as long as I can add negative delay compensation to the recorded track in the DAW.

Also, I am listening myself through speakers, not through headphones.

Edit: The procedure described by Gunnar also works with the iLoud Micro Monitors! Turns out these speakers have 6 inputs: 2 RCA, 1 stereo 3.5'' jack, and bluetooth. So I could remove almost all latency by connecting the main kronos outputs to the RCA inputs and the 1/2 outputs to the stereo minijack input in the speakers. The it's a matter of routing USB input in the Kronos Global settings to the 1/2 outputs. I can even play virtual instruments in Logic with the lowest buffer settings on my 2018 MBP!