Korg Forums

[swarupmahapatra]

Hello Korg,

If you are watching our blog, please take a notice of this –
You made a fabulous synth/workstation, the Kronos few years back and that rocked the market and still rocks. Hats off to you for that.

I am a live performer and use my Kronos 2 more like a performance synth than a workstation. But I am seeing more live performers migrating towards Yamaha Montage through past year mostly due to the following reasons -

1. Build quality of Montage is much better than Kronos for gigging. I myself brushed a light weight music stand against my Kronos 2 and it did rip off some color of the case.
2. Endless LED encoders that show you where the parameters are set instantly rather than going to the menu while using live on stage.
3. Out of box Tones/Combis of Montage sound better than Kronos. Kronos can sound much better than Montage if they are tweaked. But we are live performers and not sound engineers or sound makers. We don’t get much time to sit down and tweak the sounds.

I believe it's time you should come up with some solution to stop this happen. Maybe you can come up with a Kronos just for live performers. Here is my suggestions for a change in the Kronos –

1. Please replace the knobs with Endless LED encoders.
2. Please make it with a reduced weight (like Kronos X) and sturdy build quality which helps a lot for gigging.
3. Please make the out of box sounds bit more cheerful like Korg PA4X.
4. Please make a mechanical midpoint in the sliders so that we don’t have to look at the level mark to set the sliders to zero. Like when they come to the mid, we can feel the midpoint.
5. Please have the LCD panel bit tilted so that the visibility is better under bright light.
6. Good to have physical pads like OASYS.
7. Good to have quick/dedicated ADSR controls on the board.

Other valued members, please add your comments and suggestions if you feel so.
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Thanks
-Swarup
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Korg Kronos 2 61, Korg PA900, Korg NanoPad 2, Roland BA 330

[Kontrol49]

[swarupmahapatra]

[Schmooster]

Ooh that looks about as pricey and portable as the OASYS.

Have you listened to the sounds from 'audience' perspective? Makes the 'out of the box' stiock sounds much more 'happy' as you describe the PA4 'Caberet keyboards' as I call them - only ever seen them live with solo performers who sing in bars and clubs across Europe. Plus predominantly Asian music as well - maybe not predominantly that's not strictly true, but very popular amongst Asian / Eastern music. I assume this may be due to lack of available tuition or funds for lessons in music - that may also be a generalised assumption but there's definitely a link.

Stereo Perspective [Player, Audience] Definitely brightens up the pianos - the truth is though (in my experience) that great sounding 'out of the box' is fine for solo or sequenced compositions, but rarely any use live. The acoustics of the venue define the ultimate sound - an empty room has a lot of reverb which you lose once the place is full for example. You just have to tweak the sounds and I think they've made it as simple as it gets. Between EQ and ADSR amps there's not much you can't get to sound great live, although the house should be receiving a flat sound from you with respect to reverb and EQ. No two venues are the same - and if you play the same venue then tweaking shouldn't be a problem. I love keyboards that sound great out of the box but every single one I've bought I've regretted as soon as I'm accompanying in a band setting.
Just my experience - I've learned to to fall for the gimmicks - a lot of people also say 'Why are the demo songs so terrible'? Because they're demonstrating much more than just the 'sound' out of the box - good demos (especially any by Rudess) show the diversity of it's functionality as well as fidelity. The single and only exception to this I can think of was Planet Karma by Stephen Kay which highlighted the functionality and had a beautiful arrangement (part 2 I think - with the sax melody and flute scaling arp - amazing even today).
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Current: Korg Kronos61, Korg TR76, Korg Trinity61
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Past Korg: M1, Trinity V3, Triton LE, Triton Rack, 05R/W, Karma, PA1x, M50,
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IBM C20 dual Xeon running Omnisphere, Kontakt 5, FLStudio thru 2 x Audigy 2ZS S/PDIF
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Other: Yamaha SY85, Kurzweil PC3K6, Roland XP50, JV1080, JV2080

[swarupmahapatra]

[mikeyd]

So are you unhappy with the KRONOS? Or are you just being constructive in your post?

I'm a live performer as well and have no issues using my 88. I'm not saying it's perfect. No keyboard is.
As far as patches go that's always subjective. I played a Montage and couldn't get behind 90% of their "out of the box" patches. Their pianos to me, and only to me, were cheap sounding as well as a lot of their synth stuff. I will say however Korg brass sounds don't sound that great without tweaking to me.


But having been around for awhile I've never seen any keyboard supported like this one i.e Os updates. Not to mention the Community support, Library creation, and 3rd party software such as PCG Tools.

So maybe the layout of the KRONOS is an issue for you and that seems like your biggest one. But I'd say most are happy with a Workstation (and that's the key for me), that'll allow programming, writing songs, sampling, and live use with on the fly capabilities , setlists, and much more.

[Schmooster]

Or perhaps you need a Montage? There's never one board that does it all - they could build one - and kill their business. I'm pretty sure all the Directors of the major manufacturers meet up for golf and Corvoisier and debate who's doing what with what so that they all get a slice of the market. Sceptical maybe - but I've seen it in other 'rival' industries, it helps them all to make money without any one manufacturer ending up in a position where demand can't meet supply and goodbye reputation - there's just too much of a 'balance' between them all to be coincidence and not by design I think.

And when you say 'cheaper' I say "You get what you pay for" - that's from the perspective as an electronics design engineer - it's all relative. You gain this, you lose something else.
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_________________________________________
_________________________________________
Current: Korg Kronos61, Korg TR76, Korg Trinity61
_________________________________________
Past Korg: M1, Trinity V3, Triton LE, Triton Rack, 05R/W, Karma, PA1x, M50,
_________________________________________
IBM C20 dual Xeon running Omnisphere, Kontakt 5, FLStudio thru 2 x Audigy 2ZS S/PDIF
_________________________________________
Other: Yamaha SY85, Kurzweil PC3K6, Roland XP50, JV1080, JV2080

[swarupmahapatra]

[swarupmahapatra]

[NormC]

I played with a Montage at Guitar Center. I feel my Kronos sounds better and as far as build quality I will take my Kronos with its metal case and nice wood trim over the plastic Montage any day. Are there things Korg could improve? Sure. Are there things Yamaha does better? Maybe.
Kronos is now 6 years old and still getting software updates and new sound banks regularly. They are still fully behind the product. That speaks volumes to me.
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Kronos 2 73

[danatkorg]

[aron]

>I am a live performer and use my Kronos 2 more like a performance synth than a workstation.

So do a lot of us.

>But I am seeing more live performers migrating towards Yamaha Montage through past year mostly due to the following reasons -

I don't doubt you are seeing this, but not around where I am.

> Please replace the knobs with Endless LED encoders

Really? I've never heard a live performer say that they wanted endless LED encoders.

> Please make it with a reduced weight

This is true. Now how come the Montage is so heavy?

> Please make the out of box sounds bit more cheerful like Korg PA4X

Hmmm.... I didn't realize the PA4X was so "cheerful". I better check it out. I do play happy music now and then for sure.

> Please make a mechanical midpoint in the sliders

But endless encoders are..... endless - how do you know the midpoint for those parameters?

> Please have the LCD panel bit tilted so that the visibility is better under bright light

Some people have asked for this. Is the Montage tilted? I remember not being able to read an XF outside as well.

> Good to have physical pads like OASYS

More controls are always good I guess.

> Good to have quick/dedicated ADSR controls on the board

I could see how you might want this.

Somehow I really doubt live performers are going to the Montage from the Kronos because of the above but this is not true over here.
I agree with others that you might just like the Montage - if so, get one.

No doubt you have feature requests - we all do, but guess what? I'm sure the Kronos is selling really well and is actually farther ahead of some other keyboards and THEY are the ones wishing they had the features of the Kronos - not the other way around.
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Korg Kronos, RD-88, Yamaha VL1, Deep Mind 6, Korg Kross, author of unrealBook for iPad.

[aron]

This reminds me of the time that I was tech support and we had the world's greatest sequencer! It had almost everything!!!! It was cutting edge, awesome, did almost everything in an advanced way!!!!!

Then one guy called in, ignored all the advanced features it had and was adamant that it was a failure because it didn't have the one feature he needed. OF COURSE it MUST have that feature to be a success.

OK - will pass along the suggestion.
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Korg Kronos, RD-88, Yamaha VL1, Deep Mind 6, Korg Kross, author of unrealBook for iPad.

[danmusician]

Personally, I would hate it if the sliders had a mid-point notch. It's can be difficult to set near the notch but not at the notch when they are present.
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Kronos 2 88, Kronos Classic 73, PX-5S, Kronos 2 61, Roli Seaboard Rise 49

[Kontrol49]