Korg Forums

[maustrap]

Do you guys think itd be a good move to trade-in/sell my M50 toward getting a Kronos? I mostly play for fun at home or jam at a friends house, but I'm also wanting to do a bit more sequencing.

[Shakil]

If you have that much $$$$ to spare.... why not. But, what's that you can't get from M50 if you just play for fun at home?
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Roland Fantom-G6 ARX1, Korg M3-m exb-Radias, Korg Z1-18v, Roland MC-808, Roland MC-909, Korg microKontrol.

[kron]

[Randelph]

That's a lot of money to just get into sequencing a bit more for just having fun. Wish I was in your position!

Being that the M50 has a very similar O.S. as the Kronos, you could use the M50 as a learner board.

Another compelling reason though to buy the Kronos, esp. if you're somewhat new to all of this, is that the sounds are MUCH closer to the instruments they're emulating.

It wasn't until I had my Nord Stage that I got a sense of what an organ is supposed to sound/feel like, a piano, an ep, an analog synth. With banks of HUNDREDS/THOUSANDS of sounds on my Motif XS and M3, I had a hard time distinguishing what was good from not-so-good, whereas now my ear is much more developed. You'll have that advantage with the Kronos.

Beyond that, there's a million good reasons to upgrade. Question is though, are you worthy of the Kronos-? I have a Yamaha flute that i absolutely love, and every time I play it that's the thought that goes thru my mind: wow, such a beautiful lyrical instrument- I want to be worthy of such pure, musical expressiveness.

Randy
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Keyboards: Kawai ES920 / Casio CT-X5000
Instruments: Keys / Alto Recorder and Melodica

[maustrap]

Didn't think opening a new thread was smart so Ill just post this here. The SamAsh near me says they would take the M50 toward credit of the Kronos, but the only one they have in stock is the floor model that they only received a week ago. Think this would be a smart move right now or wait for a new one? I'm leaning toward no.

[NavidSyed]

[Synthoid]

[maustrap]

I was told 750 toward the Kronos. My bigger concern would be getting a unit that has been beaten to death in the span of a week. Not sure if this that big of a deal though.

[Synthoid]

[shap]

Depends on what you want to do. In a studio setting, sequencing just isn't done on keyboards these days. A used M-50 will bring about $800 on EBay right now, so you're looking at a $2200-$2900 upgrade, depending on your choice of keyboard action. You can get a really nice PC laptop and a copy of Sonar Producer for a lot less than that, and you'll be getting a much more powerful tool set. Heck. At that budget you can even afford a Mac-based solution.

The Kronos has many truly wonderful features, but the sequencer isn't one of them. Overall, it has by far the weakest sequencer of any current workstation. I'm buying a Kronos, but it won't be for the sequencing capabilities.

A lot of my sequencing is orchestral, mainly using the EastWest VSTi's. Insert one of those and you've already eaten 8 midi tracks, so the last time I did anything that fit in 16 tracks was, like, ten years ago.

For my lighter work, I'm mainly a guitar player and vocalist, but I capture four simultaneous audio tracks on that guitar (pickup, internal mic, and a high-quality X-Y) so that I can mix, match, and thicken as needed. At the moment I only use one vocal mic, and I'm looking at X-Y setups for that. For audio, I record audio exclusively in 96Khz/24-bit, because anything less than that fails to produce CD-quality audio (which isn't great audio to begin with). The Kronos sequencer tops out at 48Khz/24-bit.

And even when I'm mainly focused on guitar and vocals, I use MIDI to add a piano, a sax or brass sample, the occasional strings, and a drum track. Take those, selectively thicken them up even a little, and you're easily at 8 to 12 MIDI tracks. And you can see the capacity limits of the Kronos sequencer on the MIDI side getting very close.

It sounds like you're just starting with sequencing, so you aren't likely to do all of that next week or even the week after. It took me years to get set up where I wanted to be in my studio, and tens of thousands of dollars. But you may grow into something like this given time, and the awful thing about the money I spent is that a lot of it was spent stupidly, buying stuff that common sense (at least in hindsight) would have led me to skip. At the beginning I certainly wasn't ready to use Sonar to full effect (heck, I probably don't do so now), but if I had understood enough to compare the options available I would never have invested money in hardware-based synthesis and sequencing for studio use.

Now for gigging use, that's another matter. At that point portability becomes a priority, and a lot of the stuff I use in my studio is more or less permanent. It's just too much work to hook up all the cables on a stage, when you don't have time to debug the wiring. At that point you have to pick and choose, and you start to conclude pretty quickly that 48Khz is just fine for live performance, that a laptop is a lot easier to move than a PC, and so forth. I would personally still use Sonar for sequencing, capture, and edit in that scenario, but that's very debatable as a matter of taste. So partly, it depends a lot on what you want to do.

So my view shouldn't necessarily push you away from the Kronos. It has a lot to recommend it as a synth, and a 16-midi/16-audio track sequencer is definitely enough to get started and learn with. I think what I'm saying is that you should recognize going in that you'll soon outgrow that sequencer and want to go to a PC- or Mac-based solution. I started sequencing the same way you are considering (though in my case it was on a Motif XF), but my experience may not match yours.

Try asking yourself: what do I want to put in a song, and start counting. See how many tracks you end up with. You probably won't run out of audio tracks soon, but you might very well run short of MIDI tracks as you start thickening things up.

But here's my other advice, speaking as someone who learned by trying and returning a lot of gear until I found a setup I liked: always pay attention to the price of the alternatives! In this case, the cheaper and better alternative is PC-based synthesis. The next choice is Mac-based. I wouldn't put a lot of weight into the pro-Mac views on the forum. Windows-based synthesis works very well these days.

So if I were in your position, I'ld go buy either a nice laptop or a high-end but quiet PC. If you are on the fence between gigging and studio, buy a high-end laptop. You can use it for other purposes and it's portable enough. Meanwhile, buy a pro-edition copy of Sonar or Cubase or (try them and pick one). Then I'd wait for one of their ever recurring two-for-one deals and buy the EastWest pianos and something else from there. Or alternatively buy Komplete 7, depending on what you want to do.

Note that on the sequencer products, you can generally buy the "home" edition and upgrade just as cheaply as buying the expensive edition.

If you can sample audio from the M-50 (I haven't checked the specs), don't bother with a firewire or USB interface right now - use the M-50 for that while you learn the other tools. After a few months you'll have a better sense of what you want and then you can buy the right thing.

I actually feel kind of bad saying all of this here in the Kronos forum. I'm quite sure that somebody is about to jump me for not promoting the Kronos. Fact is, I think the Kronos is terrific, and as I say, I'm buying one. But given what you already have and what you say you want to accomplish, I'm not convinced that it's the right move for you.

Feel free to PM me and we can pick this up privately.

[Scott]

[panrixx]

Shap,

So what is you're setup?

[shap]

Just updated my sig to put in the setup; let's see if I hit the limit.

Gah. I knew there was a reason I hadn't done that. Looks pretentious, and I'm strictly an amateur with more money than brains. I'm an acoustic guitar player and vocalist who abuses keyboards and occasionally wants a drum track with proper dynamics.
_________________
Motif XF8, Kronos-88 (ordered), V-Synth GT, DT-Extreme eDrums
PC Core i7-920/24GB/3TB (2x)
Motu 2408mk3 + 24I/O
Sonar Producer, everything EastWest
Brian Moore iGuitar+Roland GI-20, Composite Acoustics 6, 12 string guitars, Multiple Ovations from when they were still worth it
Presonus Eureka (2x), TC Helicon VoiceOne
ADAM A7's and JBL 4328Ps, each for its purpose
Border Collies + Misc. Squeaky Toys

[panrixx]

[shap]

When I bought those in the '80s they were the right tool for what I needed, and they grow on you. In particular you get used to their tonal balance, which is pretty unusual, and then if you're a finger picker you need to re-learn a lot of stuff when you move to a bass-heavy or a treble-heavy instrument.

Unfortunately, Ovation got acquired, proceeded to recycle model names that used to be good instruments with new crap, and destroyed themselves. I have two of the older Ovation Elites (model 1868). Back when I bought them, they were well over >$1000 each, and well worth it. The current things being sold under the "Elite" name by Ovation shouldn't be called guitars.

The CAs are in a class by themselves, though. Thankfully it looks like CA will soon be resurrected.

Mrph.
_________________
Motif XF8, Kronos-88 (ordered), V-Synth GT, DT-Extreme eDrums
PC Core i7-920/24GB/3TB (2x)
Motu 2408mk3 + 24I/O
Sonar Producer, everything EastWest
Brian Moore iGuitar+Roland GI-20, Composite Acoustics 6, 12 string guitars, Multiple Ovations from when they were still worth it
Presonus Eureka (2x), TC Helicon VoiceOne
ADAM A7's and JBL 4328Ps, each for its purpose
Border Collies + Misc. Squeaky Toys