jimknopf wrote:I have been working my way into my Kronos 73 since 2 weeks now, and for my purposes experienced something I NEVER experienced before with any workstation or multi-purpose synth: wherever I want to go, I can go with this instrument, and nearly always get quite exactly what I want so far.
(*gush gush gush* Heck, read the whole thing, good post)
This is my anticipation, having no experience with the Kronos outside of some audio demos I downloaded, and some YouTube vids. But just seeing the Motif fan squishing inside because he had to admit the Kronos is a very different kind of keyboard speaks volumes. It makes me consider selling everything and getting a Kronos to use as my sole instrument for music making. Of course, then I come to my senses.
I know that everyone's experience is very personal and individual. But as a longtime M3 owner who's owned the Kurzweil PC3 for a few months now, I chucked the PC3 into the bedroom and focused on the M3. Why? (Edit: Kurz owners, take with a grain of salt and see further post below)
Dealing with the PC3 is a neverending fight. The UI makes sense for the most part, but the way the synth engine is structured has unexpected pitfalls that are frankly brain dead. Doing modulation routing is sometimes easy peasy, sometimes NOTHING works until you find a friendly ear at the Sonikmatters forums who doesn't smart off quickly with "RTFM!" Which the manual sucks, by the way. Much crucial information can only be found on Kurz legacy manuals. Audio quality is outstanding. Patches are a mixed bag, which on any other instrument I've owned has been a blessing. Not on the minefield-laden PC3. Rolling my own patches has been a migrane. The much simpler, less powerful K2000R I own has been way more fun to program patches on. With the PC3, my last patch took THREE DAYS to get where I wanted with it. On my M3, programming patches FROM SCRATCH takes a couple of hours or so. I had to get away from the Kurz because I was beginning to hate the thing. And then, lo and behold, the patch I was fighting to get on the PC3 was on a Kronos YouTube video preset. And if that wasn't bad enough, my ribbon controller was defective, and the keyboard response is very bad, making it almost impossible to play velocity values much over 100 on the 127-step MIDI scale. I can't find a combo of type and velocity curve that works. Plus, many samples on the PC3 rom are extremely compressed, like the pianos, making the whole instrument sound compressed.
Gah...
The M3 sounds and FEELS very good in comparison. I don't care for the reverb, but everything else is stellar. Just about EVERYTHING is easy peasy on the M. I want a sound, and with much less work and time, I have it. It's much more limiting than the PC3, but, good Lord, who wants to have an argument with the thing every time I want to make a patch? I'm still keeping the PC3, for now, but it remains to be seen how much use it gets. I have faith in the Kurzweil team that they can make a proper successor to the K2600, but the PC3 isn't it.
I know people rave about the Kurzweil orchestral sounds, but I compared them to the M3's, and frankly, the raw samples don't sound any better to me. It seems to be all in the programming, but I'd add that I don't find the M3's orchestral sounds, when tweaked, to be lacking at all, just different. In fact, there are more orchestral sounds in the M3, especially with the sample pack expansion. And I have to say that neither one are as good in my not so humble opinion to the samples on Roland's SRX expansion boards.
The 9gb piano samples in the Kronos aren't just a "brute force" way to provide great sounding piano recreations. It's what everyone SHOULD be doing, until high polyphony good sounding fully modeled pianos become a reality. And right now, I don't have a proper music computer, so soft pianos aren't an option for me, or many others.
Needless to say from this lengthy rant, and other posts I've made, it's obvious that I'm jonesing badly for a Kronos. Nothing less will be as satisfying. I know the Next Kurz is lurking in the vapors of tomorrow, but who knows when it's going to be born? And I don't expect it to replace any of my gear, any more than the Kronos will. Except for that damned PC3. But I expect that the Kronos partnered with the PC3 will be an adequate combination to make the new K synth unnecessary. I say that now, but I'm still going through "buyer's dismay" with the PC3, and I'd much rather wait to see if they quit making Kurzweils designed by engineers FOR engineers. Geh.
There's one more thing I didn't like - even when I disabled drum tracks in Global, THE DRUMKIT PARTS WERE STILL TURNED ON IN COMBIS! Which means that I played whatever the combi it was, overlaid with those drums! Which is what I did NOT want to happen! If I turn off the drum tracks, could you be so kind to mute the drum parts of all the combis, too? Sheesh. That one irritated me right there, on the spot. Just thought I'd mention it. If there's a way to make it go away, I'm all ears. If not, my only solution would be wiping all combi banks clean before using the product seriously. At least in my case.
