Initial first impressions

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 1:19 pm

My Krome 73 arrived yesterday after work and I only had 15 minutes to unbox and check it out, SO this is by no means in depth,. I will spend time this weekend.

So here we go,,
It is lightweight,so even with a hard shell case shouldnt be a pain to sleph to gigs.
Boot up time about 50 seconds, Ill time it closer later.

Keybed feel. This is so subjective, I dont have any other Korg boards to reference to(I did have an SV1 but thats weighted) It does feel lighter than my Stage 2 73but does respond smoothly to velocity, again more later. I know you cannot expect a connection to acoustic painos with semi weighted..

The sounds.. Acoustic Piano= I think the opening patch Krome Piano is supposed to be the flagship(didnt look at waveforms) But I prefer the German grand bright(once again may be same sample)..

EPS nice some coming close to Nord status..

Organs... hate to say it, BUT initially I am undwerwhelmed and disappointed.. lots of percussions and the rotary sim is well, anything but.. I THINK tweaking the FX will make it sound better, and perhaps going through the samples and creating a COMBI with appropriate samples .
I noticed what appeared to be very similiar sounding patches to my Micro station/

In general, editing the FX will clean things up on all the patches.

Strings and Brass just in my quicky auditions sound nice and usuable.

Synths-- lots of interesting ones, however synths are not my interest, in that I am a live gigginf musician and looking for meat and potatoes sounds for the type of gigs I am doing.

The disclaimer : I was running mono into a Traynor K2, SO I will try headphones and haul the Krome into my studio and listen over studio monitors before I nail down my review.

Once again, not enough time to do it justice, but I feel with some editing
of factory patches the board could be a staple.

moontom · Post by **moontom** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 2:05 pm

was the depth and richness of the Jazz Ambient drum kit.

really sweet, very different from the typical workstation kit. looking forward to exploring that more....

SpecialFX · Post by **SpecialFX** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 3:38 pm

what do the waveforms tell you?

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 5:01 pm

SpecialFX wrote:what do the waveforms tell you?

I used that term to denote the samples used in that patch. What I meant was I didnt have the time to look at the various samples used for the Krome piano patch and see what wa sup with that.

I will hook up the editor later and start probing the machine ..

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 1:22 am

a little more digging reveals quite a bit with regard to FX.

I am playing MONO live so I am using the L/Mono output of the Krome, and the rotary sim sounded horrible.I found by turning the spread parameter down to 0 and the mic distance to 0 the rotary sounded much better and more realistic.

Apparently, the L/Mono does not sum down.

Playing through my studio setup provided much more pleasing results, even in mono.The signal chain was a Focusrite DSP 24 pro and BlueSky System 1 monitors.

The flagship piano consists of several samples at velocity switching levels. Even with the non weighted keybed I get passable results, although for the hard core pianist, go for the 88 weighted version.

I created several combi splits and layers rather quickly with the editor. My only gripe is the damn small size of the editor, its a strain on old eyes, LOL.The editor also insists on running a scan of midi devices every time. I can cancel it, but there doesn't seem to be a setting to avoid this.

Someone asked about the drum kits, they are exceptional and radio ready.

Boot up time = 58 seconds. So if samples are in ROM then the OS must be loading or something else going on,, thus MAYBE sampling was in the first OS version and this is being held over for possible future features???
I suppose this opens up future menu choice under utilities for update OS. OS updates with this procedure, since there is

I will give it a test on a gig this sunday. More to come.

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Mon Sep 24, 2012 4:33 pm

the rotary sim sounded horrible.I found by turning the spread parameter down to 0 and the mic distance to 0 the rotary sounded much better and more realistic.

That is awesome information, thanks much for that.

Regards,

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:18 am

more on the organs:

I am lucky to have a Hammond AV and 147 Leslie to set as a standard, plus some clones and a Neo Ventilator..

first the organ patches:
LOTs of sample with percussion or overdrive go through them and find some clean basic samples,
there is a discussion on the Keyboard Mag forum about creating a B3 emulation with 9 sine waves tuned to the draw bar fundamentals. the only issue is controlling EACH timbre in a combi in real time (not enough controllers)

second, the EQ settings, you must adjust them to your current monitoring system, whatever you are using live or in the studio. A little trick I am using is adjusting the mid frequency to 800 hz, the crossover frequency of a Leslie.
the factory patches are dialed in to who knows what but go from there...

second if your running stereo the FX are ok, but if you run mono in a live situation, adjust the parameters to collapse the spread or mic spr4ead or balance, the L/Mono output will not sum the FX to mono.

With enough time and patience , usable Hammond organ emulations can be created, with respect to the programmers, I know they put work into those patches, however, the factory patches leave something to be desired..saying that, the RAW material is there , you just have to dig, persevere, sweat and program
naturally an external uni tike a Neo Ventilator would solve the Leslie issue
if you start with the proper foundation.

mocando · Post by **mocando** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 2:29 pm

musicman2011 wrote:more on the organs:

I am lucky to have a Hammond AV and 147 Leslie to set as a standard, plus some clones and a Neo Ventilator..

first the organ patches:
LOTs of sample with percussion or overdrive go through them and find some clean basic samples,
there is a discussion on the Keyboard Mag forum about creating a B3 emulation with 9 sine waves tuned to the draw bar fundamentals. the only issue is controlling EACH timbre in a combi in real time (not enough controllers)

second, the EQ settings, you must adjust them to your current monitoring system, whatever you are using live or in the studio. A little trick I am using is adjusting the mid frequency to 800 hz, the crossover frequency of a Leslie.
the factory patches are dialed in to who knows what but go from there...

second if your running stereo the FX are ok, but if you run mono in a live situation, adjust the parameters to collapse the spread or mic spr4ead or balance, the L/Mono output will not sum the FX to mono.

With enough time and patience , usable Hammond organ emulations can be created, with respect to the programmers, I know they put work into those patches, however, the factory patches leave something to be desired..saying that, the RAW material is there , you just have to dig, persevere, sweat and program
naturally an external uni tike a Neo Ventilator would solve the Leslie issue
if you start with the proper foundation.

Sounds like a huge amount of research and programming fun is ahead

Thanks. Will check the B3 emulation thread on KM forum.

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Tue Sep 25, 2012 5:53 pm

Not sure who will be interested in this, but I've spent some time exploring the creative possibilities of the Krome, and they're strong.

I took a piano pad Combie, changed the drum track, tempo, and the bass voice that was played by the Arp, and got something quite inspiring, so I did that a few more time, and I'm really very pleased.

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Initial first impressions

Initial first impressions

one thing I noticed...