Who is going to take their Krome apart to peek under hood?

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:44 pm

there is a discussion over at Keyboard Corner speculating abut the sample playback/streaming. etc. Some say perhaps an SSD.

Who among us will peek inside to see if they can hash out the innards?

mine is only a week old, so at this point Im hesitant to open the case.

mocando · Post by **mocando** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 8:28 pm

Well, once I get mine, the first thing I plan to do is the power supply mod, like I did on my M50 back in 2010. More info in this thread: http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... wer+supply and the images about the whole process: http://www.dpreview.com/challenges/Chal ... ts&Rows=25

I hope there is room inside for the power supply. Why is Korg still using an external power supply with the Krome? is beyond me.

I will have the chance of getting a good look at it.

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 9:15 pm

the most often used reason for a brick is to obtain a quicker pass for the UL type ratings (and whatever other worldwide entities are responsible for
certifying equipment so the gear can go to market easier.
I dont remember if our brick is autosensing, but if it is, all Korg has to do is change tha AC power cord . This may be moot in that the autosensing power supply could be included inside the keyboard, and the AC socket remained the same, just include the appropriate AC cord.

mocando · Post by **mocando** » Wed Sep 26, 2012 9:32 pm

musicman2011 wrote:the most often used reason for a brick is to obtain a quicker pass for the UL type ratings (and whatever other worldwide entities are responsible for
certifying equipment so the gear can go to market easier.
I dont remember if our brick is autosensing, but if it is, all Korg has to do is change tha AC power cord . This may be moot in that the autosensing power supply could be included inside the keyboard, and the AC socket remained the same, just include the appropriate AC cord.

The funniest thing is that you remove the M3 cover, and you could see the brick power supply inside. So, I will do the same to the Krome. The hardest part is cut opening a hole for the socket, but other than that, is just a couple of solder points and hot glue to keep it in place.

andersborg · Post by **andersborg** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 8:32 pm

musicman2011 wrote:there is a discussion over at Keyboard Corner speculating abut the sample playback/streaming. etc. Some say perhaps an SSD.

If there was an SSD in Krome it would have been a major selling point, so that sounds very unrealistic.

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 9:18 pm

andersborg wrote:
musicman2011 wrote:there is a discussion over at Keyboard Corner speculating abut the sample playback/streaming. etc. Some say perhaps an SSD.
If there was an SSD in Krome it would have been a major selling point, so that sounds very unrealistic.

thus the adjective "speculation"..

,

A comment from the keyboard forum for everyones edification

No one has asked how they made this quantum leap from 256MB of ROM in the M50 to 3.8GB in the Krome, and kept the price at $1000. The Motif XF has 781MB of ROM and sells for several times as much. Notice Korg does not call it ROM but rather PCM Memory. Streaming requires RAM and my take is that the 32MB is left over once all the preload takes place. Why would you have RAM in a standard ROMpler if it's not being used for some purpose?

Busch.

mocando · Post by **mocando** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 9:26 pm

musicman2011 wrote:thus the adjective "speculation".. ,

A comment from the keyboard forum for everyones edification

No one has asked how they made this quantum leap from 256MB of ROM in the M50 to 3.8GB in the Krome, and kept the price at $1000. The Motif XF has 781MB of ROM and sells for several times as much. Notice Korg does not call it ROM but rather PCM Memory. Streaming requires RAM and my take is that the 32MB is left over once all the preload takes place. Why would you have RAM in a standard ROMpler if it's not being used for some purpose?

Busch.

I've been saying that, it doesn't look like it is ROM at all, but RAM and even the OS is loaded at boot time. Why would a workstation take almost a minute to load? If the OS where on ROM, it would boot instantly (like the M50). And that opens the possibility not only for the sampling feature to be "officially" available in the future, but even for "virtual" synth engines (CX3, comes to mind). At additional upgrade costs, I don't care. I'd gladly pay for a Drawbar synth engine for my Krome if they do it this way.

musicman2011 · Post by **musicman2011** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 9:43 pm

which begs a question.. SUPPOSE Korg installed more memory than necessary for the current operations to support further engines...

how much would you be willing to pay for the upgrade to the OS for the sampling option, or as Mocando pondered, a CX3 engine(which would be a bear for drawbar emulation, UNLESS, with an upgraded OS you have drawbars on the touch screen...

BUT all of this undermines the flagship Kronos, which market and profit wise would not be a good move...just saying

mocando · Post by **mocando** » Thu Sep 27, 2012 9:51 pm

musicman2011 wrote:which begs a question.. SUPPOSE Korg installed more memory than necessary for the current operations to support further engines...

how much would you be willing to pay for the upgrade to the OS for the sampling option, or as Mocando pondered, a CX3 engine(which would be a bear for drawbar emulation, UNLESS, with an upgraded OS you have drawbars on the touch screen...

BUT all of this undermines the flagship Kronos, which market and profit wise would not be a good move...just saying

The price difference between the Krome and Kronos is big enough to justify upgrade pluggins. Besides, you could never get the sampling and vocoder features, or the immense amount of inputs and outputs. Lets say it has the capacity for one or maximum 2 more engines available at the same time.

Price? Hmm ,don't know. Between 60 and 150 per engine, maybe? I would say similar pricing scheme as the KLC

Is all speculation, of course, but is fun

marct2009 · Post by **marct2009** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:12 pm

So I've been having some issues with my krome and come to find out that I have a bad mother board. I really need to know how to safely take this bad boy apart so I can locate the defective part. I'd appreciate any input at all.

marct2009 · Post by **marct2009** » Thu Oct 16, 2014 5:33 pm

So I just cracked open my krome today. There is room for a power adaptor inside for those who are interested in doing so. It's fairly easy to get inside. You just need to remove all the outside screws on the bottom side of the keyboard. Do not remove the screws connecting the inputs on the front logo side of the keyboard. Also there are two hidden screws on the bottom side near the middle of the keyboard (First photo). They have arrows pointing right at them. These screws had me scratching my head all night. Once all the screws are removed the bottom half should come loose with the keyboard controller keys as well. Weird, I know. Be careful, the keyboard controller wires are connected directly to the mother board do not just yank it up. After you disconnect that one connection the bottom half should come right off. I've searched everywhere online for someone to teach me how to do this and I literally found nothing. Well, my inpatients got the best of me so I hope this helps someone else.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw3mvx ... sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw3mvx ... sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw3mvx ... sp=sharing

The last photo is just a close up of the mother board.

maranite · Post by **maranite** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 6:17 pm

Hey.. thanks so much for sharing!

Any chance of you being willing to remove the sdcard, do a block level backup of it, and send it (the backup) to me?

I'm trying to reverse engineer the firmware in order to improve it (better screen layout in sequencer, option to turn off metronome light, etc.)

The update firmware has me stumped, because they use a seemingly nonsensical derivitive of the LZJB algorithm to compress it, it no permutation of decoders seems to work.

Would you be prepared to help me? I really want to see the bootloader bytecode, and its probably on that motherboard mounter sdcard.

Kromeheaven · Post by **Kromeheaven** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 6:26 pm

cool !

Is it possible to publish these photos on my website kromeheaven.com ?
Thank you.

Cyph !

Kromeheaven · Post by **Kromeheaven** » Thu Oct 23, 2014 6:28 pm

also interested in the sdcard content

of course

maranite · Post by **maranite** » Fri Oct 24, 2014 8:07 pm

BTW... I imagine the it would serve us well to figure out a mod that allowed the internal sd card socket to be accessible from the back panel.... I.e. wire out to a case-mounted slot.

Once we've figured out what's going on with the sd card, Cyph would probably be able to mod his sample conversion software to write entire new 4gb PCM ROMS for the Krome.

This would be a game changer for Krome owners... the ability to completely customize the sample set, and not be stuck with just one well-sampled piano.

Who's got the skills to figure out how to make such a mod?

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Who is going to take their Krome apart to peek under hood?

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Looking to take apart