The New Kronos!!!

[Synthee]

The new case seems to have more ventilation, and I thought someone recently posted a SSD that doesn't need a fan. Maybe the new one is quieter. I don't hear my fan either, and I haven't replaced it with a quieter one. As for the boot time, it makes no difference to me. It seems like a live gig with no UPS would be the only time it would matter. I can't imagine changing keyboards for such minor issues.

However, I don't use Cubase. I browsed it the other day, and they specifically mentioned Yamaha integration, but didn't mention any other manufacturers. I guess that could make a big difference if you're already invested in Cubase.

Yes, all those little holes on the back for ventilation seems promising, in the old Kronos the air vent out through the buttons opening on the control-surface. Maybe this alone have made an improvement in noise. It will be interesting to check it out when it comes to the store.
I think I saw that someone wrote that they had seen some settings for fan in the menues also?

[alanjpearson]

oh c'mon. Maybe you are not up to date

Owners have been installing higher quality and more quiet fans for years.
And on the other hand, a slight fan hum does not bother many ( thousands of owners).

You must know this. Kronos has 9 synth engines and gigabit pianos to load.
Tons of data. your DAW would take at least that long of it loaded a similar data load.

comparing that to 1981 is a red herring

True, it appears the processor/spec may not have changed. but if you can find a more perfect keyboard workstation, let us know.

Yes I know, I switched the fan myself to a more quiet one, but even with that one I couldn't stand hearing that hissing noise from the fan all the time when I was sitting down to make music.
Maybe Im more sensitive than thousand of other people?

without a doubt, there is plenty of variation with being distracted or certain noise. Some keyboardists want no noise because the type of fan noise is unwelcome when playing. It can be an unwelcome distraction.

For others, or just me , once I start jamming, my music noise drowns out all ambient noise and I sink into the enjoyment of playing the Kronos.

my wife has the most sensitive/best ears and does not even notice the Kronos fan noise. I have a very live room- wood floors, nothing to absorb sound acoustically.

If the Mox makes you happy, thats cool. I doubt that V3 will solve your requirements, from what I read

Lots of red herrings here.

I accept some may hear the fan but I never have and have quite an old machine. The noise from my keyboard amp and PC fan would drown it out.

The start up time is comparable to a PC now, not in 1981.
And anyway what is it that you are in such a hurry for?
Plus why do you need a more powerful processor?
I've never seen any delay between hitting a button and something happening.
Upload/download speeds are usually a function of the transfer method rather than the processor in the case of workstations.

For me the benefits FAR outweigh the drawbacks - and for me at least one drawback will be fixed with the new zoom feature.

As far as reliability is concerned, I had a PSU failure at the outset but it has been 100% ever since - long live Kronos!

[alanjpearson]

Lots of red herrings here.

I accept some may hear the fan but I never have and have quite an old machine. The noise from my keyboard amp and PC fan would drown it out.

The start up time is comparable to a PC now, not in 1981.
And anyway what is it that you are in such a hurry for?
Plus why do you need a more powerful processor?
I've never seen any delay between hitting a button and something happening.
Upload/download speeds are usually a function of the transfer method rather than the processor in the case of workstations.

For me the benefits FAR outweigh the drawbacks - and for me at least one drawback will be fixed with the new zoom feature.

As far as reliability is concerned, I had a PSU failure at the outset but it has been 100% ever since - long live Kronos!

[Matthomas]

I don't hear my fan either, and I haven't replaced it with a quieter one. As for the boot time, it makes no difference to me.

... specifically mentioned Yamaha integration, but didn't mention any other manufacturers. I guess that could make a big difference if you're already invested in Cubase.

Kronos fan is not apparent when you play music and there is sound.

Cubase integration with any keyboard is not complex, or better with
Yamaha. I used Spdif optical to PC from Kronos with Korg NanoControl2 to mix Cubase tracks. No problem!

If you have specific needs that are better addressed with another keyboard, that's great you found what works for you, but it works well for Protools or Cubase or Logic already as studio device. Peter Gabriel has two....

Mat (Kronos is the best part of the studio i work with)

[Synthee]

I don't hear my fan either, and I haven't replaced it with a quieter one. As for the boot time, it makes no difference to me.

... specifically mentioned Yamaha integration, but didn't mention any other manufacturers. I guess that could make a big difference if you're already invested in Cubase.

Kronos fan is not apparent when you play music and there is sound.

Cubase integration with any keyboard is not complex, or better with
Yamaha. I used Spdif optical to PC from Kronos with Korg NanoControl2 to mix Cubase tracks. No problem!

If you have specific needs that are better addressed with another keyboard, that's great you found what works for you, but it works well for Protools or Cubase or Logic already as studio device. Peter Gabriel has two....

Mat (Kronos is the best part of the studio i work with)

Kronos fan-noise is apparent when you play Piano in ordinary level at home.
Cubase integration are much better with Yamaha. You got ASIO drivers for starters, incredible that Kronos don't have it, and then all the sounds from Yamaha MOXF8 goes automatically in to mixdown in Cubase via USB.

I really hope that Korg have fixed those things on new Kronos, because they are important.

[Derek Cook]

I don't hear my fan either, and I haven't replaced it with a quieter one. As for the boot time, it makes no difference to me.

... specifically mentioned Yamaha integration, but didn't mention any other manufacturers. I guess that could make a big difference if you're already invested in Cubase.

Kronos fan is not apparent when you play music and there is sound.

Cubase integration with any keyboard is not complex, or better with
Yamaha. I used Spdif optical to PC from Kronos with Korg NanoControl2 to mix Cubase tracks. No problem!

If you have specific needs that are better addressed with another keyboard, that's great you found what works for you, but it works well for Protools or Cubase or Logic already as studio device. Peter Gabriel has two....

Mat (Kronos is the best part of the studio i work with)

Kronos fan-noise is apparent when you play Piano in ordinary level at home.
Cubase integration are much better with Yamaha. You got ASIO drivers for starters, incredible that Kronos don't have it, and then all the sounds from Yamaha MOXF8 goes automatically in to mixdown in Cubase via USB.

I really hope that Korg have fixed those things on new Kronos, because they are important.

It probably helps that Steinberg are owned by Yamaha and are probably designing for each other from the outset to give the combination a competitive edge

That said, better Kronos DAW integration would be nice in this day an age.

[SanderXpander]

I would also like better integration but it doesn't involve ASIO drivers. The Kronos already has class compliant WDM drivers which offer the exact same low latency support as ASIO drivers. Rather, I would love to see softsynth like integration a la Virus TI. As for the MOX, are we talking a MOX or Motif? I find the comparison Motif/Kronos a stretch but MOX/Kronos is laughable as far as features and sound quality goes. VST integration or not, I would rather play a part three or four timee live, no midi, on the Kronos, than use a MOX with the best softsynth integration in the world.

[Purusha]

Virus Ti - style integration would be great, but I'd be amazed if we saw it in this generation of Korg workstations.

Mind you, even Access haven't got it completely right with their VSTi editor.

People have been asking, since it landed, for a stand-alone editor - for those who want to use it as a MIDI driven synth.

No dice.

[danatkorg]

Also it's processor is very outdated and underpowered. I love my Kronos X but it is a PITA to wait for it to start up. Korg could have beefed up the processor but they chose not to.

Startup time is primarily due to loading samples - not related to the processor.

Re underpowered: offhand, I can't think of another hardware synth that can play 400 voices at once, as the SGX-1 does. If you know of one, I'd be interested to hear about it!

- Dan

[jimknopf]

I would also like better integration but it doesn't involve ASIO drivers. The Kronos already has class compliant WDM drivers which offer the exact same low latency support as ASIO drivers. Rather, I would love to see softsynth like integration a la Virus TI. As for the MOX, are we talking a MOX or Motif? I find the comparison Motif/Kronos a stretch but MOX/Kronos is laughable as far as features and sound quality goes. VST integration or not, I would rather play a part three or four timee live, no midi, on the Kronos, than use a MOX with the best softsynth integration in the world.

SanderXpander, if you found a way to use Kronos WDM drivers within Cubase on Windows systems, please let me know. I never saw a Kronos WDM entry among the available drivers.

The only available workaround so far seems to be Asio4all, which uses up a lot of CPU power, the bigger your project is, and has other issues depending on project and system context. All professionals I ask tell me that Asio has been and continues to be the reference solution for all professional soundcard use in Windows.

I know of not a single one among all the soundcards offered for Windows systems (not even the cheaper ones), which would not offer Asio drivers. It's just ridiculous IMHO not to offer them for a soundcard solution in Windows, and even embedded soundcards like the Access Virus TI do of course offer Asio drivers.

[EvilDragon]

Startup time is primarily due to loading samples - not related to the processor.

...but definitely related to SATA bus transfer speed, right? Those SSDs should easily be able to have random read transfer rate of over 200 MB/s, which should load 2 GB of samples in 10 seconds or less. Except something seems to limit the SSDs to attain this peak performance, so this tells me that SATA2 or SATA3 is not used at all in Kronos. Which is a shame.

[qayqaywsx]

Some of the libraries have to be decrypted, maybe thats one of the reasons of strart up time.
Anyway after 2 minutes you've got one of the best (electronic keyboard -)instruments in the world direct under your fingers.
I think it is worth to wait for that !

[SanderXpander]

I would also like better integration but it doesn't involve ASIO drivers. The Kronos already has class compliant WDM drivers which offer the exact same low latency support as ASIO drivers. Rather, I would love to see softsynth like integration a la Virus TI. As for the MOX, are we talking a MOX or Motif? I find the comparison Motif/Kronos a stretch but MOX/Kronos is laughable as far as features and sound quality goes. VST integration or not, I would rather play a part three or four timee live, no midi, on the Kronos, than use a MOX with the best softsynth integration in the world.

SanderXpander, if you found a way to use Kronos WDM drivers within Cubase on Windows systems, please let me know. I never saw a Kronos WDM entry among the available drivers.

The only available workaround so far seems to be Asio4all, which uses up a lot of CPU power, the bigger your project is, and has other issues depending on project and system context. All professionals I ask tell me that Asio has been and continues to be the reference solution for all professional soundcard use in Windows.

I know of not a single one among all the soundcards offered for Windows systems (not even the cheaper ones), which would not offer Asio drivers. It's just ridiculous IMHO not to offer them for a soundcard solution in Windows, and even embedded soundcards like the Access Virus TI do of course offer Asio drivers.

I don't know about Cubase but Sonar does this just fine. WDM is a Microsoft/Windows standard and ASIO4ALL is nothing but a WDM wrapper. Seems weird that Cubase wouldn't support it. Still I think you'd agree the Virus TI style integration would be preferable to standard ASIO considering you can only use one ASIO driver at a time in a given host.

[jimknopf]

In fact the Kronos soundcard problem is no real issue to me most of the time.

I have not used the TI Asio driver as main driver for recording in Cubase either, simply because a soundcard with several inputs and outputs for my other keyboards and sound modules is much more useful to me, than direct soundcard access to the Virus. It was fine for traveling just with a Virus and a notebook though.

Same with the Kronos: I would never use the Kronos soundcard as replacement for my Focusrite soundcard, which gives me immediate access to all my instruments/microphone(s) for recording. It's as above with the Virus: when traveling with just the Kronos and a notebook, then an Asio driver would be first choice in Cubase, followed by well working WDM drivers.


So what probably would be much more helpful than Asio drivers would be a 64bit editor working like a VSTi (that would include automation) within Cubase, and it should be an editor/VSTi really using PC possibilities and bigger screen, and not just being a mirror of the Kronos UI. On the other hand: even with the much less complex TI that did not work flawlessly (just mostly flawlessly), so that's probably not easy to achieve with a Kronos. In ten years from now, it will probably be easy due to better hard- and software solutions.

[slowtrain]

In fact the Kronos soundcard problem is no real issue to me most of the time.

I have not used the TI Asio driver as main driver for recording in Cubase either, simply because a soundcard with several inputs and outputs for my other keyboards and sound modules is much more useful to me, than direct soundcard access to the Virus. It was fine for traveling just with a Virus and a notebook though.

Same with the Kronos: I would never use the Kronos soundcard as replacement for my Focusrite soundcard, which gives me immediate access to all my instruments/microphone(s) for recording. It's as above with the Virus: when traveling with just the Kronos and a notebook, then an Asio driver would be first choice in Cubase, followed by well working WDM drivers.


So what probably would be much more helpful than Asio drivers would be a 64bit editor working like a VSTi (that would include automation) within Cubase, and it should be an editor/VSTi really using PC possibilities and bigger screen, and not just being a mirror of the Kronos UI. On the other hand: even with the much less complex TI that did not work flawlessly (just mostly flawlessly), so that's probably not easy to achieve with a Kronos. In ten years from now, it will probably be easy due to better hard- and software solutions.

You can upgrade the editor at soundquest to their pro version which lets tou use the Kronos as a VSTi in 64 bit DAWs, but it's $250. I contacted them on their forum, and got this reply. I'm hoping a 64 bit editor will be part of the OS 3 upgrade, but I'm not holding my breath.

"As a Kronos owner, you do qualify for special upgrade pricing. You will see the upgrade options here:

https://www.squest.com/Forms/Upgrade.html

You will need to enter your Kronos serial number as the upgrade serial number on the order form."

I still think Korg should upgrade the editor for this functionality, since 64 bit DAWs are the norm now, and the Kronos is still being sold as Korg's flagship workstation.