Korg electribe 2 Acid Filter vs. Novation Bass Station II

Ted3000 · Post by **Ted3000** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:14 pm

Here's a comparison I made of the Korg electribe vs the Bass Station II.

In it you may hear how the electribe has been over-filtered for anti-aliasing. You may also agree that the BSII's auto glide mode is more 303-like. Or maybe you like the bassy driven sound of the electribe.

What do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HooLVKgSzqg

roblabs · Post by **roblabs** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:35 pm

yeah you can really hear the difference at the top end. Bass Station wins.

apapdop · Post by **apapdop** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:37 pm

Nice little vid!! I love 303 stuff, big fan of Rebirth for ipad. Will be tinkering around with acid stuff on the Electribe, but i agree, my first impression of the acid filter was "it's a bit polite...". Maybe some distortion post filter?... Novation wins this battle.

Ted3000 · Post by **Ted3000** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 8:38 pm

Yeah, it's strange. The Korg model is probably closer to the tone of the 303. They probably used a real one to create the model. Maybe it sounds better on the King Korg?

Korg fails with this:

1. Way too much anti-aliasing on the high frequencies
2. Volume goes down as the resonance goes up (very Virtual Analog behavior.)
3. Lack of autoglide for step-specific slides
4. There's no keytrack at all,
5. The simplified single envelope is shared for filter & amp

All of the electribe's resonant filter models drop in volume as the resonance increases, and the entire output is shaved down by a lowpass. Maybe that's desired on a groovebox that has so much going on at once. But it sure does not make for authentic analog sounds. It's no TB-303 killer. It's not even in the running for the TB-3.

Still, the electribe has a ton of great features and tricks and those drums are banging. No one should obsess over the shortcomings! (and this is coming from the guy who made a video about them.)

Re-Member · Post by **Re-Member** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:14 pm

For a VA, it sounds pretty damn good. Even with it rolling off a lot of the high end, it sounds much more like a real TB-303 than my Volca Bass. Maybe using a compressor as an insert effect will balance out the sound a little better. Usually when I do acid type stuff with my SH-101, I'll use a compressor during mixing in order to keep the resonance from peaking too loud and drowning out everything else. Same deal with the Volca Bass. That thing screams waaay too much to the point of overkill. For acid, it's sweet spot is way too small and narrow.

Re-Member · Post by **Re-Member** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:39 pm

Also wanted to add...

On my Korg R3 and microSTATION, the anti-aliasing occurs just within the oscillator and filter modeling, so any insert or master effects added are not effected by this since they are mixed into the sound post-aliasing. The same is probably true with the Electribe. In addition to the built in compressor effects, I also like to use the tube amp simulator to really warm up the sound.

I'll probably be getting my Electribe this weekend, so maybe in the future I'll upload some templates people can use. I'm mostly getting this machine to emulate my analog gear for easier live gigging, so they might be worth sharing.

Ted3000 · Post by **Ted3000** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:30 am

Re-Member wrote:For a VA, it sounds pretty damn good. Even with it rolling off a lot of the high end, it sounds much more like a real TB-303 than my Volca Bass. Maybe using a compressor as an insert effect will balance out the sound a little better. Usually when I do acid type stuff with my SH-101, I'll use a compressor during mixing in order to keep the resonance from peaking too loud and drowning out everything else. Same deal with the Volca Bass. That thing screams waaay too much to the point of overkill. For acid, it's sweet spot is way too small and narrow.

Yeah - the Volca bass is a great little analog box - but the filter is one of those screaming 70's Korg designs, and only 12db per octave - so it's never gonna fool anyone.

The Korg electribe filters seem to be carefully modeled, but they chose to go with the "increased resonance makes the volume drop" route. You can get a compressor/limiter set up that brings the volume drop back up to line level, or just get used to it. It's kind of handy in a crowded mix.

But that anti-aliasing is just too much to compensate for. I ran mine into an outboard distortion and cranked up the high EQ - you don't recover the missing frequencies, those just vanish. But you do pull the curtain back on the aliasing. There's a ton of it, much earlier than you'd expect.

I think one way that Korg got so much synthesis parts onto the new electribe was by running the parts at a lower quality, and then smoothing over the nasty aliasing. Really sweeping the dirt under the rug. I doubt the King Korg is filtered so hard.

I've looked at the electribe's output on Live's Spectrum analyzer. Made the filters self-oscillate, then cranked the cutoff knob up slowly. The higher it goes, the quieter it gets, the duller it sounds, with overtones and even root frequencies totally rounded off to nothing by C8. All kinds of noisy reflected frequency beating (starting at C6) too, so it's not even good anti-aliasing. It's a nyquistmare.

Despite that I still love it. Cold dead hands, etc.

KnowingWhatTheButtonDoes · Thu Jan 01, 2015 11:33 am

It's a nyquistmare.

Of Fourier rolling in his grave. But yeah, cold dead hands +1.

Funny thing, I had to choose what to get first a tribe 2 or a Bass Station 2. I chose the tribe cos of the broader application (drums, fx ect.) but i'll be getting the BS2 in a few months, so long squelchy licks won't be far off.

Ted3000 · Post by **Ted3000** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 9:14 pm

KnowingWhatTheButtonDoes wrote:
It's a nyquistmare.
Of Fourier rolling in his grave. But yeah, cold dead hands +1.

Funny thing, I had to choose what to get first a tribe 2 or a Bass Station 2. I chose the tribe cos of the broader application (drums, fx ect.) but i'll be getting the BS2 in a few months, so long squelchy licks won't be far off.

Bass Station II is my favorite analog synth - not comparing it to things like DSI and Moog. Blows the Minibrute to smithereens. Though I am pretty excited to see what Korg has done with the Arp Odyssey and how much it costs.

TechnoMusic · Post by **TechnoMusic** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 10:39 pm

The basstation sounds better, but the electribe is FAR better bang for the buck.

Ted3000 · Post by **Ted3000** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 3:27 pm

TechnoMusic wrote:The basstation sounds better, but the electribe is FAR better bang for the buck.

Quite true. But they're both excellent and a huge value. It's crazy how much you can get for milk money these days. The electribe does a million things that an analog synth can't. But a dedicated analog synth does one thing the electribe can't: juicy full-range analog zip.

People are attracted to the "one box does it all" approach. I totally get that, though I'd say "almost all."

Korg Forums

Korg electribe 2 Acid Filter vs. Novation Bass Station II

Of the two, who has the most accurate acid filter?

Korg electribe 2 Acid Filter vs. Novation Bass Station II