Aditional engines

Bachus · Post by **Bachus** » Sun Jul 05, 2015 8:10 am

Once in a while this topic surfaces..

Currently i am very much enthralled by the depth of my recently purchased Kronos, there is so much goodness in there allready to play with.. it will probably take ages before i consider myself a pro with the machine..

Yet currently i find myself often choosing the other instruments in my setup when it comes to certain sounds, which are more suited for those.. espescially acoustic instruments like wood, brass, ethnic and such, when i choose Roland or Yamaha.. Same goes for strings, where my kontakt libraries come in very handy..

Now i am still wondering if Korg could and will cover these and other brakcets in the Kronos sound palette with new emngines in future models or software updates..

Will we ever see a virtual accoustic engine like the Technics WSA engine (which was for sale recently) that could be used for great dynamic accoustic sounds..

And would other synth engines like the Radias or the King korg (with all those great emulted filters) make a good edition to the Kronos?

Or should they just add all the stuff from the kORG gadget (ipad app) to the kronos, just to give people something to play around with inside the Kronos...

I dont htink for me in my setup there currently is much to wish for, but its filling out my room nicely, and if i wanted to perform on stages with just a single keyboard, i might love to see some of those other things added to the Kronos...

Broadwave · Post by **Broadwave** » Sun Jul 05, 2015 8:31 am

I should imagine it would be "fairly" easy for Korg to introduce new engines... I've been hankering for a Mono/Poly for the past 4 years

My original K61 has come on in leaps and bounds since the original OS release, and as new Kronos 2 owners start off with OS3, hopefully Korg will continue to improve things in the future.

Obviously Korg won't be announcing a new Kronos at this weeks NAMM, but I'm hoping for some possible updates.

cynkh · Post by **cynkh** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 7:27 pm

Well, the ease of which new engines can be introduced notwithstanding, the engines already in place I believe cover everything you mentioned right out of the box.

I think the Kronos HD-1 engine is the most versatile hardware sampling engine I've ever worked with. That and Korg have opened up the streaming sample playback to user samples. If you're willing to play around with some of the controller settings and KARMA engine (or at least flip through the trillions of KARMA GE's already in there

) the Kronos is at least as good as, if not better than, anything Roland and Yamaha have on offer. Within a program you may find it more limiting than the aforementioned due to what appears to be a deficit of filter options. If you stay the course, though, and use filters via FX (yup, they're in there

) or- my personal favorite- use a Kronos combination as a virtual modular and route HD-1 sounds through other engines (MS-20, AL-1, MOD-7, STR-1) there is no limit to the expressivity and tonal palette at your disposal.

As for the physical modeling, the STR-1 is quite an amazing modeling engine for working with a string model. It's a little deceptive since string modeling sounds very limiting; but, again with some creativity some absolutely other-worldly sounds can be achieved. Or, if you prefer, some absolutely this-worldly sounds

. For example, using noise or a long attack sample to excite the string in the string model can achieve similar results to a wind model.

I personally would love to see Korg release the full complement of King Korg (generated) waveforms and filters for the Kronos. I also love Bachus's suggestion for a Korg Gadget collection for the Kronos.

Cheers!

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 7:54 pm

I think apart from unique features like wave sequencing and direct-from-disk streaming, HD1 is pretty limited compared to what the competition offers. I'm not surprised the OP prefers Kontakt there, but Kontakt is ahead of all hardware offerings as far as I'm aware. Perhaps the JP80 comes close but Kontakt is much more flexible.

That said, the Korg expansions (and some third party ones) certainly cover better strings, guitars, woodwinds, brass and ethnic sounds (and almost everything else).

After so many years with not even a hint of a new engine it seems unlikely to me, but we can always hope.

Derek Cook · Post by **Derek Cook** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 8:57 pm

cynkh wrote:..... or- my personal favorite- use a Kronos combination as a virtual modular and route HD-1 sounds through other engines (MS-20, AL-1, MOD-7, STR-1) there is no limit to the expressivity and tonal palette at your disposal.
Cheers!

I am still scratching the surface of the Kronos..... Can you do really do that?

I guess I'll have to go and read the manual again

but if you give a hint as to how to do it (or point to a manual section) that would be appreciated....

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 9:05 pm

Use combi mode to direct a timbre to a record bus, and set up another program in your combi to use the record bus as EXi audio input.

Bachus · Post by **Bachus** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 5:31 pm

SanderXpander wrote:Use combi mode to direct a timbre to a record bus, and set up another program in your combi to use the record bus as EXi audio input.

thanks Xander, i just tested this and it works like a dream...

cynkh · Post by **cynkh** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 5:40 pm

What Sander said!

Another personal favorite of mine with the real-time controls is to set up the vector joystick to control tape delay depth and time on the X and Y for immensely spacey sounds!

Also, check out the Glass Runner patch for some inspiration with FX and busses. I dare you to leave your house within the first couple hours of dialing that patch up!

Cheers!

Derek Cook wrote:
cynkh wrote:..... or- my personal favorite- use a Kronos combination as a virtual modular and route HD-1 sounds through other engines (MS-20, AL-1, MOD-7, STR-1) there is no limit to the expressivity and tonal palette at your disposal.
Cheers!
I am still scratching the surface of the Kronos..... Can you do really do that? I guess I'll have to go and read the manual again but if you give a hint as to how to do it (or point to a manual section) that would be appreciated....

Derek Cook · Post by **Derek Cook** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 6:33 pm

SanderXpander wrote:Use combi mode to direct a timbre to a record bus, and set up another program in your combi to use the record bus as EXi audio input.

Thanks, I will have to try that out some time.

LZ · Post by LZ » Wed Jul 15, 2015 1:15 am

I generally don't find the Kronos lacking, but if I could just have whatever the hell I wanted, I'd add:

The King Korg filters to the AL1 engine

An Additive engine (I know, technically CX3 is additive, but you know what I mean)

Wind modelling (covering reed/brass/flute)

LZ · Post by LZ » Wed Jul 15, 2015 1:17 am

Then they could say "our engines go to eleven"

psionic311 · Post by **psionic311** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 2:54 am

LZ wrote:I generally don't find the Kronos lacking, but if I could just have whatever the hell I wanted, I'd add:

The King Korg filters to the AL1 engine

An Additive engine (I know, technically CX3 is additive, but you know what I mean)

Wind modelling (covering reed/brass/flute)

+1, except that I'd trade additive for brass modelling, like from the MOSS boards

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 5:03 am

LZ mentioned the same thing already?

Bachus · Post by **Bachus** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 7:20 am

LZ wrote:I generally don't find the Kronos lacking, but if I could just have whatever the hell I wanted, I'd add:

The King Korg filters to the AL1 engine

An Additive engine (I know, technically CX3 is additive, but you know what I mean)

Wind modelling (covering reed/brass/flute)

Add to that a modular engine, which they could expand uppon till eternity with new modules... You would have a perfect 12 engines, and have the sound engines future proof for quite some time.....

And if you made that engine MAX based, you could even have people create their own modules..

LZ · Post by LZ » Wed Jul 15, 2015 1:53 pm

Bachus wrote:
LZ wrote:I generally don't find the Kronos lacking, but if I could just have whatever the hell I wanted, I'd add:

The King Korg filters to the AL1 engine

An Additive engine (I know, technically CX3 is additive, but you know what I mean)

Wind modelling (covering reed/brass/flute)
Add to that a modular engine, which they could expand uppon till eternity with new modules... You would have a perfect 12 engines, and have the sound engines future proof for quite some time.....

And if you made that engine MAX based, you could even have people create their own modules..

There's some limited capablilty to do that now with some of the Audio input tied to being able to route things to the rec bus, and then parts of certain engines available as IFX. They could expand on that some. But theoretically, now for instance you could take a Mod 7, run it through an AL1 filter, and through a PolySix ensemble effect.

But I hear what you're saying. I think the problem trying to implement something like MAX is that 1) you could run out of horsepower in a hurry, and 2) it would likely be difficult to maintain stability without the ability to fully test a feature before releasing it.