Have Korg now abandoned the electribe?

sauce · Post by **sauce** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 4:45 am

1_inch_punch wrote:I am certainly no fanboy. The circumstances are what they are.

I hear you. This unit is a piece of utter garbage, with terribly implemented features and glaring omissions, yet I continue to work with it, make it a centerpiece of my street-busking rig and upload tutorials to help users get the absolute most out of it. The relationship I have with this thing is ridiculous, lol.. But it's going to continue, at least for a good while.

Buska · Post by **Buska** » Wed Nov 04, 2015 12:40 pm

I pre-ordered, spent some solid time with it as I was travelling and it was my only music device other than an ipad.

It was fun and interesting but the synth engines are lackluster, and the terrible pcm sounds started to annoy me. All that wasted space that could have had more useful sounds put in.

Finally the 4 bar limit ended the fun. I got bored of using it at half bpm and using delays to make the drums more interesting.

I don't see anything in the new update that's even remotely got me interested getting another.

I waited many years for a new electribe and had such high hopes for this but it ended up really like a dsp vst in a box, clean and anaemic in character, lacking synth programming depth.

Pygmy · Post by **Pygmy** » Thu Nov 05, 2015 7:04 pm

I've (also) got a Roland TR8, and the difference between how Roland interacts with its customers and how Korg does is enormous.
First of all, the Roland (Aira) products seem to have been thought out very well; it seems they've really checked with their customers what they actually want. Their new Boutique line is, again, amazing for the money.

Then - they have an Aira Users group on facebook, and an Aira Crew group for members of the Aira team - *that other people can also join*. Stuff is discussed, people communicate and in general everyone is very happy.

Now compare this to the Korg facebook "support" sites, where no one from Korg ever shows up to say anything useful, everyone is disgruntled and the only person with less than 7 degrees of separation from Korg has left the group because he was pissed off about a hack that people used to make their Electribes slightly less useless.

jpeg · Post by **jpeg** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:42 pm

Buska wrote: It was fun and interesting but the synth engines are lackluster, and the terrible pcm sounds started to annoy me. All that wasted space that could have had more useful sounds put in.

I waited many years for a new electribe and had such high hopes for this but it ended up really like a dsp vst in a box, clean and anaemic in character, lacking synth programming depth.

what synth programming features did the emx-1 that the the current e2 does not have?

also was the emx also not just a dsp vst in a box?

finally yes the pcm sounds are poor but it seems that they are somewhat flexible because I have seen alot of variation on the sounds created using those sounds.

_INTER_ · Post by **_INTER_** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 5:10 pm

what synth programming features did the emx-1 that the the current e2 does not have?

It feels like turning a knob on the E2 only allows values between 20 - 70 compared to the EMX. It's like the sound is intentionally kept sterile and smoothed so that it by no means ever will rattle your teeth. On the EMX at certain knob values and weird combinations the osc would strangely start to interact, interfere and fluctuate (most you will never experience again without saving). Often enhanced by chaining the right kind of effects and modulation. Maybe everything is also possible on the E2, but then I'd need to start menu diving.
Rather than a dsp vst box, the EMX was a great sketch board that allowed immediate experimenting.

thesigma · Post by **thesigma** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 6:54 pm

The EMX, far from being an advanced synthesizer, has way more knobs, that should be a clue how they...um....simplified things on the e2. Yes it was DSP in a box, but the point of putting it in a box is to have knobs on that box....

Telengard · Post by **Telengard** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 9:12 pm

_INTER_ wrote:It's like the sound is intentionally kept sterile and smoothed so that it by no means ever will rattle your teeth.

As a previous EMX-1SD user, I can definitely get the teeth-rattling sounds and bizarre "nail on chalkboard" shivers with my e2 as well. I find that both with the e2 and the EMX that there is a world of sound in-between the tiny movement of the knobs on both. My favorite music genres are aggrotech and electro-industrial and I can definitely use the e2 to get those type of sounds. And in saying that I have done latin-based music, classical-ish, pop and many other with just it or of course the EMX as well.

I couldn't get those sounds from it when I started, though. It took a while just playing with it as it works similar to other electronic instruments, but has it's own quirks.

captain johnson · Post by **captain johnson** » Fri Feb 05, 2016 11:05 pm

What do people think about the possibility of further firmware updates??

thesigma · Post by **thesigma** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 1:07 am

captain johnson wrote:What do people think about the possibility of further firmware updates??

Possible? Sure. The previous electribes didn't get much in the way of updates though, so I'd not hold my breath.

Poumtschak · Post by **Poumtschak** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 11:32 am

thesigma wrote:The previous electribes didn't get much in the way of updates though, so I'd not hold my breath.

Sure, but being early 2000 technology (ASIC ?), they were not as heavily software based than the current gear. They had to do it right from the beginning.
OTOH, since its release, we've had 4 updates (1.03, 1.10, 1.17, 1.18 ) released for the e2, not counting the intermediate version on production runs (1.04? 1.05?).

I sure do hope for an EXpanded v2.0 electribe.
Why would there be so many (reserved) spacers in the data structure then ?

There's too much room for improvement in the UI and basic functionalities.

thesigma · Post by **thesigma** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 5:40 pm

I'm not sure that they were ASIC, but regardless they were updatable. Also we have no idea how much reserved space there was in the old ones.

As for those updates, weren't only two or three of them anything that actually changed something? And I say changed not fixed because people have complained about things being worse after the update, like the touchpad response or the noise in sleep mode or something's like that. And then there was the update that basically just blocked the hack. All of the updates thus far have basically only attempted to fix things that should have been done right from the start, there aren't any new features, unless you count a few shift+button shortcuts as new features, or they snuck one in I missed...

I think they must have fired all their good coders or they retired or something, because this whole thing has been really sloppy.

jbvdb493 · Post by **jbvdb493** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:28 pm

Poumtschak wrote:
thesigma wrote:The previous electribes didn't get much in the way of updates though, so I'd not hold my breath.
Sure, but being early 2000 technology (ASIC ?), they were not as heavily software based than the current gear. They had to do it right from the beginning.
OTOH, since its release, we've had 4 updates (1.03, 1.10, 1.17, 1.18 ) released for the e2, not counting the intermediate version on production runs (1.04? 1.05?).

I sure do hope for an EXpanded v2.0 electribe.
Why would there be so many (reserved) spacers in the data structure then ?

There's too much room for improvement in the UI and basic functionalities.

That doesn't make too much sense mate, anything with a chip and a firmware is upgradable
Only something like a minibrute that has no digital components is not upgradable

musicmagus · Post by **musicmagus** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:45 pm

My old rm1x firmware update came on a new chip that had to be installed. So, yes, i guess everything is upgrade-able, but maybe not through software methods.

musicmagus · Post by **musicmagus** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 10:52 pm

I've also got an adrenalinn 1 pedal I've been contemplating ordering the new firmware chip for. Why can't I update it through the interwebs? Because according to this one guy on the internet everything is upgradeable.... Damn you roger linn!!!

Poumtschak · Post by **Poumtschak** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 11:30 pm

thesigma wrote:I'm not sure that they were ASIC, but regardless they were updatable. Also we have no idea how much reserved space there was in the old ones.

Okay, the 2003 EMX/ESX were Renesas SH3 based. Basically one chip does it all, or so it seems.
And there were a few (11) reserve slots in the data structure actually:
http://www.korg-datastorage.jp/Software/MIDIImp/EMX.pdf

I agree than the electribe2 should not have been released prior to firmware 1.10, but we all know how clumsy and weird things have been since the fall 2014 announcement.

Still a nice capable unit.

And BTW, it's still possible to downgrade to 1.10 and do the firmware swap hack from there. Just a matter of changing the minor version byte in the SYSTEM.VSB, as usual. Korg doing much more to iron out bugs and UI discrepancies than anti-hack procedure is fine to me.

thesigma wrote:I think they must have fired all their good coders or they retired or something, because this whole thing has been really sloppy.

They're doing well with the Volcas, the SQ1, the Minilogue and so forth. ARM all over the place.