What is going on KORG???

[o.w.t.m]

Does it annoy the hell out of anyone else that Korg seem to have no interest in keeping their customers.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2016/04/m ... ser-tools/

The updates and feature improvements have been almost non existant, so what's up KORG do you even care about your customers and the standalone groovebox market any more?

[totalcult]

Does it annoy the hell out of anyone else that Korg seem to have no interest in keeping their customers.

Hahaha. That's a bit of a loaded question.

FWIW, I own both a Circuit and a ES2. The Circuit update does make it far more versatile, but with only 4 drum parts available, it means my ES2 still has a vital role to play in my setup.

BUT it's worth noting that pre-update, the Circuit was really just a pretty costly "preset skipping" machine. The update really makes it a viable bit of studio kit. The Electribes as they stand are already viable additions to any studio. Do they have limitations? Yes. Are they workable creative tools? No doubt!

I've read a LOT of bitching about the latest generation of Electribes, but there's really no alternative/equivalent unless you want to drop a whole lotta moolah.

[jpeg]

electribe got the market cornered defo

[Z7A]

I wish that KORG would give us an editor like the Circuit has, or themselves add more analog synths and instruments into the grey electribe, to replace all the drums and voice sounds. Because I use the sampler for those tasks.

Holding the Shift button to change more hidden parameters would be nice too.

[PureSecksPirate]

"Liberation through limitation" The new electribe series are more than functional. You just have to work for it and understand that you are only as good as your sound design skills and imagination. Really tired of hearing people bitch about it. Like really tired.

Here is a 35 minute drum and bass EP I released. Drum and bass is hard to program, but with enough drive and patience, I made it happen.

https://m.soundcloud.com/pinkertonpinkerton

[Redmond Barry]

4 drum parts are not enough for me at all. I could work with it but I'd always be wanting more so that alone disqualifies the Circuit for me. I'd take my ES2 warts and all over the Circuit in a heartbeat. I struggled with the ES2 for a year. I experienced the frustration everyone else has, but at one point everything just "clicked" and now I would never part with it. For me, I had to log in about 80 hours with it before I reached a point where I zip around on it comfortably and don't have to "think" while I use it. I'm a bit thickheaded when it comes to learning gear so I was slow on it..

[1_inch_punch]

yeah - like I *really* want to have to log online to

change my piddly number of samples..

change my piddly number of sessions - compared to the number of allsamples and allpatterns i can dload from my sd card..

purchase an interface to actually record my patterns to a comp when i can export the wavs to sdcard...

really??

[o.w.t.m]

My first Electribe was and EA-1 in 1999. At the same time I got my first MPC 2kXL, I also purchased the first Kaoss Pad to hit the market. This is now 17 years ago and essentially all Korg have done is combine some elements of each in YES a more advanced way, but seriously! Stop.
I am not bitching about how awesome or not it is! What I am saying is 'where's the real effort going in maintaining loyalty'!! In other words this means listen to your customers more KORG! It's what makes and brakes in 2016. Do something to seriously stay engaged with the community, aka updates to firmware and better editing tools ! Be active in the market, like your major competitors! Or Novation will do to you what N.I has done to AKAI!

[Ted3000]

If Korg gave us some cool features in a free OS update, the following things would happen:

electribes would be news items on the top of various gear blogs at a time when not a lot of new stuff is coming out.
electribes would get a sales boost with almost no marketing cost.
Existing owners would be happy.

Korg does not seem interested in this. No news, rumors, or official statements of development. They sort of half-patched the pattern transition problems, added shift shortcuts, and left it alone for 2 years.

If they would add a shift parameter to open up the insert effects, or give the sampler crowd a few more filters and the e2 people some limited sampling, that would be enough to make the electribe series freshly relevant.

Dual ADSR and filter tracking would also be nice, why not do this?

[thebiglebowski]

On the other hand Korg is doing a lot of cool things: the Minilogue synthesizer, the Volca series. Everyone asked for cheap analogue polyphonic synths for years and here they are, brought to you by Korg. The engineers and designers responsible for those products are giving interviews and have fancy photo shoots. The Minilogue and Volcas are hot news.

My guess - the Electribe 2 has (unofficialy) abandonware status, once Korg realised they make more money on iOS apps like Korg Gadget (which is upated on a regular basis). There is no E2 development team anymore, focus is elsewhere.

Its a bummer, the machine had a lot of potential. But I'm still optimistic. With the excitement surrounding Novations Circuit, and the general trend of moving away from the computer to hardware, I don't think its the last time we will see a standalone hardware groovebox.

[apapdop]

On the other hand Korg is doing a lot of cool things: the Minilogue synthesizer, the Volca series. Everyone asked for cheap analogue polyphonic synths for years and here they are, brought to you by Korg. The engineers and designers responsible for those products are giving interviews and have fancy photo shoots. The Minilogue and Volcas are hot news.

My guess - the Electribe 2 has (unofficialy) abandonware status, once Korg realised they make more money on iOS apps like Korg Gadget (which is upated on a regular basis). There is no E2 development team anymore, focus is elsewhere.

Its a bummer, the machine had a lot of potential. But I'm still optimistic. With the excitement surrounding Novations Circuit, and the general trend of moving away from the computer to hardware, I don't think its the last time we will see a standalone hardware groovebox.

I think you hit the nail squarely on the head here...

[SMK]

My guess - the Electribe 2 has (unofficialy) abandonware status, once Korg realised they make more money on iOS apps like Korg Gadget (which is upated on a regular basis). There is no E2 development team anymore, focus is elsewhere.

I could almost agree with this (and it does make sense) if only Korg would release the SDK on the ES2/E2 and make this all open source so another company like Single Cell can do some amazing things with it. This is what was done with the Volca Sample, and can be done here.

Since that does not look like this will be the case, I think Korg is trying to figure out how to segue it's attention back the the Electribes...it's going to be tough.

IMHO user negativity towards the new Electribes have not helped this community at all. I believe because Korg got to read many comments that the new tribes were, lets just say; "underwhelming" negatively impacted inspiration any further development into making the Tribe better. It's better to go with what gear or software is getting the best response from users.

We want everything now now now, but when it's not perfect, instead of being patient for firmware updates, it's all negative reviews.

There are things I have bitched about in regards to the Electribes but I have never said anything to the regard that this gear not good. I relay on these tools, heavily now. There are things that would make life so much better but I can work with in the limits of my chosen gear, which for the most part has taken very good care of me.

[apapdop]

I've been bitten quite badly by the Volca bug these past few months and i've gotta say, the "functional robustness" of those little boxes puts the new 'tribes to shame in a few places. I know that the new Electribes are far more powerful, flexible and productive in sooooo many ways compared to the Volcas but hey. You can switch to a different pattern on a Volca and notes are allowed to release/loop naturally, until a new one is triggered. The new Electribes don't do this. It's my biggest gripe and yet these bargain bucket little Volcas do it without batting an eyelid. And as an added bonus, the Volcas can switch patterns BEFORE the outgoing pattern finishes whilst remaining in step with itself. Huge plus there for me. It expands those limited memory slots and 16 steps per pattern in a big and often spontaneous way.

The Volca Sample, 10 part sequencer, right? It can happily blaze away with all parts firing at the same time (bearing in mind parts 9 and 10 are tied together as choke parts) without any note stealing. Ok, the resulting racket is not always what you would want musically, but i've never had 9 simultaneous parts playing on the black Electribe. Throw in some delay based insert FX's... forget it.

Once i started adding other pieces of hardware to my setup, i realised that the role the new Electribes play for me could change. Instead of trying to do EVERYTHING inside of one Electribe, i could use it more as a means of creating/playing backing tracks. Using the Event Recorder, i would create a backing track either by live tweaking/muting of a single pattern, or by recording a chain of pattern changes. My hope was that somehow i could have the playback of this backing track synced up with one or more Volcas, so i could jam along with the Volca sequencers and process their audio through the Electribes FX (which is a HUGE strength of the Electribe range, even more so on the new models...)

Playback of Event Recordings CANNOT be synced to external sources. Either by MIDI or the sync in/out, regardless as to whether the Electribe is master or slave.

I'm happy with the Event Recorder, i don't pine for the much lamented Song Mode of the previous 'tribes, but not being able to sync the playback of the recordings to external gear is... baffling.

I still love the new Electribes and am more than happy to use them. But yep, i get the feeling that Korg doesn't have much love for them anymore.

Rant over.

[Poumtschak]

We want everything now now now, but when it's not perfect, instead of being patient for firmware updates, it's all negative reviews.

Except the electribe2 line has been marketed while the product was immature and not ready for release (until firmware 1.10). Add to this the low volume availability problem, and you've got the picture.

I'm not interested by the Novation Circuit, but to me Korg should take lessons from Novation for their next generation product.
Circuit has been released with limited but basics covering features, and was available in stores right from the beginning of the marketing campaign. So they had the batch built and shipped months even before the teaser.
And then they started building from here, unleashing features, specs, endorsing external editors, and now allowing user samples uploading through a web browser editor, not to mention thorough computer integration. All this in a quite short time line, so the user market attention keeps its momentum.

It must have been planed from the beginning, so kudos to Novation.

OTOH, one's would have the feeling Korg had no vision for the electribe2/sampler, except rushing half-finished products to the market, and doing a little damage control after that. Not the mention the infamous OS swap, which had no response (not even asking endorsement) from them, let alone protection. You still can edit the headers, downgrade the OS and do the swap.

Maybe they just needed a product, we'll never know.

Yet, the unit is a very capable sketchpad and creative tool, tons of Youtube videos for that. But still a frustrating experience.

electribe2/sampler EX final OS2.0 please Korg!

[captain johnson]

I'd love for them to improve the voice handling on the units via a firmware update! I do think there will be another update though for sure!!