Korg Kross 2 or a Roland Juno DS61

[Biggles]

Well after hours of trawling throgh the manual and watching the Korg Video Manuals over and over again, I saw the light.

No thanks to Korg but thanks to watching the Roland Juno DS videos, they taught me what I wanted to know.

Then I went back to see if I could then make sense of the Korg Manual and I think I have figured out the systems.

Now to go and put my new knowledge into practice on a demo Kross 2 and see if I have it right.

Saturday and I am music store bound.

[Biggles]

The deed is done.

I am now owner of a Korg Kross 2.

[Scott]

Here you are some quick mark-ups

Kross 2 has
• multi-sampling feature with 128MB for user samples
• more user storage + all patches/combis could be edited re-written if needed.
In numbers, this means:
1280 vs 256 in Programs
and
896 vs 128 in Combinations
• more pads (16), more intuitive for on-the-fly jammin'
• smaller and lighter body-factor, more airplane-friendly (935x269x88 @ 3.8kg vs 1008x300x97 @ 5.3kg)

Juno-DS61 has
• slot for loading Axial Sound Library (orchestral sounds or world collection are actually nice add-ons)
• more knobs (4 vs 2)
• dedicated buttons for octave / transpose functions that DOES NOT cut sound off
• "sound remain" option for transition between Programs (doesn't work in Combi though)
• numeric (digit) input for patches - yep, you have to jog the wheel for 511 user patches to jump from 473 back to 020 and then all the way up to 496 on Kross
• Reverb and delay effect that can be used together. Yep, Kross can only use 110ms delay if combined with reverb.

With the 2.0 Update, Juno DS-61 now has multi-sampling with (i've read) 55 mb for user samples.

Sound remain does work in Combis (or as Roland calls them, Performances), though you may sometimes hear a glitch because of a change in effect (which can happen between Programs as well).

IHaving a split and easily use setup for the split and quick instrument selection (particularly right hand) is looking as though it is my main requirement.

With the Kross when using a split keyboard you have to mess around in the menu system to get the sound balance right yet with the Roland you have two physical sliders, one for upper and the other for lower.

Split is a particular strength of the Roland. Yes, you have sliders for upper and lower. Also a particularly nice feature when you have only 61 keys, is that it is easy to octave-shift JUST the lower or JUST the upper part, on the fly.