Easiest way to record- DAW or Kronos Sequencer?

[J.S. Bach]

I've done a fair amount of recording in professional studios with an engineer. I'm older now and just want to record some music by myself without spending massive amounts of time on the techy side. Is it more straight forward to record into my Kronos sequencer and then transfer the midi files to a DAW or would it be easier to just send audio from the Kronos to the DAW? Is there a DAW that works better with Kronos than the others?
I've looked through scores of topics on here and watched lots of youtube videos but so much information is confusing if you haven't used midi very much.
Thanks for any help or just directing me to a thread that already addresses this topic.

[GregC]

I am biased on the SEQ. Many DAW enthusiast think hardware recording is archaic and so on and so on.

Its really about the result you are looking for and what is a stream lined comfortable recording process- for you.
I think you have to figure that out- you are taking the correct steps.

100% of my recorded songs are Kronos SEQ. No DAW [ that is subject to change next year].

I believe I am getting near professions results with the SEQ. Feel free to check my Sound Cloud.

If you are strong on Kronos navigation and DISK/file management, you have a good footing to use the SEQ.

If it wasn't for the SEQ, it would be Cubase. However, you will read and find that Kronos is not DAW friendly. I will leave that explanation to others, who have doped out that connectivity and learning curve.

These kinds of choices are similar to what weather you like, your choice of favorite food, etc, etc. You know, all subjective.

[J.S. Bach]

Thanks for your quick reply. While I have recorded some songs with the sequencer, my attempts are rough. It's perfect to hit the quick record button from a combi and at least retain what my musical idea was. Going back and cleaning it up is where my weakness is.
Is it a better alternative to use Focusrite or other USB adapter in order to just record the audio out of the Kronos to a DAW? I have no hands on with any DAW's yet, just lots of videos.
I'm trying to get educated before I purchase additional hardware or software.
Thanks

[GregC]

Thanks for your quick reply. While I have recorded some songs with the sequencer, my attempts are rough. It's perfect to hit the quick record button from a combi and at least retain what my musical idea was. Going back and cleaning it up is where my weakness is.
Is it a better alternative to use Focusrite or other USB adapter in order to just record the audio out of the Kronos to a DAW? I have no hands on with any DAW's yet, just lots of videos.
I'm trying to get educated before I purchase additional hardware or software.
Thanks

I hear you. I work heavily in track edit and track parameter in the SEQ

I don't know about your computer. I am on Mac. It might be possible for you to get by without an audio interface{AI]. I found that its better to have an AI.
I am happy with my Steinberg UR44

When you purchase an AI, they usually give you stripped down DAW to work with, so thats a route to consider.

You should be hearing from other Kronos owners who use Logic- an excellent solution.

[gminorcoles]

I have the Kronos hooked up to the DAW - either Reaper or FL Studio in my case, but I own other daws like Logic that are not in favor right now. I use USB for the midi connection, which is ironic since I spent a lot of time setting up a low latency RME audio pci card.

But for keyboard playing, the latency is fine, and so hit record and play parts into the DAW from the Kronos, and then edit it in the piano roll which is super easy.

Then when I have parts recorded, sometimes i send all the midi back out to the Kronos and trigger the sounds there, because I find that for some sounds the Kronos sounds Better then anything else I have.

Some of those parts I recorded as audio in the daw just using the 1/4 outs into my audio interface.

I am a bad keyboard player and am super new to the Kronos but that is my workflow and i got two demos done that I am happy with.

[gminorcoles]

P.s. I wish I could edit the piano roll on the Kronos from my computer directly

[Poseidon]

Stay away from cheap audio interfaces. What’s the point to buy it, if Korg Kronos already have one.

My personal recommendation is to get RME, the lowest latencies, stable, splendid driver support. All this at affordable price.

if you have a Mac, Logic Pro X is probably the best performer from all DAWs, unless you want Pro Tools HD.

if you on Windows 10, and your system have more than 14 logical cores (CPU), avoid Cubase DAW, there are serious performance issues and drop-outs.

[voip]

A standalone multitrack recorder can also be very useful, and the workflow might have a more familiar feel to it.

.

[KorganizR]

just want to record some music by myself without spending massive amounts of time on the techy side. Is it more straight forward to record into my Kronos sequencer and then transfer the midi files to a DAW or would it be easier to just send audio from the Kronos to the DAW?

You say you don't want to get too techy.
I don't know if you're planning to use audio other than the Kronos' output (i.e. no VSTs, etc.).
If you only use the Kronos as a sound source, then I think:
1) you don't really need to send audio from the Kronos back to the DAW
2) and you don't need to send MIDI files over to the DAW either.

If you want to keep it real simple, consider another approach:
At least in my case I use Reaper as a DAW to use the piano roll, I just send MIDI events (not MIDI files) over the USB cable to the Kronos, and only use Kronos sounds and effects.
Basically I don't really record with the SEQ.
I use SEQ mode for playback only.
I use a SONG entry in a SNG file as a kind of COMBI setup (with all tracks set to BTH so MIDI goes both ways between Kronos and DAW, this cannot be done in a regular COMBI, AFAIK).
When I want to record, I playback from the DAW and record a WAV file on the Kronos.

And for external sounds you can always use Sampling on the Kronos and put it in a Program, so it can be triggered via MIDI by the DAW.

I know I'm missing out on advanced features that the Kronos SEQ has (e.g. recording of complete IFX setup changes via internal SysEx),
and I miss out on the nice sounds that VSTs can offer, but for me I want to keep it simple and only use the Kronos sounds and a DAW piano roll.
Therefore, this MIDI-USB-only setup works good for me.
Of course I need to backup both the Kronos SNG file and the DAW project file. It's not a single "Complete Recall" from within the DAW. But for me that's no problem.

Summary:
DAW (piano roll) <-> MIDI USB <-> Kronos SNG (as a "COMBI" with "BTH")
Playback controlled by DAW -> Record WAV file on Kronos.

Hope this helps.

[GregC]

[qu
1] When I want to record, I playback from the DAW and record a WAV file on the Kronos.

.

that sounds like a clever approach

question on 1] above. Do you need to route DAW audio into Kronos audio in ?

IOW, all audio is heard thru Kronos audio to speakers/headphones

[J.S. Bach]

Wow, thanks for the informative replies. I'll need to take some time to think through the choices. BTW I have a current Windows 10 laptop with 16 GB of ram, i7 core processor and 2T of hard drive.

[KorganizR]

question on 1] above. Do you need to route DAW audio into Kronos audio in ?
IOW, all audio is heard thru Kronos audio to speakers/headphones

Hi Greg, in my case I only use Kronos sounds (no VSTs, no external audio, just DAW MIDI to/from Kronos) in combination with Kronos headphone output, to keep it simple.
I currently don't have nor need an audio interface in my setup, that's why I never thought of routing audio from the DAW back to the Kronos for combined playback and recording.
But yes what you suggest sounds very interesting and definitely is something worth trying.
I think it should be possible.

It feels like "the other way around" to use a DAW, but hey, if it works...
For one, it might be a way to circumvent the 64/32-bit Kronos Editor/VST issue, if I'm correct.
Use the VSTs in the 64-bit DAW environment, in combination with DAW-to-MIDI USB to generate the Kronos audio, and do the end-stage WAV recording on the Kronos itself.
It might not be the workflow for everyone, but it's a nice alternative to have if it works.

Like I said, I don't have an audio interface myself, but I'm surely interested in the result if someone would give this a try.

I think this is a good example of this forum being a great place where ideas can be shared and combined to collectively produce new possibilities.

---

P.S. Something to be thoughtful of for those of you who want to experiment with Kronos SNG / DAW MIDI combination:
Whenever you do a "Copy from Program" (i.e. with effects) into the SONG on the Kronos,
for some reason the Kronos resets the Track status from "BTH" back to "INT", which means there's no MIDI going back to the DAW.
Simply set it back to "BTH" after "Copy from Program" and the MIDI is OK for that track again.
Took me a while before I found the culprit (see SEQ/Track Parameter/MIDI/Status).
Hope this helps someone.

[J.S. Bach]

With much time and effort I've managed to save a song in the Kronos seq. and then record the playback in the Reaper DAW. I can then edit in the DAW and send the MIDI back to Kronos to trigger the Kronos sounds that are in a song. In fact it's the same song that I originally record into the Kronos but I'm just receiving MIDI in at that point. So far, so good. My problem is that I'm trying to use a microphone plugged into the Kronos ( to use the built in USB adapter) to record vocals on the DAW. You can see my mic signal on the DAW vocal channedl just fine. However, when I playback the recorded song, the music plays through the mic input somehow. If I try to record the vocal track, all I get is the music from the Midi channels. I've tried lots of different settings in the Kronos (in the song settings and the Global settings) to cure this but haven't had any luck. Any ideas?

[VICTOR KENNEDY]

Interesting to read peoples comments on this topic.

I for one started out sequencing in the '80s with an Ensoniq ESQ Workstation, so it was all in the keyboard. Total hardware recording. The ESQ was very straight forward and easy to use. No fussing about when it came to editing etc.

I then got Steinberg Pro 24 running on an Atari 1040 ST computer, synced to a 4 Track tape machine and Ensoniq Mirage sampler. The move from Hardware to Computer based sequencing was a godsend in terms of flexibility and ease of use, as well as the micro details of parts.

Move into the late 90s and I started using Logic PC based DAWs etc. Again, another leap forward with more option and ease of use.

On and on we go, bringing me to 2020, where I use Macs, and have had a Korg Kronos for a few years. I don't find it's sequencing aspect at all user friendly. It is not quick and intuitive, and quite clumsy in regards to capturing the moments of inspirational jamming, composing etc.

To begin with, doing all that type of work on a small touch screen on the Kronos is very fiddly, and I don't find the editing of sequences very user friendly either.

As others in this post have said, it's a bit akin to what type of food you like, but from what the original poster says, that they want something for "Quick Capture" of inspirations, I'd certainly suggest using a DAW.

I prefer Pro Tools myself, as I do a lot of Audio recording as well, but I continually use my Kronos to record Midi tracks in Pro Tools, as well as recording from Kronos Outputs direct into ProTools, to record the Audio of my performance ( piano, strings, organ; weird synths etc etc).

I can also have a Midi track in Pro Tools that I've recorded with a different midi controller keyboard, and then send that Midi track into Kronos to assign a sound in the hardware, and route it back into ProTools for recording. Possibilities far more flexible AND fun compared to doing it all in the Kronos Sequencer.

There are of course many decent DAW programs available, and many FREE DAWs also, such as Reaper, Strudio One Freebie, and many more. Logic Pro X is very popular for Midi people, and I have that also, but generally prefer Pro Tools.

So, J.S. Bach, my suggestion to you would be to try out a free DAW to see how it sits with you. As for Kronos not 'working' within a DAW, I've never heard of such an issue. Mine works to a tee, and as I've written, can be used in many differing setups.

Give it a Go, you'll be so pleased you did.

[J.S. Bach]

As I stated, I'm using Reaper DAW. I found a convoluted work around to record my vocal through the Kronos into the DAW. I already have four Midi tracks recorded in Reaper and I'm adding an audio vocal track also. I was amazed how much I had to increase my buffer (from the initial 128 for recording without latency to 2048) in order to avoid dropouts. You can see my computer specs in my post above, but it's fairly new and fast.
With all of this effort to record a vocal, it was particularly frustrating to learn that my voice sucks. I had hoped the the plugins would make me sound good but apparently a pig with lipstick still isn't all that attractive.
The whole question in my previous post was that I was trying to figure out how the recorded Midi tracks were bleeding into my audio vocal track. From the workaround that I made work, I would have to conclude that it was sharing the USB I/O to/from the Kronos. I was simply trying to avoid buying a USB interface just to record one audio track but the latency involved made it very difficult to sing and monitor along with the existing recorded tracks in Reaper.