Dear Korg Staff, your Kronos users.

exsequor699 · Post by **exsequor699** » Thu Jun 17, 2021 2:15 am

Dear Korg staff,
first of all congratulations for the new workstation Korg Nautilus!We are from the KApro Club and love our flagship Korg KRONOS. We are now over 200 users who own one or two KRONOS and love the sound libraries of Korg & KApro. Unfortunately the aftertouch, controller and faders have been cut on the Nautilus. Of course I understand that they had to make savings! Thus, many users can now enjoy playing the sound of the KRONOS at a relatively low price! However, we wish for our flagship also the same features for the KRONOS. such as., the 4 different drum pattern, dark mode, transpose and so on! I just hope that you do not forget us and deliver an update for the mother of all workstations!
Many love greetings,
Your KRONOS users
#kronos #nautilus #korg

(From Kurt Ader and Michael Maschek facebook posts)

steveyoung29 · Post by **steveyoung29** » Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:16 am

Is there any sense or evidence that Korg are in conversation with their customers when looking to upgrade and improve their products? Since being on this forum I get the impression that Korg are arrogant and they have no intent to listen.

Steve

GregC · Post by **GregC** » Thu Jun 17, 2021 3:50 pm

steveyoung29 wrote:Is there any sense or evidence that Korg are in conversation with their customers when looking to upgrade and improve their products? Since being on this forum I get the impression that Korg are arrogant and they have no intent to listen.

Steve

I think its a question of money. Korg hasn't invested in kronos for 3 years. We have clearly corresponded to Korg Inc, and the answer is silence. it doesn't seem realistic to expect anything different.

steveyoung29 · Post by **steveyoung29** » Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:59 pm

Korg's silence is very disrespectful. Korg does have some excellent gear but to not correspond with the customers/user-base is not nice.

Steve

dimitris · Post by **dimitris** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:26 pm

KORG MUST listen because there are many new KRONOS buyers like me!!

Regards,
Dimitris

davc · Post by **davc** » Tue Jun 22, 2021 3:14 pm

sadly , at the age of the Kronos ... i doubt they'll be doing any more to make us happy owners ... old or new ... i bought the very first 88 note K to hit the Tampa area very long ago ...

now we can enjoy what we have ... or move on ..! complaining out it seems to be a waste of energy ..!?!?

Docflick · Post by **Docflick** » Tue Jun 22, 2021 5:05 pm

davc wrote: now we can enjoy what we have ... or move on ..! complaining out it seems to be a waste of energy ..!?!?

Full agreement. After 10 years, the Kronos is a "mature" product. Further updates by Korg are unlikely, and should not be expected. Korg has moved on, by spinning out the Oasys/Kronos architecture into the Nautilus.

As you suggest, I plan on enjoying the unmatched capabilities of my Kronos for years to come – clunky OS and UI be damned!

mosspa · Post by **mosspa** » Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:57 am

It's not like this was still the 20th Century, and the Kronos was like a Karma. Back in the day (and, I guess that really wasn't all that long ago), synthesizers were based on relatively discrete circuitry, developed specifically for the synth, and pretty much set in stone after the final revision was released. In order to change the hardware, for example, it would be necessary to completely change the circuitry. These synths suffered from sure obsolescence and eventual abandonment by the manufacturers simply because they had become obsolete. There is no reason that this would need to happen for the Kronos. On the inside of the synth there is a computer that is not all that different than the one that occupied the first IBM-PC in 1981. Sure, the motherboard is of a lot newer vintage, and even the paltry Intel Atom processor that powers it is 100s of times more powerful than the I-8088 in the first PC, and nobody today would ever consider paying $2000 for 1981 technology. However, the Kronos is much more than its guts, which is just an off-the-shelf x86 motherboard running the aforementioned Atom processor. What we perceive as the "Kronos" is just a computer program running on that processor and its integration with the hardware with which we interact on the surface of the synth. Ergonomically, Korg did a pretty good job in designing the hardware interface. Yes, the touch screen could be a little larger so it could support larger fonts in their current density, but the overall success of the Kronos for over a decade is a pretty good testament that Korg's physical user interface was satisfactory to most of its users. As somebody apparently first said, "Why fix something that isn't broken?", and that's what is critical to the evaluation of the Kronos as being obsolescent. Like the physical case of the original IBM-PC, there is nothing that prevents the Kronos from being a much more powerful device for the future if only a few simple changes were made to its hardware (i.e., installing a modern motherboard that utilizes a modern 64-bit multicore processor). The physical exterior of the Kronos and its components haven't really changed in over a decade. The fact that it remains the "flagship" of the Korg synth line is testimony to the fact that something must be right about it. If Korg was intent on "replacing" the Kronos, they certainly have a funny way of showing it by introducing the Nautilus as a hardware stripped down version with some software tweaks. If anybody in their R&D and marketing departments had more than one neuron functioning at any given time they would surely come to the conclusion that giving the processing capability a serious upgrade and devoting R&D dollars into software improvements and ergonomics would be a much better investment than starting from scratch and letting a perfectly acceptable platform die from obsolescence. Hell, if they just made substantive improvements to the platform they could probably accomplish three things at once: (1) Build consumer confidence in a product that demonstrates the company's willingness to support and improve it; (2) have a product that can technologically compete for new users in its intended marketplace (I'm thinking Roland Fantom, here); and (3) sell overpriced motherboard and software upgrades to current users who would gladly pay them and who otherwise might look elsewhere if they were being forced to purchase a new synth. I am only recently a new Kronos owner, and if Korg offered me an opportunity to upgrade my unit to one that featured a 64-bit operating system that ran on an 4.5+ MHz 8-core/16-thread processor on a modern x64 motherboard with, say, 32 GB of user RAM, and pledged that this would continue to be their market segment synth focus for the next decade, I'd happily shell out another $2k as opposed to thinking about moving to a new platform for twice the money. Also, given the degree to which the Fantom has surpassed the Kronos in the past several months, I'd probably end up jumping to Roland because there wouldn't be much point staying with Korg.

mosspa · Post by **mosspa** » Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:59 am

Oops, dual post

tunaman · Post by **tunaman** » Sun Jul 18, 2021 5:43 pm

Whoa… wall of text, too. TL:DR.

White space is our friend.

ITguy54 · Post by **ITguy54** » Sun Jul 18, 2021 6:30 pm

mosspa wrote: If Korg was intent on "replacing" the Kronos, they certainly have a funny way of showing it by introducing the Nautilus as a hardware stripped down version with some software tweaks.

I have to disagree with your logic. I think the opposite is true. The Nautilus is a smart way for Korg to drop the price of a Kronos, without actually dropping the price of the Kronos and pissing off people who paid full price. Korg probably got a lot of blowback from OASYS owners after the rug was pulled out from beneath them, when the Kronos came out at a much lower price. The Nautilus allows Korg to keep raking in the dough for people who want a Kronos, without Korg spending much on R&D. This could open the door for Korg to replace the Kronos at a future date. But Korg has no incentive to do so, as long as people keep buying the Kronos. Why should they?

We wouldn’t even be having all these discussions if the OASYS had truly been like the prototype shown at NAMM long ago.

billysynth · Post by **billysynth** » Fri Jul 23, 2021 4:37 am

That's why the Oasys MUST be brought back as Version 2 with a lot more power with a new contemporary 21st century look with premium aluminium hardware along with a premium BMW price tag. All good.

Increase the Power with all new technology, new powerful wavs, new synths and increase the Price. Include ARP 2600.

Nautilus is there for those of you who can't afford Oasys 2

Happy Days
Vas

blazerunner · Post by **blazerunner** » Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:19 am

steveyoung29 wrote:Is there any sense or evidence that Korg are in conversation with their customers when looking to upgrade and improve their products? Since being on this forum I get the impression that Korg are arrogant and they have no intent to listen.

Steve

They seem to give their attention to the analog gear community these days. They actually make what that crowd asks of them.

As for the Kronos it's like they forgot they make it or something.
Plenty of things about it that could do with a fix or an upgrade or even some kindly software for a DAW to make incorporating the Kronos into DAW setups easier.

I try to learn as much as I can about the keyboard and in those searches whether it's here or else where I always run into people asking the same questions and dealing with the same problems and it's not like a one off thing it's like going through the years since release with people running into the same issues.

At some point you'd think Korg would address them. I also don't understand most of all why there's no real tutorial video for the Kronos but they have all kinds of stuff for Analog gear. They even have regular uploads on synth tricks and tips...

But the Kronos has the same shallow 2 minutes videos from like whenever this thing came out with thousands of questions on the videos no one from Korg ever answered.

It's kind of funny,sad and amusing all at the same time. At least in those Trinity/Triton days they would just release a new version of the keyboard with all prayers answered. Now they release the same Keyboard with a new color scheme and a few new piano's added.

Pedja · Post by **Pedja** » Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:31 pm

I have to admit, that I more or less agree with everything, said about Kronos, and his eventual successor. I would just like to add that competition is the basic demotivating factor that keeps Korg asleep. There was a certain fear, before the release of Roland Fantom, which quickly subsided when they saw that there was no competition for them. I won't even talk about the Yamaha Montage. I think competition is the main driving mechanism. Nautilus has brought an improved user interface, very good new combies and programs, but that is not the successor of Kronos. The cosmetic changes of Korg Kronos, in recent years, are really devastating. If they are arrogant, they are, they do not listen to the voices of users, at all, although there are people, on this forum, who work for them, in one way or another. I think it's high time they released the update, which I doubt will happen.

danmusician · Post by **danmusician** » Sat Aug 21, 2021 7:09 pm

I don't think it's arrogance, I think it's business. Korg certainly has its finger to the wind in terms of marketing and product placement. If they believed there was a market for a new full-featured workstation, there would be one. For a tech company like Korg, it's not about making a particular product with particular capabilities. It's about bringing that product to market at a price point that will sell well enough to be profitable.

Back in the day, every new WS came it at about $2k. That's what the market would support. Every 18 months or so, Korg, Yamaha, Roland, Ensoniq, etc, would come out with a new product. The days of ever newer workstations being released are behind us for whatever reason. Whether people are using laptops and iPads or just keeping their hardware longer, the market doesn't seem to be there to justify new workstations. That's why Yamaha and Roland seem content to let the Kronos rule the WS kingdom. If the market was there, you'd see the others competing for the space.

I've said many times before, I believe that the Kronos is the last of the flagship workstations. It's been a great run!

PS - I would gladly be wrong about Kronos being the end of the line. Feel free to make me look foolish, Korg!