Kronos 3 expected Launch

Derek Cook · Post by **Derek Cook** » Thu Oct 12, 2023 7:34 pm

I do not think we will ever see a Kronos 3, as the nautilus is obviously the new flagship. Some people will love it, some will not, but I suspect most of those will be existing Kronos owners like myself, who need the features in the Kronos (like Karma)

I feel that Korg have diversified into other synth lines and that is probably where the money is. The Wavestate and Modwave are amazing, so Korg are still innovating, just not in a workstation format.

In the mean time, as I have said many times before here, my Kronos is amazing and I still think after nine years I have only scratched the surface of mine.

blazerunner · Post by **blazerunner** » Sat Oct 14, 2023 7:59 am

Derek Cook wrote: I still think after nine years I have only scratched the surface of mine.

For that reason is why I preferred an update over a new keyboard. It takes so long to learn the ins and outs of these keyboards because they're so complex. A new keyboard not only adds on the expense of a a few grand out your pocket but the learning curve it takes to become efficient with it. After you spent years learning your keyboard you get used to it and start yearning for features and fixes. It would have been nice if Korg thought in that way and threw us some genuine updates to keep your Kronos competitive with whats out there but they just abandoned us.

Even if Korg were to release a new workstation how many variations of it would it need to go through before they finally settled on "The One". Took a lot of Kronoses to get to the Kronos 2. The Korg business model of just making an entirely new product version of the same thing instead of providing downloadable updates to make the old thing do what the new thing does is very yester year. A lot of manufacturers have proved that and even with analog synths that updates can be provided to expand the capabilities of the synth.

I'm just not all that excited to drop 4 grand on a synth that I know won't have any real support and will be dropped the moment the manufacturer decides to make one in a different color with an additional sound bank. The Kronos as good as its reign was really deserved better product support from the manufacturer. It's almost like Korg abandoned it long before we all realized. It's just software. It's not impossible for them to have programmed some new useful stuff for us to download and enjoyed.

But... it is what it is. For what the Kronos can do I will use it. For what it can't do I'll just use something else. For me the disappointments with my Kronos isn't so much to do with the keyboard as it is Korg's decision making. Reminds me much of pioneer with the SP16. A user base that loved it but pointed out the problems, informed the manufacturer, waited patiently for fixes that never came and then one day the SP16 was discontinued leaving loyal users stuck with a buggy machine they had to find work arounds to enjoy. Why? did Pioneer do that? Who knows it was also just simple fixes fans of the machine asked Pioneer to resolve.

ArminH · Post by **ArminH** » Sat Oct 14, 2023 5:43 pm

The new one is called Montage m8X

ChrisDuncan · Post by **ChrisDuncan** » Sat Oct 14, 2023 10:28 pm

Derek Cook wrote:I do not think we will ever see a Kronos 3, as the nautilus is obviously the new flagship. Some people will love it, some will not, but I suspect most of those will be existing Kronos owners like myself, who need the features in the Kronos (like Karma)

I feel that Korg have diversified into other synth lines and that is probably where the money is. The Wavestate and Modwave are amazing, so Korg are still innovating, just not in a workstation format.

In the mean time, as I have said many times before here, my Kronos is amazing and I still think after nine years I have only scratched the surface of mine.

I have difficulty classifying the Nautilus as a flagship as it seems to be exactly the same class of creature as the ModX and Fantom-0 series - "flagship lite." Those are the models which are direct competitors to the Nautilus. Korg was just late to market with a less expensive, scaled down version and was playing catch up to Yamaha and Roland.

Even so, you may be right that the Kronos is as far as Korg is willing to take the flagship workstation concept. To a degree I can understand this. Beyond the incremental tweaks that all three flagships could use (there's always a list of improvements that customers want), I just don't know where they could go next to up the ante.

Polishing the bumpers on the existing line (which is all the Montage M is doing) is easy. Coming up with something new that would run laps around the existing flagships is difficult to imagine.

Especially since, as you pointed out, I still haven't scratched the surface on what I already have.

Arizona Sage · Post by **Arizona Sage** » Wed Oct 18, 2023 6:46 pm

Kronos as a VST....why Korg hasn't done this yet is mind boggling. It would sell like hotcakes. Just give us the engines please....would make fly dates so much better.

average_male · Post by **average_male** » Wed Oct 18, 2023 11:55 pm

Arizona Sage wrote:Kronos as a VST....why Korg hasn't done this yet is mind boggling. It would sell like hotcakes. Just give us the engines please....would make fly dates so much better.

Korg wrote:We can sell a physical Kronos for $3K or someone could forego the sale and download a hacked version of the Kronos VST and we would lose a sale.

Derek Cook · Post by **Derek Cook** » Thu Oct 19, 2023 7:08 pm

average_male wrote:
Arizona Sage wrote:Kronos as a VST....why Korg hasn't done this yet is mind boggling. It would sell like hotcakes. Just give us the engines please....would make fly dates so much better.

Korg wrote:We can sell a physical Kronos for $3K or someone could forego the sale and download a hacked version of the Kronos VST and we would lose a sale.

I do not see why not for a technology that must be now 15 years old. They have "gone native" for Modwave, Wavestate and OPSIX in a far shorter period and now have VST versions of many of their classics - but still a lot of omissions of course.

ChrisDuncan · Post by **ChrisDuncan** » Thu Oct 19, 2023 7:26 pm

Derek Cook wrote: I do not see why not for a technology that must be now 15 years old. They have "gone native" for Modwave, Wavestate and OPSIX in a far shorter period and now have VST versions of many of their classics - but still a lot of omissions of course.

Yeah, it's all about return on investment, which I'm sure you understand being a developer.

By the way, the Roland guys desperately need you to write a librarian for their Fantom (far more important to most of them than having a VST version). I mean, you know, whenever you have a little spare time.

Derek Cook · Post by **Derek Cook** » Sat Oct 21, 2023 5:38 am

ChrisDuncan wrote:
Derek Cook wrote: I do not see why not for a technology that must be now 15 years old. They have "gone native" for Modwave, Wavestate and OPSIX in a far shorter period and now have VST versions of many of their classics - but still a lot of omissions of course.
Yeah, it's all about return on investment, which I'm sure you understand being a developer.

By the way, the Roland guys desperately need you to write a librarian for their Fantom (far more important to most of them than having a VST version). I mean, you know, whenever you have a little spare time.

Yeah, I understand ROI

, and it depends on many factors, but given the Kronos is a virtual instrument I would have thought it not that difficult to port to a new software format, but that is speculation of course.

I am afraid I do not own Roland hardware, so no chance of me writing a Roland Librarian.

You can tell the synths I own from the librarian list. summit.factory is in development and then there will be one for the Hydrasynth as their librarian is shockingly terrible!

ChrisDuncan · Post by **ChrisDuncan** » Sat Oct 21, 2023 3:21 pm

Derek Cook wrote: I am afraid I do not own Roland hardware, so no chance of me writing a Roland Librarian. You can tell the synths I own from the librarian list. summit.factory is in development and then there will be one for the Hydrasynth as their librarian is shockingly terrible!

Yeah, I've done more than a few projects purely out of self defense, because I couldn't find what I wanted elsewhere. I'm just too lazy to take on a librarian project. Last time I worked on a MIDI app I recall it being a pita. Of course, that was back in the C++ days, so maybe it's better in .Net now.

kronoSphere · Post by **kronoSphere** » Sat Oct 21, 2023 3:51 pm

In the absence of a Kronos 3 : a superb and flamboyant OS 4 would really be welcome.
Would that be too much to ask ?

KK · Post by KK » Sat Oct 21, 2023 6:54 pm

The last Korg programmer who attempted to update the Kronos OS probably died from a gigantic headache.

ITguy54 · Post by **ITguy54** » Sat Oct 21, 2023 9:31 pm

kronoSphere wrote:In the absence of a Kronos 3 : a superb and flamboyant OS 4 would really be welcome.
Would that be too much to ask ?

Yes. They don’t care.

cjfox · Post by **cjfox** » Thu Oct 26, 2023 7:32 pm

With the introduction of the new Keystage, a virtual Kronos would make even more sense. It took them a while to do the virtual Triton, but they did it.

kday · Post by **kday** » Tue Oct 31, 2023 2:34 pm

Koekepan wrote:My completely uninformed outsider's view (but I have dealt with a lot of product design questions in other contexts):

KORG didn't want to keep doing Kronos. They could have had many reasons; trouble with maintenance, a desire to change strategy, a desire to put money elsewhere, a hope that they could get a higher margin on a cut-down product with the sheen of the prior flagship. Who knows? They do, and we don't.

There is no reason to believe (that I can see) that they intend to maintain their supremacy in the workstation market, there is no reason to believe that they have anything big up their sleeves for the near future as far as keyboard workstations are concerned, and given that the Big Three tend to echo each other's behavior a lot and both Yamaha and Roland have basically given up on workstations, there's ample industry reason to believe that KORG doesn't want to do this any more. They're just sunsetting the line, and offering the Nautilus as a terminal product.

Why do people think like this ^^^? lol

Korg, Yamaha, Roland have been building newer synths and newer workstation consistently for decades. That's there business model to earn revenue in the professional musical instrument department, and it's been very successful for all three companies overall, otherwise they would've stopped a long time ago.

Korg will never stop making flagship Workstations, neither will Yamaha or Roland. Korg knows when is the best time to release their Kronos 3. One thing I did observe is that the big three keyboard companies tend to not release flagships at the same exact time. If Yamaha or Roland released a new workstation this year, you most likely won't get a Korg flagship this year or possibly even next. But the next to release the next big flagship most likely will be Korg, now that Yamaha released theirs.