Crystal ball opinions on Kronos 2

[kday]

Kronos and Workstations in general are not designed to be sold forever.

They want to sell a lot of them of course. But they also want you to buy the next flagship that comes out because older technology becomes harder to support over time.

So they will continue to build newer flagships to gain another 20,000+ workstation sales, and not try to rely on 2000 sales for a few more years of an old keyboard.

Flagship workstations will always be popular, and will always sell, and will never become obsolete from any software made overall. So every so many years we will forever see newer flagship workstations from the keyboard companies in their due time.

[Liviou2004]

Kronos and Workstations in general are not designed to be sold forever.

They want to sell a lot of them of course. But they also want you to buy the next flagship that comes out because older technology becomes harder to support over time.

So they will continue to build newer flagships to gain another 20,000+ workstation sales, and not try to rely on 2000 sales for a few more years of an old keyboard.

Flagship workstations will always be popular, and will always sell, and will never become obsolete from any software made overall. So every so many years we will forever see newer flagship workstations from the keyboard companies in their due time.

Yamaha has stopped workstations production with MOTIF, 5 years ago. Many people refer to the Montage/ModX as a workstation, that's not the case.

The Montage has been designed as a flagship synthesizer, not a worksation.

Here is an excerpt of Sound on Sound about the Montage :

"Perhaps the most important thing you need to understand about the Montage is that it’s a synthesizer rather than a workstation"...
Although the Montage isn’t a workstation...( https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-montage-7 ).

I have the both : Kronos and Montage, so I can compare ! Definitely, the Montage is not a workstation. Yamaha got rid of this concept 5 years ago !

So we can imagine Korg could do the same. It's not impossible.

[Hector Space]

Regarding the Mac or PC or Linux and soft synths with usb interfaces.
The issue isn’t stability, it’s to do with companies like Apple and Microsoft forever updating the operating systems often because of bugs or exposed weaknesses but mainly because it’s their income stream to sell more hardware and software.

What this means is regardless of which commercial platform you use you’re out of control because changes can and will be made that will make your apps and interfaces fail. That happens regularly regardless of whether it’s a Mac, Windows PC or Linux Pc..etc.

This means that companies that produce apps and hardware interfaces that run on these systems will always have to invest extra money in product maintenance, or dump customers with short lifecycle products.

Korg have given themselves extra breathing space by fixing the Kronos hardware and operating system at a stable milestone behind a safe wall. This has provided them with 10 years of more or less update free operation. Apart from the need to update the Mac USB interface.

[GregC]

Kronos and Workstations in general are not designed to be sold forever.

So every so many years we will forever see newer flagship workstations from the keyboard companies in their due time.

Yamaha has stopped workstations production with MOTIF, 5 years ago.

I have the both : Kronos and Montage, so I can compare ! Definitely, the Montage is not a workstation. Yamaha got rid of this concept 5 years ago !

So we can imagine Korg could do the same. It's not impossible.

I agree. My MODX is not a w/s. I have to use Cubase to lay down tracks effectively. The pattern SEQ is sort of useful but not for any end recording
result.

There is zero assurance that Korg will ever replicate a w/s class keyboard in the future.

Product decisions made in 2010 and prior do not accurately reflect or predict what will happen next year and 2023 and so on.

Circumstances, the marketplace, access to 3rd party components , have all changed radically [ its not just covid]. Companies have also made substantial
internal changes. Korg has. Its part of business survival. Its difficult to see the change as we are on the outside. Thus I would not assume a replay of Korg 2010 , etc.

[Track 7]

What this means is regardless of which commercial platform you use you’re out of control because changes can and will be made that will make your apps and interfaces fail. That happens regularly regardless of whether it’s a Mac, Windows PC or Linux Pc..etc.

This means that companies that produce apps and hardware interfaces that run on these systems will always have to invest extra money in product maintenance, or dump customers with short lifecycle products.

Thus my curiosity about Presonus Sphere and other cloud services. I know there's resistance to this model, but it seems the only way to futureproof is to ride whichever wave of the present appeals to you most and hang on for the ride. I love hardware as much as some other folks on this forum (for a brief moment today I was tempted to buy a nearly mint and fully loaded OASYS just for the rock-solid cool factor ). But hardware doesn't last forever either, and you can't subscribe to it with monthly updates.

[KingKronos]

Some quick thoughts regarding usb and Mac/Win/Linux having to constantly update drivers.

Thanks be that SPDIF doesn't require drivers. A 90's device with SPDIF still works with a 2020+ device with SPDIF, which the Kronos has. Reason I'm bringing this up is because I'm considering getting a MOTU 828es for its SPDIF input that ultimately goes thru an ESS Sabre32 DAC. The sonic gains might be minimal thanks to the Kronos Burr Brown DAC being good enough, but the immense routing flexibility of the MOTU might be enough to justify it regardless.

I'm imagining all sorts of fun routing the Kronos. Making the Kronos a hybrid by sending it thru a DSI evolver's stereo Curtis filters or thru a Minitaur's moog filter. Thru a Kurzweil Mangler or an ipad AU FX. All live onstage and with minimal latency. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I doubt I've pushed the Kronos to its limits.

[Jan1]

I have the both : Kronos and Montage, so I can compare ! Definitely, the Montage is not a workstation. Yamaha got rid of this concept 5 years ago !

So we can imagine Korg could do the same. It's not impossible.

However, Yamaha received a lot of criticism from users who missed the presence of a sequencer and who had hopes for something more along the lines of a next gen Motif.
To pacify that particular group Yamaha added a pattern sequencer among other things. It shows Yamaha is rethinking their decision based on feedback from the market.

There’s a market for workstations, and although Korg could decide to turn their back on it I would think of it as a big mistake from a company which earned the title ‘King of workstations’ and which has invested so much in an OASYS concept.