Bertotti wrote:When you all say master I am a little confused.
In short, this is it [I try to make myself clear. If I exagerate in simplifying, tell me to eff off: I don't mean to patronize].
I'll talk to you like you were a 5 years old, and as if I was a cretin.
The kronos has a BIG BAD HUGE amount of sound in it.
It can be a very nice hammond organ and a quite convincing minimoog at the same time.
You don't need many sound sources after you get such a beast (except may be very special engines like a real analogue or certain mega-sample-libraries)
But it has too little keys and controls to play all that at the same time.
I thought you talked about this, when you said you missed the "organ" configuration.
Now:
the SECOND, control, keyboard could be a synth (keys+sound engine) OR could be a plain masterkeyboard/controller.
the difference is:
300 euros will give you a wonderful masterkeyboard,
a decent synth worth adding to the kronos will cost you 1500/2000 or more. Anything less than that, would be made redundant by the kronos itself.
Taking a master keyboard (let's say, a 88 keys piano-like keyboard), which is cheap,
and connecting that to the kronos would allow you to
* solo on the kronos keyboard set to a moog sound while comping on a kronos piano sound on the 88 keyboard.
OR
* you could buy a 73 or 88 piano-keys kronos, comp on it, and play kronos synth lines on a 61 keys masterkeyboard on top of it.
Those synth lines are worth as much as any nord's or virus' [with the limitations discussed above].
or of course you could have:
* a hammond solo sound on the top master keyboard
and another hammond comp/bass sound on the kronos, exploiting tewo different kronos patches.
A master is:
a keyboard with good keys (and good controls for optimizing the key's velocity and aftertouch response),
many controllers (pedals, knobs, faders, breath control, ribbon controller, percussion pads, you name them) and
with a dedicated software section which allows you to carefully manage how these controllers can drive external synths (e.g.: choosing that three knobs will drive the filter of an external synths, 3 more will drice the EQ of another synth, etc. choosing that two octaves will drive a bass sound and the remaining 3 will play a synth solo on two different external synth engines).
It is usually a dedicated, sound-less device [studiologic, roland, oberheim made excellent such instruments] , OR you can use some synths (like the kurzweil pc3 series) as masterkeyboards because they have huge controllers.
In the case of kurz pc3, it's a wonderful "master" albeit it's a synth. You can play breath control+keys on a channel, ribbon+keys on another, fixed velocity keys on a third, synth-piano keys on a 4th channel. Of course you pay also for the synth engine though, and that makes it a "redundant" and expensive tool. You'd get more hammonds and rhodes which are probably not better than the kronos'. at 1500/1600 euros, it's some "money per key". uhm...
Other synths (nord VAs, prophet, phatty) make for LOUSY master keyboards. Their keys and controls barely control themselves, let alone other synths [the kronos is 9 synths, never forget that. You control that from a masterkeyboard... it's got to be a GOOD one, with separate controls on several channels].
Korg synths are NOT famous for being so great "master" keyboards.
is that clear?
have I gone too simple? Didn't mean to consider you incompetent.
My bottom line is:
you miss your organ?
You want a two-keyboards kronos?
buy the kronos and add a masterkeyboard. if you buy the weighted kronos, add a waterfall keyboard (good for hammond+synth emulations)
if you buy the kronos synth action 61 keyboard,
and a plain 88 keys piano-like master (used ones: oberheim mc1000 at 300 euros, roland a 90 at 400. New ones: studiologic, or whatever).
"master functionalities" means: the second keyboard will be able to drive the kronos, select sounds, have separate pedal controls, control synth paramenters through knobs (you play the piano on the kronos and control its sound from the kronos panel, while playing a synth on the matrekey and fiddle its filter from the master's knobs).
All of this doesn't need more than 300/400 euros to add to your kronos budget.
The prophet08 was a funny idea: it can work as a VERY BASIC masterkeyboard [NO WAY of carefully programming it to send knob controls on several midi cyhannels. it's just one more set of keys on a single channel... not very good], but would add a complementary sound to the kronos.
but that's at a 2000 bucks price tag...
