what to buy?

Kim Lajoie · Post by **Kim Lajoie** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 12:51 am

kikedeolivos wrote:
SanderXpander wrote:Virtually all modern synths still have this issue, though the gap can be quite small...
What would be the reason?

I've had (check my sig) Ensoniqs 20 years ago and you could sustain the chord (manually or via pedal) while choosing the "next" sound without any cuts...

The M50 can do this in program mode. It's seamless if both programs have the same effects (or no effects).

-Kim.

kikedeolivos · Post by **kikedeolivos** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 1:10 am

Kim Lajoie wrote:
kikedeolivos wrote:
SanderXpander wrote:...It's seamless if both programs have the same effects (or no effects).

-Kim.
That's an easy one, ANY keyboard can do that under the same scenario, and again with Ensoniqs; 25 year old technology. As far as I recall, programs sounded great (for that era), each one with different effects and there was ZERO gap, very useful for live players.

I can't believe Korg, on the 21st century, can't nail it down with so many brainiacs working for them. (Engineers)

Ajbbklyn · Post by **Ajbbklyn** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:52 am

kikedeolivos wrote:I can't believe Korg, on the 21st century, can't nail it down with so many brainiacs working for them. (Engineers)

They can and did. As per SanderXpander: The Kronos has smooth transitions between programs, combis, sequences (or any combination thereof) via the Setlist function.

raffi.nordiguian · Post by **raffi.nordiguian** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 1:39 pm

yea they did that.
but i dont mind if theres a small gap. but the problem in the m50 is that the gap gets longer if the combi get more and more complex. so to switch between a lead to a massive piano combi it will take a while (around 1sec 1.5sec)

kikedeolivos · Post by **kikedeolivos** » Thu Mar 28, 2013 7:08 pm

Ajbbklyn wrote:
kikedeolivos wrote:I can't believe Korg, on the 21st century, can't nail it down with so many brainiacs working for them. (Engineers)
They can and did. As per SanderXpander: The Kronos has smooth transitions between programs, combis, sequences (or any combination thereof) via the Setlist function.

I'm talking here that Ensoniq achieve the smooth transitions between patches 25 years ago and Korg was able to achieve the SAME on 2012/13? Well, enough said.

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:06 am

I don't know which Ensoniq you had but I guarantee you that it had like a tenth of the features and synth power that a modern synth like the M50 had. How many parts and layers did it have? How many simultanous fx and how many different ones? Polyphony count? ROM size? Korg (and all its competitors, don't forget) just made a trade-off that most people are very happy with.

Also, really, dissing Korg with a synth manufacturer that ceased to exist because they couldn't make competitive products anymore?

csteen · Post by **csteen** » Fri Mar 29, 2013 8:32 am

SanderXpander wrote:I don't know which Ensoniq you had but I guarantee you that it had like a tenth of the features and synth power that a modern synth like the M50 had. How many parts and layers did it have? How many simultanous fx and how many different ones? Polyphony count? ROM size? Korg (and all its competitors, don't forget) just made a trade-off that most people are very happy with.

Also, really, dissing Korg with a synth manufacturer that ceased to exist because they couldn't make competitive products anymore?

This about sums up the situation.

kimu · Post by **kimu** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 10:30 am

anyway you can always go and play live with the ensoniq if that features is the most important for you to have.

for what i know, between up-to-date workstation, kronos is the only one offering zero-gap when changing patches (maybe kurzweill, but not sure)

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 11:13 am

The reason for the gap is that on a budget synth model particularly processing power is limited.

In order to achieve 'seamless' transitions the Kronos reserves a significant portion of it's (relatively abundant in comparison) processing power purely for the few seconds that you need both effects chains running. It is a massive waste but the Kronos can afford it and also dynamically manages processing workloads because it uses a generic processing unit (computer multipurpose CPU).

The M50 and most other synthes and workstations on the market will have dedicated DSP processing units which have to have algorithms loaded into them from ROM (seems to be bit slower than the comparative operation on a CPU). They have a fixed processing workload.

Basically, to achieve SST the M50 would need double the processing hardware, half of which would be wasted over 90% of the time. This would increase the cost significantly too.
Alternatively they could reduce the number of simultaneous FX available in every mode but this would reduce the quality and complexity of sounds. Personally I'm glad they prefer to make all the processing power available to play with effects routings rather than keep half of it in reserve.

Bald Eagle · Post by **Bald Eagle** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 12:03 pm

X-Trade wrote: Basically, to achieve SST the M50 would need double the processing hardware, half of which would be wasted over 90% of the time. This would increase the cost significantly too.
Alternatively they could reduce the number of simultaneous FX available in every mode but this would reduce the quality and complexity of sounds. Personally I'm glad they prefer to make all the processing power available to play with effects routings rather than keep half of it in reserve.

This got me thinking. If half of the processor resources in the Kronos sit idle most of the time just for SST wouldn't it be nice to have a setting that could disable SST if not needed and double the polyphony?

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Sat Mar 30, 2013 6:17 pm

Bald Eagle wrote:
X-Trade wrote: Basically, to achieve SST the M50 would need double the processing hardware, half of which would be wasted over 90% of the time. This would increase the cost significantly too.
Alternatively they could reduce the number of simultaneous FX available in every mode but this would reduce the quality and complexity of sounds. Personally I'm glad they prefer to make all the processing power available to play with effects routings rather than keep half of it in reserve.
This got me thinking. If half of the processor resources in the Kronos sit idle most of the time just for SST wouldn't it be nice to have a setting that could disable SST if not needed and double the polyphony?

I thought about this too, but I'm not sure it's exactly the way that Kronos does it. It's a good example of how a fixed DSP unit would have to achieve the same thing though.
Difference is that the Kronos has dynamic allocation of processing resources because it uses a general purpose CPU. In some cases some combinations of effects can actually reduce the available polyphony. So I suspect that there would probably be a slight reduction in available polyphony during SST. Of course there isn't actually any information from Korg on exactly how they achieve this but I think we've covered all of the angles here..