Whats missing in KRONOS..

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:19 pm

Shakil wrote:Combi and Song should have their own copy of the program within. This way if I customize the program for a Combi or Song, it won't affect anything else.

Exactly. This is the future. Combis and songs should NOT reference Programs, instead they should copy the Program into their own file and allow it to be edited in there - with no relation to the original Program.

What this means: you can edit a Program completely within the Combi, without going to Program mode. The original Program won't be affected. In essence you get a lot more room to play with, without saving lots of variations in the way a Program is programmed (beyond what Tone Adjust can do to tweak the Program on the fly).

Come on - we're in 2011. Memory is not as expensive as it was. This can be done and it shouldn't be rocket science. The pros are massive. I can't see any cons.

I'm not talking about having 16 non-volatile multis (Combis in Korg-speak), like what Virus TI is offering. I'm talking about having all 1792 combis like that.

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 9:53 pm

I don't know how hard that is to achieve technically, but shouldn't there be more than enough room on the SSD for any number of combinations containing adjusted programs without silly referencing?

I think Shakil and EvilDragon have a valid point here, and as long as I don't see a technical reason making this difficult (which I fail to see at the moment), I can only say:

+1 on independent saving of edited programs within combis and songs

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:04 pm

jimknopf wrote:I don't know how hard that is to achieve technically

Well, from my perspective, the only thing that is saved as "program used by the combi" is a memory location of that particular program. Which is, a letter and 3-digit number, in Korg's case.

Instead of referencing (or, in programmer's lingo, pointing) to a memory address that links to the program, the combi would copy over all the data that describes the program to his own memory space.

The difference is quite drastic - from, say, 4 bytes, you get to, say, up to 16 kilobytes per program. So, if a combi uses all 16 programs, instead of 16*4=64 bytes, it could potentially use up to 16*16=256 kilobytes (0.25 MB) per combi.

I still don't see any problems with this. 1792 combis could use up to 448 MB on hard drive. NOT A PROBLEM ON KRONOS!

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:32 pm

That's what I meant: we would get very relevant everyday flexibility at the cost of a maximum of ~500Mb on a 30Gb SSD.

As long as nothing else could make that difficult (an I don't see what that could be), this would just be a great solution!

If Korg is reluctant about the change, they could even let it be a principal user option in the basic settings, how much space a user wants to spend on programs in combinations and songs (choose the 'reference' or the 'complete write' option there).

Akos Janca · Post by **Akos Janca** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:04 pm

danatkorg wrote:Thanks for your comments, Akos. One point:

Akos Janca wrote:IDEA #3 - MIXED ENGINES IN A BANK
...
One note: the restriction is between EXi and HD-1 banks, rather than between individual engines. So, you can mix all 8 EXi engines together in one bank, or within a Program for that matter; you just can't mix them with the ninth, the HD-1.

True! Thank you for the correction.

StephenKay · Post by **StephenKay** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:56 pm

EvilDragon wrote:I still don't see any problems with this. 1792 combis could use up to 448 MB on hard drive. NOT A PROBLEM ON KRONOS!

Sure, not a problem if you want to wait for each combi to load from hard disk when it is selected. Otherwise, all of that has to go into RAM to be accessible from the bank buttons for instant combi selection, etc.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:05 am

No problem if you ask me. With SSD access times (what, 0.2 ms? or less?) and read speeds, that shouldn't be too big a deal

Even better - RAM is cheap nowadays. I'd gladly sacrifice user sample RAM for non-referencing combis! ESPECIALLY if an update happens so that Kronos can go from current 2 GB to 4 GB that's ultimately available. Sign me up for that!

Granted - my figures were speculative. I don't know on top of my head how large in KB is a single program or a single combi with all 16 parts assigned on Kronos/OASYS. It'd be cool if you could enlighten me with that info, it would be much appreciated. I'd be interested in max possible size, I presume different engines save their data differently, and depending on total number of parameters in that particular engine, the size is increased or decreased.

StephenKay · Post by **StephenKay** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:45 am

EvilDragon wrote:It'd be cool if you could enlighten me with that info, it would be much appreciated. I'd be interested in max possible size, I presume different engines save their data differently, and depending on total number of parameters in that particular engine, the size is increased or decreased.

Well, since the Kronos doesn't have this feature, nor is it even close to getting this feature as far as I know, it's sort of useless to speculate about the memory size required to store it all that way...

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 12:48 am

Understood. Still, it might be fun contemplating about it in numbers, just for kicks!

Shakil · Post by **Shakil** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:25 am

How loading 16 programs from within the combi or song is different from loading 16 programs from 'program' slots.

16 programs are being loaded into RAM anyway with the COMBI or SONG.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 1:49 am

It's different in case of non-referenced combis - they would need more memory because they're self-contained.

However, thatt's not happening on Kronos and it isn't planned to happen, from the look of things.

StephenKay · Post by **StephenKay** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:15 am

Shakil wrote:How loading 16 programs from within the combi or song is different from loading 16 programs from 'program' slots.

16 programs are being loaded into RAM anyway with the COMBI or SONG.

When you load a combi, it copies 16 programs into edit buffers. So yes, that *one* large self-contained combi is in RAM, in an edit buffer. All the other hundreds and hundreds of combis are in RAM as well, in a much smaller size, because they only contain pointers to the programs, and not 16 complete programs in each one.

StephenKay · Post by **StephenKay** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:23 am

EvilDragon wrote:Understood. Still, it might be fun contemplating about it in numbers, just for kicks!

Well, OK - I thought about it for a few minutes. Checking some documentation:

A Kronos Combi = 7810 Bytes
1 bank (128) = 999680 Bytes
14 banks = 13995520 /1024 / 1024 = 13.3 MB of RAM to hold 14 banks of combis

(This is with just a pointer to each program and bank for each timbre.)

An HD-1 Program = 3450 Bytes
An EXi Program = 4960 Bytes (so we'll go with the worst case scenario of using 16 EXi timbres)
A Kronos Combi (with embedded EXI) = 7810 + (16 * 4960) = 87170 Bytes
1 bank (128) = 11157760 Bytes
14 banks = 156208640 /1024 / 1024 = 148.9 MB of RAM to hold 14 banks of combis

There would be some tone adjust parameters you could get rid of, so the size could be a bit smaller,
but then you have to figure in the extra size of the 200 songs, and the set list...

So, it's really NOT out of the question memory-wise. But there's a whole lot more to it than that, I suspect...

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:29 am

Stephen, thank you very much for humouring me!

Wow, the numbers are even better than my "worst case scenario"! That was unexpected.

All in all, I'd gladly just take self-contained combis. Songs can stay referenced for all I care.

Shakil · Post by **Shakil** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 9:26 pm

I think the sequencer is going to be area that will need a lot of work.

I think with all these synth engines and editing capability.... 16 MIDI tracks are not enough..... 16 MIDI parts is fine, but I want to have my midi notes data and midi controller data on separate midi tracks in the sequencer. Or having the ability to store different takes for a midi channel.

Also having all those nice graphics for controlling the instruments only program mode is not fun. I should be able to jump into the program editing for a midi part while I am working on the song without having to stop the sequencer so I can hear how the editing is affecting the sound for recorded MIDI data...........