Korg Forums

Just over two years of constant use now and has never crashed once. I'm really pleased about this as I gig a lot and my K spends a lot of time in transit and being moved in and out of venues. Rock solid so far!

I've had mine for almost two years and have never had a crash. It has been very reliable.

Hopefully this is not thread-drift.

I program music apps and have a lot of ancient synths, but hadn't bought a new one lately. Researched the current availables "intensively" a few weeks and decided to get a kronos.

So I got a b stock kronos 61 from a dealer listed on the korg site as an authorized dealer. It had been upgraded to two 30 gb drives and 3 gb memory, the kronos upgrade kit. Claimed that this unit will be under new warranty. I have no reason yet to doubt the claim about the warranty. It was a very good price compared to a new X.

So anyway the thing arrived and is externally spotless. Boots in 2:33 and all functions seem to work. The sounds are very good.

Except that it would repeatably crash about 7 minutes after boot. Having done electronic and synthesizer repair for many years in the dim past, and currently being a programmer, endeavored to see if the problem is diagnosable. To avoid having to ship the thang back, because I like it, and a shame to ship the thing back over a badly plugged-in cable or whatever.

The Kronos could be talked into crashing sooner by using combis with greater polyphony, and even with single voices the performance meter was reading higher than would seem reasonable, possibly implying memory errors. In addition, the streaming voices such as acoustic pianos work fine (before it crashes) implying that the drive might be working ok.

After playing a big combi for a few seconds, it would begin to choke all new notes like a big store of processor tasks was "hung" with stale notes.

So I bravely disassembled it and checked the two drive connections and the ram seating. The addon 1 gb crucial memory stick looked possibly not completely seated on one end. I popped both memories and reseated them, reassembled and tested.

The unit had similar problems, so I thought about it awhile and figured it wouldn't hurt to see if maybe that addon memory stick is weak. So I disassembled, pulled the 1 gb stick, reassembled, and thought for awhile maybe it was fixed.

With the 1 gb stick removed will now play showing reasonable (low) figures in the performance meter when playing single patches, seems to sound better and I don't think it is my imagination. Previously some of the patches "didn't seem all there".

But unfortunately now it seems enjoyable and healthy about 50 minutes at a time before it crashes. Fifty minutes up-time is lots better than 7 minuts, but still no cigar. The crash is the same as reported here, reboot and the a failure to complete the reboot. With the message "disconnect usb drives and reboot".

So possibly the problem is weak memory PLUS something else slightly bad in the box. Or perhaps the something else exacerbates a marginal memory stick, or whatever. I'd almost be tempted to debug further, possibly temporarily disconnecting the addon drive or debug-replacing both memory sticks. But it ain't my job and would be good time thrown after bad to mess with it any further, because I'm not gonna go messing with any other modules in the thang.

Send it back, possibly see if the dealer will take more of my money and send me a sealed in the box kronos X rather than another b stock item. Though this b stock item would have had me deliriously happy if it happened not to crash.

It is a nice gadget and am sure I'll love it once I have a good one.

Since some folks report "no crashes ever"-- Here is a dumb analogy and I apologize for writing such a long tome-- A couple of years ago, was hot to buy a motorola xoom pad. Some folks on the web were claiming it rock-solid and others reporting it moderately stable with flakey software and others reporting it crash city.

So I bought a xoom and it was crash city, but it worked perfectly except when it would go belly up about every hour on the hour. So I took it back and got another one, and the second unit is bullet proof to this day. So there was some subtle defect in some of the xooms where a bad unit would work fabulous except for that nasty occasional crash. If the hardware happened to be "as designed" in a unit, it actually was really good hardware/software. Intermittent hardware problem giving all the symptoms of flakey software ala windows 98 on a bad day.

So maybe its the same with the folks who get kronos crashes-- Those units might have something "a little wrong somewhere" and in that case its a waste of time looking for software solutions such as reinstalling the system or whatever? I hate intermittent problems. It takes so long to find and fix a rare problem. One of the reasons I quit repairing keyboards many years ago.

7 months and 1 hiccup. Don't know if you'd call it a "crash"; just froze up in between songs at a gig. Rebooted and was fine. use mine every weekend 4 hours in a working cover band, and 1 or 2 days during the week for a couple of hours.

Zero times....

I completely know the feeling!

I posted not too long ago in another thread here about all of my headaches with my own Kronos. In my case though, I had a new unit which seemed to work fine when I first got it, but I had a few "hiccups" when trying to do the first one of the software updates that was released for it. (After the update, I'd occasionally get the error about it failing to boot and to remove any USB devices and try again.)

When it did boot successfully though, I could leave it on for a week straight and walk up to it any time and it would work properly -- so I determined it had to be a problem with the SSD. I decided to upgrade to a larger capacity one, rather than hassle with shipping it back for warranty work (and perhaps being told no issue was found anyway, since it only happened intermittently).

To make a long story short? Even with the new SSD, I've had random boot errors to this day -- but I've had so much going on in my life, I haven't had much time to play (or tinker with/troubleshoot) the KRONOS, so I've just let this go on for months.

I have tried switching the RAM around but as far as I can tell, that hasn't changed anything. At this point, I'm reasonably certain the replacement SSD I installed is either having compatibility issues with the KRONOS (might be as simple as updating the SSD's firmware?) or it's simply a defective one, and I think the factory one might be failing/flaky too.

I'm hoping this weekend, I'll get time to take the thing apart once again and do some more experimenting. If a 3rd. replacement SSD doesn't pan out, I'll probably give up and pay an authorized service center to look at this thing. But the point of all of this? I'm thinking your issue might be related to the SSD as well? Many of the patches (such as the piano) constantly stream from (read from) the SSD as they're sounding -- so that could cause your crashes just as likely as RAM. If it's neither item, it may be a bad main board in the KRONOS -- but I guess that's what we all hope is NOT wrong, since that's the hardest item to replace.

DoubleNaught7 wrote:Hopefully this is not thread-drift.

I program music apps and have a lot of ancient synths, but hadn't bought a new one lately. Researched the current availables "intensively" a few weeks and decided to get a kronos.

So I got a b stock kronos 61 from a dealer listed on the korg site as an authorized dealer. It had been upgraded to two 30 gb drives and 3 gb memory, the kronos upgrade kit. Claimed that this unit will be under new warranty. I have no reason yet to doubt the claim about the warranty. It was a very good price compared to a new X.

So anyway the thing arrived and is externally spotless. Boots in 2:33 and all functions seem to work. The sounds are very good.

Except that it would repeatably crash about 7 minutes after boot. Having done electronic and synthesizer repair for many years in the dim past, and currently being a programmer, endeavored to see if the problem is diagnosable. To avoid having to ship the thang back, because I like it, and a shame to ship the thing back over a badly plugged-in cable or whatever.

The Kronos could be talked into crashing sooner by using combis with greater polyphony, and even with single voices the performance meter was reading higher than would seem reasonable, possibly implying memory errors. In addition, the streaming voices such as acoustic pianos work fine (before it crashes) implying that the drive might be working ok.

After playing a big combi for a few seconds, it would begin to choke all new notes like a big store of processor tasks was "hung" with stale notes.

So I bravely disassembled it and checked the two drive connections and the ram seating. The addon 1 gb crucial memory stick looked possibly not completely seated on one end. I popped both memories and reseated them, reassembled and tested.

The unit had similar problems, so I thought about it awhile and figured it wouldn't hurt to see if maybe that addon memory stick is weak. So I disassembled, pulled the 1 gb stick, reassembled, and thought for awhile maybe it was fixed.

With the 1 gb stick removed will now play showing reasonable (low) figures in the performance meter when playing single patches, seems to sound better and I don't think it is my imagination. Previously some of the patches "didn't seem all there".

But unfortunately now it seems enjoyable and healthy about 50 minutes at a time before it crashes. Fifty minutes up-time is lots better than 7 minuts, but still no cigar. The crash is the same as reported here, reboot and the a failure to complete the reboot. With the message "disconnect usb drives and reboot".

So possibly the problem is weak memory PLUS something else slightly bad in the box. Or perhaps the something else exacerbates a marginal memory stick, or whatever. I'd almost be tempted to debug further, possibly temporarily disconnecting the addon drive or debug-replacing both memory sticks. But it ain't my job and would be good time thrown after bad to mess with it any further, because I'm not gonna go messing with any other modules in the thang.

Send it back, possibly see if the dealer will take more of my money and send me a sealed in the box kronos X rather than another b stock item. Though this b stock item would have had me deliriously happy if it happened not to crash.

It is a nice gadget and am sure I'll love it once I have a good one.

Since some folks report "no crashes ever"-- Here is a dumb analogy and I apologize for writing such a long tome-- A couple of years ago, was hot to buy a motorola xoom pad. Some folks on the web were claiming it rock-solid and others reporting it moderately stable with flakey software and others reporting it crash city.

So I bought a xoom and it was crash city, but it worked perfectly except when it would go belly up about every hour on the hour. So I took it back and got another one, and the second unit is bullet proof to this day. So there was some subtle defect in some of the xooms where a bad unit would work fabulous except for that nasty occasional crash. If the hardware happened to be "as designed" in a unit, it actually was really good hardware/software. Intermittent hardware problem giving all the symptoms of flakey software ala windows 98 on a bad day.

So maybe its the same with the folks who get kronos crashes-- Those units might have something "a little wrong somewhere" and in that case its a waste of time looking for software solutions such as reinstalling the system or whatever? I hate intermittent problems. It takes so long to find and fix a rare problem. One of the reasons I quit repairing keyboards many years ago.

kingtj wrote:I completely know the feeling!

[/quote]
maybe the 2 new updates will help

Mine froze every time I tried to put a sample on it so it went back to korg and got it back couple of week ago and so far so good.

Just to update this my kronos 73 won't even boot up now on it's way back to korg

I had only one crash with an OS over 1.1. Too bad it was during a gig.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I fixed it last night!

I pulled the aftermarket SSD out of the KRONOS and installed it in a Dell laptop so I could work on it. It turns out the laptop couldn't even see the SSD as an installed device! I made a bootable CD with OCZ's "workbench tools" and booted from that, but even it didn't see the drive at all. So I put in an RMA with OCZ to get it replaced.

I went out and bought a Sandisk brand 60GB SSD so I had something to put back in the KRONOS immediately - and voila! It's been booting up flawlessly.

I'm about to do the new OS update in a minute, but things are finally looking good over here.

shaneblyth wrote:

kingtj wrote:I completely know the feeling!

maybe the 2 new updates will help[/quote]

kingtj wrote:I completely know the feeling!

I posted not too long ago in another thread here about all of my headaches with my own Kronos. In my case though, I had a new unit which seemed to work fine when I first got it, but I had a few "hiccups" when trying to do the first one of the software updates that was released for it. (After the update, I'd occasionally get the error about it failing to boot and to remove any USB devices and try again.)

When it did boot successfully though, I could leave it on for a week straight and walk up to it any time and it would work properly -- so I determined it had to be a problem with the SSD. I decided to upgrade to a larger capacity one, rather than hassle with shipping it back for warranty work (and perhaps being told no issue was found anyway, since it only happened intermittently).

To make a long story short? Even with the new SSD, I've had random boot errors to this day -- but I've had so much going on in my life, I haven't had much time to play (or tinker with/troubleshoot) the KRONOS, so I've just let this go on for months.

I have tried switching the RAM around but as far as I can tell, that hasn't changed anything. At this point, I'm reasonably certain the replacement SSD I installed is either having compatibility issues with the KRONOS (might be as simple as updating the SSD's firmware?) or it's simply a defective one, and I think the factory one might be failing/flaky too.

I'm hoping this weekend, I'll get time to take the thing apart once again and do some more experimenting. If a 3rd. replacement SSD doesn't pan out, I'll probably give up and pay an authorized service center to look at this thing. But the point of all of this? I'm thinking your issue might be related to the SSD as well? Many of the patches (such as the piano) constantly stream from (read from) the SSD as they're sounding -- so that could cause your crashes just as likely as RAM. If it's neither item, it may be a bad main board in the KRONOS -- but I guess that's what we all hope is NOT wrong, since that's the hardest item to replace.

Thanks kingtj

Might very well have been an intermittent SSD. It seemed to "work fine" playing streaming piano for some minutes before crashing, so that made me think the SSD might have been basically healthy or it couldn't have streamed piano samples for so long before going belly-up. But maybe some rows or columns of the SSD were bad and maybe it had to wait to hit the bad sectors before getting into trouble? Dunno.

Or possibly a twitchy power supply.

Sometimes it would get in a condition of glitching note-ons, and reporting a lot more voices used than were being played. And often it would not sustain a sound thru a patch change. Almost making me wonder if the cpu could have had a bad core. I don't have any idea if it is possible for a computer to even boot and operate with a bad core, though. Maybe.