KRONOS Polyphony Problems

[NormC]

Honestly, I keep saying this, but the only reason this even comes up is because the Kronos' internals resemble a common PC so much. You don't see the same kinds of complaints about the Motif, simply because it doesn't have a Mobo with "Intel" printed on it.

Treat the Kronos like a synth and most of these misgivings will be void.

I'll also be hoping for a higher performance model somewhere in the coming years. But it's not going to be top shelf performing PC hardware, ever. Even disregarding cost, if they just did custom software development, stability testing and mass production they'd be years behind the most current hardware releases. It's amazing that they used hardware as recent as they did. This is not Windows, that you can slap on basically any random configuration of hardware and it will boot (and then gets crap for not being 100 percent stable 24/7).

All solid and reasonable points.

Its a wrong assumption that the numerous key components of a Kronos are simple plug and play, like my uncle's windows PC. And those PC tasks are somewhat simple in nature.

Plus hardware/CPU strength advances every year. An owner can toss away his commodity PC every 2 yrs if he/she is so hardware inclined.

A 'custom ' or sophisticated device like the Kronos has a 'useful' life span of at least 6 yrs or many more.

I agree. I am sure I will get more than 6 years out of my purchase! Korg makes a great product and has great support.

[JPROBERTLA]

I believe that the Kronos is already 5 years old, and with the introduction of the Montage being what it is, I can see the Kronos easily lasting 10 years like the Triton series did.

Unless and until someone comes out with something that can do what it does better, the Kronos will remain #1, and there will be little reason for Korg/Kronos users to get something else.

That is good news for Kronos users as Korg will have more time to develop the next generation synth as well as have ongoing motivation to continue improving the Kronos and thereby keeping Kronos users loyal.

[NIO0850]

I dont work for Nord. That's just silly. I'm ready for what Korg makes next.

2001 Triton
2004 Triton Extreme
2005 Oasys
2007 M3
2011 Kronos
2012 Kronos X

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... ucts#2000s

Did we forget how long it has been? The Kronos successor should release 2017 NAMM

This guy works for Nord This is his ID badge number NIO0850.

[michelkeijzers]

I dont work for Nord. That's just silly. I'm ready for what Korg makes next.

2001 Triton
2004 Triton Extreme
2005 Oasys
2007 M3
2011 Kronos
2012 Kronos X

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... ucts#2000s

Did we forget how long it has been? The Kronos successor should release 2017 NAMM

This guy works for Nord This is his ID badge number NIO0850.

There are some missing like 2008 M50.

However, since Korg is much ahead of the competitors and the market is changing, I don't know if we can interpolate years so easily.

[JohnDonovan]

A 'custom ' or sophisticated device like the Kronos has a 'useful' life span of at least 6 yrs or many more.

Only 6?! I've only recently sold my old Triton Studio from 2002 and it's still going strong being played by someone else!

[GregC]

A 'custom ' or sophisticated device like the Kronos has a 'useful' life span of at least 6 yrs or many more.

Only 6?! I've only recently sold my old Triton Studio from 2002 and it's still going strong being played by someone else!

I said at least 6. And I put ' useful ' in quotes. Plus many of us bought in 2011.

To clarify, I am projecting another great board from Korg, an evolution from the Kronos sometime next year.

[NIO0850]

I didnt think it was important to list the Triton Le, M50 and Krome budget boards. I was trying to stick to flagship models.

There are some missing like 2008 M50.

However, since Korg is much ahead of the competitors and the market is changing, I don't know if we can interpolate years so easily.

[chini]

Korg will of course replace the KRONOS with a new model, my guess is within the next 14 months. However in the meantime I am surprised anyone would sell by far the most powerful synth workstation available bar none at the present time from a professional point of view unless it was for personal reasons. When a new model does materialise I certainly won't change my Kronos unless all its years of programming could be migrated over to the new model!

I am probably one of the few here who really does max out the machine often live on stage (covered in detail on other various threads). I have yet to upload the 3.04 update which this time round is supposed to finally help out polyphony when the metre display function is disengaged on the global page. In fact just a little relief on the main processor would go a long way to avoiding some of the drop outs I have been experiencing at times due to extremely rich timbre content within songs or combies.

If anyone has experienced an increase in performance with the 3.04 update please do let me know!

Cheers!

[NIO0850]

A good way to increase performance is to upgrade the ram to a good dual channel kit and replace the stock SSD with 500mb+ read and write speeds. And a Noctua fan update. My Kronos booted 2x faster after I did this.

Korg will of course replace the KRONOS with a new model, my guess is within the next 14 months. However in the meantime I am surprised anyone would sell by far the most powerful synth workstation available bar none at the present time from a professional point of view unless it was for personal reasons. When a new model does materialise I certainly won't change my Kronos unless all its years of programming could be migrated over to the new model!

I am probably one of the few here who really does max out the machine often live on stage (covered in detail on other various threads). I have yet to upload the 3.04 update which this time round is supposed to finally help out polyphony when the metre display function is disengaged on the global page. In fact just a little relief on the main processor would go a long way to avoiding some of the drop outs I have been experiencing at times due to extremely rich timbre content within songs or combies.

If anyone has experienced an increase in performance with the 3.04 update please do let me know!

Cheers!

[chini]

A good way to increase performance is to upgrade the ram to a good dual channel kit and replace the stock SSD with 500mb+ read and write speeds. And a Noctua fan update. My Kronos booted 2x faster after I did this.

Who was calling you a troll?….!… Thanks for the tip- this sounds good!

I already have the second 64gig SSD and 4gig of RAM. Are you suggesting there is a possibility to add a larger block of RAM? I wasn't aware one could increase the size of the internal drives. I presume the larger SSD will allow one to stream that much more sounds from the hard drives no?… I have only recently cottoned on to using the "USER program" files. Previously I had all my custom samples hogging up the RAM instead of streaming those samples from the SSDs! Utilising the user files enables one to stream sounds from the HD.

If this is possible which RAM kits/SSDs do you recommend?

P.S. am still perplexed why you decided to sell your KRONOS !….?

[SanderXpander]

RAM is not SSD. You can increase the size of the internal SSD but that has nothing to do with RAM. You could in theory replace the existing RAM with two matching 2GB sticks though the OS will only recognize 3GB. I am not aware of any significant speed increase and would be surprised to see proof of this. There is some theoretical speed gain when you get a more current and larger SSD but this doesn't have much to do with playing "more" sounds from SSD unless your current model is full. The Kronos polyphony is limited via software based mostly on CPU speed.

[GregC]

RAM is not SSD. You can increase the size of the internal SSD but that has nothing to do with RAM. You could in theory replace the existing RAM with two matching 2GB sticks though the OS will only recognize 3GB. I am not aware of any significant speed increase and would be surprised to see proof of this. There is some theoretical speed gain when you get a more current and larger SSD but this doesn't have much to do with playing "more" sounds from SSD unless your current model is full. The Kronos polyphony is limited via software based mostly on CPU speed.

I am not buying his 2x boot up speed increase. , either. he can put it on youtube to prove it

[chini]

Sure! I know the difference between RAM and hard drives of course!…

I think I didn't explain myself clearly… I was merely interested in the idea of replacing one of the SSDs so instead of playing any samples from RAM I could stream them off the hard drive. I have found that loading the "user" type files can give a slightly better performance in my case. For I ages I have been booting up my K with all my custom samples fully occupying the 4gig (3gig) RAM block- in fact it remains at 5% free all the time! I have recently started to try loading the user type folders instead of booting up the normal program/song folders. I read somewhere that this can put less strain on the cpu in my case with such fully loaded songs and combies.

[BobTheDog]

RAM is not SSD. You can increase the size of the internal SSD but that has nothing to do with RAM. You could in theory replace the existing RAM with two matching 2GB sticks though the OS will only recognize 3GB. I am not aware of any significant speed increase and would be surprised to see proof of this. There is some theoretical speed gain when you get a more current and larger SSD but this doesn't have much to do with playing "more" sounds from SSD unless your current model is full. The Kronos polyphony is limited via software based mostly on CPU speed.

I am not buying his 2x boot up speed increase. , either. he can put it on youtube to prove it

Sounds like crap to me as well.

[SanderXpander]

Sure! I know the difference between RAM and hard drives of course!…

I think I didn't explain myself clearly… I was merely interested in the idea of replacing one of the SSDs so instead of playing any samples from RAM I could stream them off the hard drive. I have found that loading the "user" type files can give a slightly better performance in my case. For I ages I have been booting up my K with all my custom samples fully occupying the 4gig (3gig) RAM block- in fact it remains at 5% free all the time! I have recently started to try loading the user type folders instead of booting up the normal program/song folders. I read somewhere that this can put less strain on the cpu in my case with such fully loaded songs and combies.

Right, sorry for misreading. I haven't noticed any performance differences but I don't strain the polyphony as much as you do I think. UserBanks are great though, definitely use them! Even so, did you fill up your drive already? Rather than replacing the internal one, you could add a second one and stream your samples from there.

That won't do anything about boot time (remains to be seen how much of a difference that would be anyway) but it's somewhat easier than replacing the OS drive (no drive cloning etc, just mount it and plug in the cable).