NAMM 2017 Surprise

[Kevin Nolan]

I just had a terrible thought.
What if its a synth like MONTAGE?
KORGS new flagship synth! without midi sequencer, without audio seq/recorder, without virtual analogue, no real sampler, no KARMA.
Just an overpriced performance synth.
Could this be the death of the workstation?
Whatever the new synth is.
It would have to plug into my brain and play my thoughts to make me ever part with my KRONOS, and my MX49.

The workstation is already dead. It has been for 10 years. The Kronos is an OASYS with added pianos - 2005 technology. If you want to drag Montage into the discussion - pop on over to a year old thread on Montage further on down on this forum, and have a read of all of that, and then, please, express your personal views on Montage there and spare us here.

[Koekepan]

The workstation is already dead. It has been for 10 years. The Kronos is an OASYS with added pianos - 2005 technology.

To be entirely fair, I think that AKAI's latest efforts at least apply a bit of CPR to the workstation as a concept.

Let's look at it. Audio recording? Check. Audio manipulation? In spades. Live audio manipulation and recall? Absolutely. Effects on audio? Check, check. MIDI recording? Yup! MIDI editing? Definitely yes. MIDI production in parallel with audio? No question about it.

And a very large number of potential customers appear to be very interested in this workstation.

Maybe KORG is going to unveil a workstation based around a single virtual modular structure, like a Solaris but more flexible?

[spaceman3]

I just had a terrible thought.
What if its a synth like MONTAGE?
KORGS new flagship synth! without midi sequencer, without audio seq/recorder, without virtual analogue, no real sampler, no KARMA.
Just an overpriced performance synth.
Could this be the death of the workstation?
Whatever the new synth is.
It would have to plug into my brain and play my thoughts to make me ever part with my KRONOS, and my MX49.

The workstation is already dead. It has been for 10 years. The Kronos is an OASYS with added pianos - 2005 technology. If you want to drag Montage into the discussion - pop on over to a year old thread on Montage further on down on this forum, and have a read of all of that, and then, please, express your personal views on Montage there and spare us here.

[eli125]

can anyone tell me im looking forward to get a kronos so many out there any reason to buy a new model or the old will do the same job

[spaceman3]

I just had a terrible thought.
What if its a synth like MONTAGE?
KORGS new flagship synth! without midi sequencer, without audio seq/recorder, without virtual analogue, no real sampler, no KARMA.
Just an overpriced performance synth.
Could this be the death of the workstation?
Whatever the new synth is.
It would have to plug into my brain and play my thoughts to make me ever part with my KRONOS, and my MX49.

The workstation is already dead. It has been for 10 years. The Kronos is an OASYS with added pianos - 2005 technology. If you want to drag Montage into the discussion - pop on over to a year old thread on Montage further on down on this forum, and have a read of all of that, and then, please, express your personal views on Montage there and spare us here.

Thats just your opinion Kevin.
I can talk about MONTAGE where and when i want.
I dont need your permission.
Everyone knows what you think about KORG.
By the same token i could say you need to spare all of us on the forum from what you think.
But i try not to say things like that.
That is untill someone acts like a rude butthole and forces me to call them out on it..

[Koekepan]

can anyone tell me im looking forward to get a kronos so many out there any reason to buy a new model or the old will do the same job

I'm not a real Kronos expert, but here's what I do know:

they can all run the same software, so you're not giving anything up in terms of raw capability.

The newer ones have somewhat more capable hardware, and (so rumour has) quieter fans, so they're somewhat better in measurable ways.

Wikipedia actually lists the hardware updates - nothing epoch-making, but good stuff.

[synthguy]

can anyone tell me im looking forward to get a kronos so many out there any reason to buy a new model or the old will do the same job

As Koekepan says, an old Kronos is about as good, good sounding and useful as a new one. A newer Kronos has a 60GB SSD drive and twice the ram, but you can upgrade the ram yourself, and even the hard drive, or add one. The Kronos I get to use is a four year old first gen, and it's awesome.

Sync aside, I think you're too hard on AL-1.

Sir Kevin, I think you misread my post, or I said something that sounds differently across the Pond. Maybe it was the "Every VA does it better." Which by that I specifically meant hard sync, and I do defer to other synths to handle that. But I very much love and respect the AL-1 synth, I love all the VAs in Kronos. In fact, most of my programming was done on AL-1. But when hard sync gave me some conniptions, I went to another synth (memo to EvilDragon, use what works), but that's not a knock on it, just a quirk that I keep in mind. I would add though that this was actually a good thing because I had been overlooking the other synth engines in Kronos, and I found to my delight that they all have wonderful qualities, and going back to DX style FM was a bit of a slog, but it was a very good slog.

On MS20-EX, I guess I'll have to go back to browsing YouTube video demos of the original, because the ones I came across were filled with squelchy, grindy stuff. Now to be sure, that kind of texture is absurdly popular today so maybe I'll just have to poke around for more demos that shows off its refined side. The MS20-EX is a delight to program and produces some wonderful patches.

Now on that workstation thing, it seems that a lot of keyboardists, myself included, really like the convenience and functionality that a workstation provides. Are DAWs better at audio? Oh definitely. MIDI? Some will adamantly say yes to that too, but it's not a universal position. Many of us still do our primary composing on workstations. If KORG decides to go the Yamaha route of bundling a well designed performance rompler/synth with a DAW, I won't complain, I already have a few good ones. But one thing in that regard people bump into head first is discovering that using their home computer for surfing, gaming, movie watching etc and then trying to turn it into a studio DAW computer can cause headaches. A dedicated music computer is definitely the way to go, as I discovered myself a few years back.

[Koekepan]

I have had a vision of the future of music!

I was visited by the ghosts of Carl Sagan, Jimi Hendrix and Prince, and they informed me that it's a keytar tuner.

In gold.

Optimised for keytars with minikeys.

Either that, or I need to moderate my irish coffee intake.

[jimknopf]

The workstation is already dead.
It has been for 10 years.
The Kronos is an OASYS with added pianos
- 2005 technology.

Talking utter nonsense in each of 4 out of 4 statements in a row: that's quite an achievement. Wow!
Saying the Kronos is dead since it appeared nearly reads like grandpa saying the iPad is dead - since 10 years.
Well, because he never got to using one.


On topic: The Kronos has been an extremely successful working horse since it appeared. It's still on top of the game with it's 9 engines, user sample streaming, audio and midi sequencing on board for backing etc. (and far ahead of the Oasys in many important ways). It delivers all a keyboarder needs for live performing (plus some for recording), across all kinds of music. It needs some skillful programming though.

A Nord-Stage like (not: Montage like with it's heavy design flaws, midi etc.) performance keyboard SV-2 would not be a bad idea. Many live keyboarders love the easy hands on approach with essentials in direct reach.

[John01W]

I'm excited for folks and I'm not even on the market for a new workstation! On saying Kronos is just an OASYS with new pianos.....I don't own either...but I LOVE the fact that the Kronos can stream multisamples off the SSD....you can literally have gigs more samples loaded onto the Kronos compared to the OASYS. I don't even own one....but that alone is a HUGE advantage the Kronos has over the OASYS! I'd love to have one, but I'm happy with what I got workstation wise(i'm going analog for my next purchase)...happy for you guys though!

[EvilDragon]

(memo to EvilDragon, use what works)

Of course, that's a given, man! When TR-Rack doesn't work (and I really use it for those lush pads and motion synths, since that's what it's best for), I have... FS1R, K5000R, Microwave I, JD-990, MKS-70, Blofeld, N1R, PC3K8... and a heap of VSTi... and some of those VSTi do hardsync better than any hardware VA


As for PWM aliasing on Roland's SN synth... remember this thread? http://forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=48093


(And now as I read additionally, looks like PWM aliasing happens on waveforms nicked from Gaia (and MUCH earlier than G#8 - also is this with C4 being middle C or?), which were all (sic) sampled. Why would Roland do such a ghastly decision and depreciate their more expensive boards with stuff from their cheaper range that is just not nearly as good is beyond me... doing PWM and supersaw with samples is just borderline insulting IMHO.)

[skinmechanic]

Without the touchscreen consider the Alesis Fusion which came out at the 2007 NAMM show - this already had sample streaming from HDD, Audio HDD recording and 4 separate synth engines (Physical Modelling, FM, Virtual Analogue, Sample Playback). The Kronos borrows from that and their own OASYS. The Kronos to used the same 7 Synth engines from the OASYS which came out two years prior in 2005, the only engines that are new in the Kronos are the Piano and Electric Piano engines

With regards to a DAW Vs Workstation, one thing that strikes me, if you open up the Kronos, you can see a bog standard Mini PC Motherboard, you even see the parallel printer ports still intact! The kronos is really an Intel x86 Atom based computer running Linux using RTAI extensions for the interface and touch capabilities and 9 software synthesizers. I did have a Kronos for a while but for me because I don't play Live and I use a DAW for recording I have no use for a workstation at all. Since most of the Kronos engines I already had (PolySix, MS20, Wavestation), the HD1 is taken care of with the Integra-7 and Kontakt I sold it on. For me the interface was the most complicated (I had the M3 previously) so having a big screen didn't help with Synth sound design which is what I wanted (something more hands on out of the box utilising the various synth engines). The Montage is basically a Motif (Since it has the same waveforms as the XF series which again is the same synth engine as the XS released in 2011) with a new version of their FM synth engine which has 8 operators and 128note Polyphony. It also borrows from the Wavestation in that it can record motion shaping elements, so is this basically the MOD7 synth engine from the Kronos?

What I'm trying to say is all manufacturers re-invent and use existing technology and as Dave Smith says himself, everyone is really just releasing a different version of the M1, I'm not sure there has been anything new for quite some time with the exception of where some manufacturers want to take the Analogue/Digital crossover concept.

[EvilDragon]

Fusion did not have direct from disk streaming. You still had to load samples into its flash ROM or RAM from the hard drive.

[skinmechanic]

I had one ages back and going from memory can't remember waiting ages for the samples at all so it must have been cached if it didn't stream.

[EvilDragon]

Yeah, they were cached (loaded from HD into flash ROM, so next time you power it on it would load those samples pretty damn fast...), but not streamed