Korg Forums

McHale wrote:

blazerunner wrote:The Akai Force and the MPC's picked up where the Kronos fell off and Akai only keeps adding more usable features to it.

A buddy just replaced his Kronos in his live rig with a Force and has been selling me on the idea.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Force. I like it as its own thing, but it's nowhere near the Kronos, whether it be sounds, file management (need to use computer), or sequencing. Kronos can do so much more. I don't have to establish a clip in Kronos, I just start recording whenever I want, and stop whenever I like.

I recently just purchased, Fabric XL, Studio Strings, and OPX4. They are all nice. I love that OPX4 has formant shaping in its 4 operators. It also has a small selection of sample waveforms, which is cool Kronos can have 16 operator (dual) programs, with any samples I like, plus a ton of wave shapers. Nevermind that you can work in combis for more layers.

Almost everything on Kronos has many more options. You don't have to wait several seconds for Fabric or other sample based programs to load up. What a pain. Kronos programs are instant. One thing I like about the Force is the ability to add a streaming 2 terrabyte SSD, which I put in my Force. Other MPCs don't have streaming, yet.

True the Force is being continually upgraded and Kronos is not. You can do a whole production on each. They are both monsters.

Most of the community requests for the Kronos could easily be made by Korg in 2023, as these requests are not huge or very expensive technological leaps.

Mike Conway wrote:They are both monsters.

I think this pretty much sums it up on Kronos vs anything.

There's just so much good stuff out there today. Each has its own strengths that make it shine brighter than the rest. And eventually, each will hit end of life and no longer be updated. Nonetheless, whether it's the Kronos, Akai stuff or anything else, even at end of life you still have a monster.

While there may have been better times for paying the bills as a musician, there's never been a better time for making music given all the options we have these days.

The biggest problem we have with gear today is the danger of our credit cards becoming overheated and melting.

Kronos/Force:

I would pick the Kronos for live play, mostly because it's nearer that role. It has the integrated keyboard, and a lot of emphasis on things like smooth sound transitions and KARMA accompaniment.

Force is a better studio master, especially because of how the internal routing and effects allow for much more flexible audio management than the Kronos, and how the USB3 allows for expanding inputs and outputs. The delays on changing sounds and kits make it less suitable for live.

I have other things for live performance. The Force is a studio monster, which is exactly why I got it so I'm very happy.

the new AKAI MPC 61 KEY seems to be a real rival to the Korg Nautilus or a good direction follow for a new Korg workstation.

♫

kronoSphere wrote:the new AKAI MPC 61 KEY seems to be a real rival to the Korg Nautilus or a good direction follow for a new Korg workstation.

♫

Personally I wouldn’t think so because the MPC can take many seconds from the time you select a sound to the moment you can acutally play a note. This makes it 100% unusable as a live instrument on stage for example. The amount of available sample ram is also very misleading because if you load a 16Bit sample, it gets converted into a 32bit sample taking up twice the amount of RAM vs the original sample. It also doens't stream samples, so the amount of data you can actuially load to RAM is tiny.

Beutiful keyboard, but he has serious design flaws.

Regards
Sharp.