StephenKay wrote:EXer wrote:irtehyar wrote:For those stating that "It's ok for it to be cheap because it's a powerful oasys in a cheap box", well, the reason you're getting an "oasys" for this price is because computer power and touchscreen technology are cheap these days.
...and because Korg didn't have to invest in software design and developement for the Kronos, since the investment had already been done for the Oasys; they didn't even update the sequencer.
Against my better judgement, I must respond to this statement. (Dan and Rich are smarter than myself in this regard; hence they never comment on this kind of stuff).
With all due respect, this kind of attitude and point is clueless. Nothing personal to the people who said them.
Let's take one new feature in point: SST (Smooth Sound Transition): the ability to change programs or combis and have sustaining notes hold over, complete with the effects of the previous programs. Everyone would, I guess, admit that this is a powerful and useful feature, that people have been asking for forever. And it works really well on the Kronos.
This single feature, which may seem just one item on a bullet-point list to most, touches every single aspect of the software, every single sound engine, every single technology in the keyboard, such that major changes and revisions and testing and bug-fixing (i.e engineering resources and $$$) were required to be spent on everything that already existed. It was not just a case of taking existing OASYS software and plugging it into new hardware. The addition of a *single* feature like this required significant re-engineering of everything in the keyboard.
Let's take, just for a moment, KARMA - my thing. KARMA in the Kronos is the same (feature-set-wise) as the M3 and the OASYS. But I still had to work for over a year and a half implementing changes to the source code and engine such that it worked correctly with SST (not to mention other architectural changes).
Another would be adding the Drum Track feature of the M3, to the OASYS, in the Kronos. Again, a bullet point to you - to the engineering teams, many, many months of redesigning and reworking the software. This costs money, and time. Let's not even talk about the Set List feature.
And these are only several examples. It seems people have no idea what goes on with keyboard software development, other than people who actually design workstation keyboard software. (Those of you involved with other kinds of software, other kinds of computerized devices, please recuse yourselves. You have no opinion here, until you've gone swimming in this pond.)
One could say that the OASYS represented about 10-15 years of software development for Korg (if you look at the failed original OASYS and all of the time spent on that leading up to the released OASYS). The Kronos represents maybe an additional 3-4 years of software development. But it's not nothing. That's the time a company might normally spend on an entirely new product. You've gotten a bargain.
This response does not address build-quality issues, nor do I intend to. Not my job. But when I see people say ridiculous things about the software aspects of projects, such as "the software cost nothing, they already had it, they should have bought better knobs/fader end caps" , I feel I have to speak out.
