Korg Forums

Hello and Happy New Year

I have a Korg Trinity Plus that I recently acquired that is in pristine shape and have integrated it into one of my gear setups for recording. I also have a Korg M50 and various other gear.

My question is regarding the Korg M50 Arps and Drum Tracks (from different combis) triggering from the sequencer in the Trinity. How do I go about doing that? What is the control # for turning them off and on?

I know that I could simply MIDI the Trinity to the M50 so that the Trinity could receive the MIDI out info from the M50 and then use the sequencer on the M50 but I wanted to see if it could be done with the sequencer on the Trinity instead. I love the action on the Trinity's keybed much more than the action on the M50 and would like to original my played tracks from the Trinity.

Any advice is welcome

Hello,
M50's Drum track and Arpeggiator switches are toggled via SysEx messages. My advice would be to use Trinity's sequencer to send SysexData to M50 during performance. However the downside of that is that you cannot trigger it with CC (and I think one cannot send Sysex directly from any knob or button on M50, so it is probably not possible to do it on Trinity as well).

I am not close to my M50 now, but you can either look into M50 Parameter Guide into appendix about MIDI messages or record a song on M50 in sequencer mode and during recording running toggle Arp and Drum Track switch to save Sysex messages. Then if you are using computer DAW you can see the Sysex messages there or you can export song data to MIDI file on M50 and investigate in your DAW.

Some external mapping software could help with that (I am actually thinking of creating one for myself).

By the way, how is the Trinity compared to M50 in terms of sound and features/control? Just a quick comparison would be nice.

Thank you for the information. I decided to use the M50 sequencer instead since it holds more data and will simply use the Trinity Sequencer as templates, since this seems to work very well. What I have found though is that when I turn the ARPs and Drum tracks off and on while recording, it inserts an EXCL message in the main track that turns them on. Since I am doing a Multi-Rec scheme and all of the tracks are recording their respective data, I simply delete the EXCL message from the M50 sequencer and the data is still there in the track(s) it is supposed to be in.

With regard to how the Trinity sounds, it is a wonderful and deep sound. It sounds clearer and this is likely due to the quality of the sample recording. I know that they are all 48Khz and I believe that Korg kept this for all models after the Trinity but I think that the Trinity was in 24-bit resolution and the Triton and such (maybe the M50 too is only 16-bit resolution). There is a difference in the sounds, especially the atmospheric and pad sounds.

The piano and guitar sounds are not good but that is not due to the resolution - it is the samples themselves being so dated and such little memory space for each one. This is where the M50 excels. Even when I have used some of the 3rd party piano creations, they are not good at all and to get a stereo sound, you must use 2 oscillators and so it halves the polyphony to 16 (but this also occurs on the M50). I have made one great piano sound though on the Trinity and it is clear and cuts well. I did it just in case I ever take the board out and have to use the piano sound on it.

I do not use the piano sounds though on the M50 when I am recording because I also bought the SG-Rack and the pianos are really good and have so much more life than the M50. All of the other sounds though are very good on the M50 and of course the strings and other sounds like that sound equally good on both, with the nod going to the Trinity for the deeper and clearer sound.

The EFX on the M50 are much better than on the Trinity, as is the sequencer. It is all just easier to use than on the Trinity but the nice thing is to see where the changes have been made from the Trinity to the M50 and how much more easily one can navigate on the M50. It is much faster too in screen response than the Trinity (but everyone already knew this).

The Trinity also gets the nod because of the Prophecy solo board being installed and I have come up with some pretty tasty lead sounds as a result that cannot be matched in realism on the M50.

The build quality on the Trinity easily surpasses the M50 as well. It feels like a substantial instrument. The key action is great and is an absolute joy to play. The screen position on the M50 is better though, especially when the Trinity is on the bottom of a stand and there is something above it. The Ribbon controller is nice too and I am getting used to that instead of always using the joystick. I've not used the multiple outputs though; I only have used the main L-R so far. The screen is clearer on the M50 than the Trinity. The floppy drive is expectedly slower and the SD slot on the M50 but works well. My rotary dial does not work on the Trinity but neither does the one on my M50 so I do not miss it at all.

I hate to say it though, the solo violin still sounds better on my Ensoniq SQ-R+/32 than anything else I have as does the Oboe and other orchestral sounds. This is why I have so many Ensoniq synths.

Korg has its place though and I am very happy to have lots of those too. They all work so well together - they play nice together

Thank you for your help

Grace,
Harry

Hello Harry,
glad to hear you found out!

Just for the record and to keep promise, here are the SysEx messages: Thank you for information on Korg Trinity. I have listened to some sound examples and it sounds amazing! Pads are much more lively on Trinity than on M50.

I was attributing it to sound phasing problems, but it seems that 24 bit samples is what makes the difference. Trinity's engine is probably 24-bit as well.

Having listened to M3 it seems to me to sound better than M50 as well. New Krome sounds to me more like M50. Interesting… Maybe I will get Trinity or Triton as companion to M50.

Have a nice day!

Thank you for information on Korg Trinity. I have listened to some sound examples and it sounds amazing! Pads are much more lively on Trinity than on M50.

I was attributing it to sound phasing problems, but it seems that 24 bit samples is what makes the difference. Trinity's engine is probably 24-bit as well.

Having listened to M3 it seems to me to sound better than M50 as well. New Krome sounds to me more like M50. Interesting… Maybe I will get Trinity or Triton as companion to M50.

Please keep in mind that many people have said that the Trinity sounds better than the Triton, with the exception to the Extreme. I suspect that in the case of the Extreme, the addition of the Tube circuit makes up for any resolution loss by adding warmth or crunch, etc...

With regard to the M3 - I suspect that since technology has progressed so rapidly, that the M3 has the higher resolution. My research has found that the M3 internal resolution is indeed 24-bit. This should be correct since the EDS system in the M3 is basically the HD-1 system from the OASYS (which was 24-bit), so it would share the higher resolution.

With that said, the M50 should also be 24-bit since it is a distilled version of HD1 (or EDS, since it really came from the M3 but the M3 EDS was initially from the OASYS HD-1 as well). Maybe it does not sound as alive due to the extra compression or something internally....maybe I am confusing things - and myself

What I really like about having both the Trinity and the M50 is that I can see where they started from (Trinity) and where it evolved to (M50) before going with the Kronos (which would up the ante on the HD1 and other engines and internal resolution) and the Krome (which is 16-bit/48kHz samples according to their specs).

If you can work around the fact that it is an older synth (and will be slower and with much lower polyphony), you will have lots of fun with it.

I welcome your updates and information. The Trinity models are fairly cheap nowadays and depending on what you use it for, are still relevant, IMHO.

If you are looking for a piano module, please consider the SG-Rack. At first, it may really appear that it would be inferior, but if memory serves, most of the 24mb (15 or 16mb, I believe) were dedicated to the stereo piano samples. It uses Ai2 synthesis, which is really old, but there is a maturity in the sound that makes me keep playing it. I upped the output level of the main piano sound and made it a bit brighter for my tastes, and it sounds great. This model actually came out after the Trinity did (1998, I believe) so they had many years to perfect the Ai2 to what it was in the SG-Rack. It is light years ahead of anything you heard in the 01/W, X, N series for sure. I also have the 05R/W and X5DR and the SG-Rack absolutely blows anything those other models had for piano offerings.

I was thinking of getting an 88-key keyboard (Yamaha or something with weighted action) but may end up just getting a weighted controller instead so I can play the SG-Rack from that. I triggered the SG-Rack from my Ensoniq KT-76 synth the other evening and the piano came even more alive due to the excellent weighted action on the Ensoniq. It was really good to do that and really dig into the action and see what the SG-Rack would do instead of using a synth or semi-weighted action board like I normally do.

In fact, I am thinking of doing it again right now just to play it again

Grace,
Harry