Decided against buying a Nautilus

[ITguy54]

The sale price on Nautilus is expiring the the end of June. I’ve decided against buying one. Korg could easily have offered an add-on box like the NanoKONTROL with 9 sliders for the drawbar organ model and other controls. But they don’t care enough. So neither do I.

[recreational]

Nautilus isn't worth buying for anyone who's not a synth-aficionado/collector. I did the experiment of buying just as much software as the cost of the Nautilus, and it was just mind-boggling how much better off I was, afterwards.

2.5 minute boot time? Even better!

Formerly physical realtime controls entrusted to a cheap-as-it-gets, resistive touch screen? AWESOME! (Good luck smoothly controlling ANY CC/other parameter with a sweaty stage finger on that super NON-slick plastic)

3 x different 1000-page manuals, (impossible to actually find the right page you're looking for) and constant troubleshooting, with OS updates to fix "bugs" as they come up? SWEET!

The editor software which is REALLY, REALLY bad is a drag to use.

My Triton was a much more enjoyable keyboard. I miss both that and my Z1 dearly. Anyone who has those two and wants to trade for a nautilus, let me know!!

Workstations are antiquated products that had a very helpful place in the 1980's, combining sequencing, sampling, and synthesis in a single product.

Yeah, it's a frustrating product to use, even from someone who learned the entire "Korg way" via the Triton. The tabs from Kronos would have been way more helpful, and I'm constantly cycling through menu after menu, whoops, wrong one, gotta go back to the main menu -- it's a horrible experience to use the Nautilus and anyone who disagrees is just happy that they got the Kronos technology in a cheaper package. I like that, too, but it doesn't stop me from objectively saying -- this synth is a *total drag,* and I can't wait to sell it to get SOME of my money back. Never in my life have I wrestled so much with a piece of digital gear, although a 32-track Korg mixer I had at one point came close!

[chelsea4023]

Hi,
Just wanted to respond to a couple of points in the thread.

I purchased a NanoKontrol 1 as it has 9 sliders compared to eight on the NanoKontrol 2. Unfortunately, neither will control the drawbars on the organ model. That said, I expect some drawbar expanders on the market should have the capability.
Secondly, I am sorry that Recreational feels the way he does about the Nautilus (obviously with some justification). I am from the arranger side of Korg (currently owning a PA4X) and decided to get the Nautilus 88 (which I really enjoy). Primarily it's the quality and the quantity of the onboard sounds that does it for me. They are breath-taking. Anybody who is reading this and not familiar with the model I urge you to go on Youtube, listen to the numerous demo's and fail to be impressed with the sound quality.
I came from owning a Roland RD2000, and wanted a similar piano action but with improved additional sounds. The Nautilus does not disappoint, although I do find it quite confusing to navigate, but overall the good points outweigh the negative points (for me anyway).

Best of luck to 'Recreational' in his search for an alternative keyboard.
Chris

[MehranPa5x76]

Hi,
Just wanted to respond to a couple of points in the thread.

I purchased a NanoKontrol 1 as it has 9 sliders compared to eight on the NanoKontrol 2. Unfortunately, neither will control the drawbars on the organ model. That said, I expect some drawbar expanders on the market should have the capability.
Secondly, I am sorry that Recreational feels the way he does about the Nautilus (obviously with some justification). I am from the arranger side of Korg (currently owning a PA4X) and decided to get the Nautilus 88 (which I really enjoy). Primarily it's the quality and the quantity of the onboard sounds that does it for me. They are breath-taking. Anybody who is reading this and not familiar with the model I urge you to go on Youtube, listen to the numerous demo's and fail to be impressed with the sound quality.
I came from owning a Roland RD2000, and wanted a similar piano action but with improved additional sounds. The Nautilus does not disappoint, although I do find it quite confusing to navigate, but overall the good points outweigh the negative points (for me anyway).

Best of luck to 'Recreational' in his search for an alternative keyboard.
Chris

Hi Chelsea

I have pa5x and I like it . But As I said I wanna buy nautilus 73 or any workstation(currently I'm confused what I want ) . But did you check Roland Fantom G sounds ? It's old workstation but the sounds and design is so perfect I believe

What you think about fantomG ?

Best regards
Mehran

[chelsea4023]

Hi Mehran,
I sold my Roland RD2000 stage piano to purchase the Nautilus 88. The sounds on the Nautilus are (in my opinion) better than the RD2000 although the actual piano sounds on the RD2000 are very, very good.
I don't think that the Fantom G would interest me that much.
Chris

[Scott]

My guess is that maybe Korg determined that a majority of the people with a Kronos were basically using it as a high quality rompler, creating splits/layers out of existing sounds, barely editing sounds at all, not using karma, not sampling, not creating sequences (at least of the linear composition kind), etc. From that perspective, if their goal was to come out with a cheaper-than-Kronos keyboard with the same sound quality but that was actually easier to use for the way so many people were using it anyway, it would be a win. And I think it has long been the case that there are lots of people who buy a board for things they think they might want to do, that they never end up doing. Which brings me to...

Workstations are antiquated products

That may be the real upshot here... that all the major players may have reached this same conclusion. When Yamaha essentially replaced Motif XF/MODXF with Montage/MODX, they took out the kind of sequencer that had made their predecessors workstations. Roland did the same when they came out with the Fantom/Fantom-0... they, too, are not workstations (as the earlier Fantoms were, along with the FA). And the new Yamahas and Rolands are both easier to use as simple performance boards than their predecessors were.

Korg may have likewise determined that the workstation era is largely over, the demand for true workstation use in a board is minimal these days. (The same reason we see so few rack modules from anyone anymore.) So they turned Kronos into something closer to Montage/Fantom in that they de-emphasized the high end workstation functionality, and instead focussed on its use as a simpler performance board. But since (unlike Roland/Yamaha) they were sticking with the same underlying platform instead of developing a new one, most of those other capabilities are still there underneath (which despite the reduction in functionality compared to Kronos, still gives it an edge for some people over the current Roland/Yamaha boards).

All that said, I'm surprised they didn't at least find it worthwhile to offer a better way to integrate their Nano devices, to maximize what they could do (and ease of doing it) on a Nautilus.

[Koekepan]

Workstations antiquated?

Interesting idea. Not sure that I believe it.

The Big Three have given up, I agree, but Casio is still in the game, Kurzweil is still in the game, and there's a strong rumble in the market for other form factors of workstation. Right now we have Akai Professional, Native Instruments and Ableton all offering workstations. Well, they call them "standalone" devices, and to be fair Ableton's Push3 doesn't really offer full soup-to-nuts creation so you might want to disregard them, but the modern MPC line (and the Force) as well as (registration requirements depending) the Maschine+ all let someone start with a blank slate and deliver a finished sonic product. That's a workstation, and they're selling very well.

If anything, I think that the Big Three have worked out that many people bought their workstations to be performance keyboards rather than production devices, and simply bent to that, rather than deciding what to do for the people who bought them to serve as workstations.

[ITguy54]

I see the discount on Nautilus has now been extended to 09-30-2023.

[jorgemncardoso]

Workstations antiquated?
If anything, I think that the Big Three have worked out that many people bought their workstations to be performance keyboards rather than production devices....

Well, i can certainly agree with that.
While having a sequencer is handy, that's like the last thing i worry about in a workstation.
I'm a performer/player, not a producer. My drive is to get my hands on the keys and play the damn thing along with a group of other musicians. Maybe that's why i kind of suck at DAW's and actual production.

Truth be told that if i bought a Kronos or Nautilus it would be to "play it", and for it's abilities for sound creation/layering and overall quality.
I actually think that if i had any money to buy new keyboards right now my choice would be the Nord Stage 4

[Koekepan]

Yup, pretty much by definition a workstation is the wrong product for you, and you might actually be much better off with an arranger, or a performance keyboard.

I think that the Big Three did themselves (and the public) a major disservice when they tried to peg their workstations as the thing to have on stage, while not differentiating that from the thing to have in the studio. Oh well, hindsight ...

[Mike Conway]

decided to get the Nautilus 88 (which I really enjoy). Primarily it's the quality and the quantity of the onboard sounds that does it for me. They are breath-taking.

Absolutely!!! Despite having a Kronos (and OASYS), I'm considering the Nautilus, so I can have my fabulous streaming libraries on more than one machine. They are indeed breathtaking.

While having a sequencer is handy, that's like the last thing i worry about in a workstation.
I'm a performer/player, not a producer

I'm not a performer or player, so the sequencer is the environment I live in. I copy my programs and combis to sequence mode. I love recording all the controller sysex, along with the notes. Very expressive.

Workstations antiquated?

Interesting idea. Not sure that I believe it.

Neither do I. There wouldn't be so many posts asking for the new Kronos or Montage, if that were the case.

If anything, I think that the Big Three have worked out that many people bought their workstations to be performance keyboards rather than production devices, and simply bent to that, rather than deciding what to do for the people who bought them to serve as workstations.

Really good point! The fine line is making something as intuitive as possible, while not stripping out the things that people, like you and I, buy them for.

[jorgemncardoso]

Yup, pretty much by definition a workstation is the wrong product for you, and you might actually be much better off with an arranger, or a performance keyboard.

Just because i hardly use the sequencer doesn't make the workstation the "wrong product" for me. I completely disagree on that one.
There is much more to a workstation synth than the addition of a sequencer.

Arrangers are definitely not for me. And a lot of the 90's/2000's "performance keyboards" had limited editing tools and no sampler/user sample library playback capabilities.

The sequencer is just one of the many parts of what defines a Workstation, not the "whole"

[Koekepan]

You're right.

There's a lot more to workstations than sequencers.

There's the ability to do sound design, performance recording, application of effects, mixing and ultimately rendering.

These are all things that could have been done in an audio engineer's "workstation" back in the days of 8 track tape, rackmount devices and analogue consoles which is why a modern keyboard workstation is called a workstation.

However, without the ability to sequence a complete, through-composed track, you don't have a workstation, and if you're not using that function you have a tool that is overspecified for your use case just as if someone who wants to make a phone call from a specific location, and would thus be perfectly happy with a landline phone dating from 1985, and is instead handed an iPhone 11 along with all the bugs and registrations and software updates and other burdens that go along with it.

Just because a workstation happens to coincidentally do some stuff that you want doesn't make it right for you; by your own description a performance keyboard with some playback capabilities would do the trick. Fortunately, Roland is ready when you are - they gave up on workstations and replaced them with performance keyboards over a decade ago.

[jorgemncardoso]

You're right.
Fortunately, Roland is ready when you are - they gave up on workstations and replaced them with performance keyboards over a decade ago.

If i where to buy any "performance keyboard" today, it would definitely be the Nord Stage 4, but adding a Kronos, Nautilus or Montage to the top tier would be mandatory

[Koekepan]

... and there it is. The Montage on the top tier would still not be a workstation. It simply doesn't have that capability set. If that would meet your need, you manifestly do not need a workstation.

Some workstations historically just happen to have a subset of their functions that is useful to you. All the rest is deadwood.