Korg Forums

Hi,
My rig is korg sv2 mostly for piano and electric piano sounds, sometimes layered with strings or pad and korg kross 1 61 for other sounds like organ, synth, orchestral and so on.
Is it worth the upgrade to kross 2?
I looked for the differences between kross1 and kross2 but didn't find something like a summary or similar.

Kross 2 additions/improvements I'm aware of:

* weight of 61 lowered from 4.3 kg to 3.8 kg (not much difference on the 88)

* polyphony increased from 80 to 120

* addition of pad sampler

* number of stock programs increased from 809 to 1075 (though there are some original Kross sounds that are not in the replacement)

* expansion memory for additional sounds, into which you can load the expansion packs for additional pianos, EPs, EDM sounds https://www.korg.com/us/news/2019/0913/

* built-in USB interface to send and receive audio over USB

* a real-time control section with a button and two knobs that can easily be switched among 6 functions. For example, you can have the knobs be cutoff and resonance, or easily switch them to attack and release, or effects. You can have the button toggle between two touch settings, or invoke a quick octave shift. etc.

* 128 user-defined Favorite locations instead of 64 (8 banks of 16 instead of 4)

There are also some things that you might prefer on the old model. The 61 had a built-in carrying handle. The headphone jack was more conveniently located on the front instead of the back. I liked the horizontal layout of the 16 Favorite buttons, because it was easy to print out labels for them (even multiple banks' worth), where the sound name would appear right under each button.