korg triton LE or korg trinity?

[rod_ger88]

I'm planning to buy a new kb..which one is better korg triton LE? or korg trinity? what are their major differences?

[EddyDeegan]

I know a fair amount about Trinity, but not so much about the Triton. I have a Triton Rack.

I think the LE has an arpeggiator which the Trinity doesn't. People who know more about the LE may be able to shed more light.

A full rundown of the Trinity specs can be found here:

http://eddy.deegan.org/faq.html

You can undoubtedly find Triton LE specs from Korg, or in Google. Compare them to the Trinity specs which are reproduced below:

Question: How much ROM does the Trinity have? I've seen some reports that it's 48Mb and others that it's 24Mb. Is there an optional extra 24Mb or something?

Answer: No, the Trinity has a fixed 24Mb of waveform ROM. However, Korg use 2:1 compression techniques to squeeze more in, hence the reports that there is 48Mb of sample data. This figure of 48Mb may be misleading, but if so I'm not sure by how much. There is 24Mb of physical ROM, although it contains compressed data.


Question: What Polyphony does the Trinity have?

Answer: 32 voices, with tweakable note-stealing priorities. With the Solo board fitted, this increases to 33 voices, the 33rd being the Solo card itself.


Question: Why does the Trinity only have 32 voices?

Answer: This is a moot point. Korg claim that it is to maintain the highest levels of quality. The samples in ROM are all taken at 48KHz and they claim that the processing required to maintain fast response doesn't allow greater than 32 voice polyphony without increasing the cost. Although this seems a little strange to me, I'm happy to go along with it although 64 voices would really make the Trinity extra extra special.


Question: OK then... what are the main specs?

Answer: The basic Trinity (common to all models) has 256 voices and 256 combinations (of up to 8 voices). Each voice can have one or two waveforms (oscillators) assigned to it, independently filtered, tuned etc. Polyphony is 32 voices. The 20-song, 80,000 event sequencer is 16 track and supports both insert effects (direct routing) and master effects (send/return routing), and it can record on multiple tracks simultaneously. Max resolution is 192ppqn, although you can quantise in realtime while you're recording if you so wish. The disk drive is standard HD.

The Trinity Plus has a prophecy daughterboard which adds MOSS synthesis (Multi-Oscillator Sound Synthesis) which has two oscillators, a sub oscillator and a noise generator, plus distortion, wah-wah, and a choice between reverb or simultaneous chorus and delay effects. These effects are built into the patch itself and do not compromise the main insert / master effects in any way. MOSS includes analogue modelling technology, by the way, with separate models for Brass, Reed and Plucked sounds. The prophecy daughterboard adds a further bank of presets taking the total programs to 320.

[Timo]

Question: How much ROM does the Trinity have? I've seen some reports that it's 48Mb and others that it's 24Mb. Is there an optional extra 24Mb or something?

Answer: No, the Trinity has a fixed 24Mb of waveform ROM. However, Korg use 2:1 compression techniques to squeeze more in, hence the reports that there is 48Mb of sample data. This figure of 48Mb may be misleading, but if so I'm not sure by how much. There is 24Mb of physical ROM, although it contains compressed data.

This is always something that's interested me, as some of Korg's PCM sets for the PBS-TRI also use the 2:1 data compression, effectively turning the 8mb flash-ROM into 16mb.

Would love to know how to utilise that myself for upping double my own custom sound/waveform data into my PBS! Alas, Jerry wont divulge. Ho hum!

I'm seriously wondering why they don't use the 2:1 compression in later models (Triton, etc.), though. Makes me think the compression might be lossy related (like MP3), as opposed to lossless (like Ape or Zip/Rar).

[EddyDeegan]

Question: How much ROM does the Trinity have? I've seen some reports that it's 48Mb and others that it's 24Mb. Is there an optional extra 24Mb or something?

Answer: No, the Trinity has a fixed 24Mb of waveform ROM. However, Korg use 2:1 compression techniques to squeeze more in, hence the reports that there is 48Mb of sample data. This figure of 48Mb may be misleading, but if so I'm not sure by how much. There is 24Mb of physical ROM, although it contains compressed data.

This is always something that's interested me, as some of Korg's PCM sets for the PBS-TRI also use the 2:1 data compression, effectively turning the 8mb flash-ROM into 16mb.

Would love to know how to utilise that myself for upping double my own custom sound/waveform data into my PBS! Alas, Jerry wont divulge. Ho hum!

I'm seriously wondering why they don't use the 2:1 compression in later models (Triton, etc.), though. Makes me think the compression might be lossy related (like MP3), as opposed to lossless (like Ape or Zip/Rar).

Ahh yes, Mr Kavorsky (spelling?) could be mysterious sometimes! I suspect the reason its not used in later models is simply the huge drop in cost associated with memory of all kinds in recent years.

It would be nice to have Korg release a 2:1 data compression algorithm though. If it is lossy, it certainly doesn't show in the Trinity... at least as far as I've always been able to hear, the high frequencies in the Trinity output are very clean and clear... which would be something I would expect compression to negatively affect if it was lossy.

Or perhaps it's an 'intelligent' compression which only compresses certain ranges of data where they are least audible...

Eddy