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Everything sounds good but something about the String synth (guitar/sitar) sounds artificial and cold! Why?

I thought so too. Nylon and Steel string acoustics are SO important to me. But considering that this workstation will probably dominate the market over the next few years, I'm sure users and third-party developers will be all over making new samples and patches for korg users to use, no?

I also gripe about the bowed strings; they sound so icky midi to me from the demos I've heard. Hopefully they will release more lush and full-sounding symphonic string patches.

On the other hand, the rest of the orchestral instruments sound pretty good! And on the whole kronos sounds amazing. My favorite is the pianos, OMG.

I haven't heard any steel string demos. Are there any out there yet?

Hayang wrote: I But considering that this workstation will probably dominate the market over the next few years, I'm sure users and third-party developers will be all over making new samples and patches for korg users to use, no?

I would not count on 3rd party products for the Kronos. Yamaha has done a great job activity persuing 3rd parties for the Motif line, but Korg has never seemed that interested in getting 3rd parties involved.

For now, a person would be wise to consider the Kronos to be a closed box, coming only with the stated engines and sounds.

String instruments like guitar are important to me. the yamaha motif does a very good job emulating them, even the electric guitars in them sound quite realistic.

The other option is REALGUITAR vst audio unit. This is amazing.

Korg has to do better in the guitar category. Right now the demo sounds like a Casiotone guitar processed with awesome effects

Forget RealGuitar. It's old and not as good anymore. I can pick it up as fake anytime.


Keep watching on Orange Tree Samples. They're soon coming out with an acoustic guitar library that's gonna put all others to shame.

I notice that Korg haven't done much to show off the guitar sounds in the Kronos demos. Also, the demonstrator should know better than to use a bloody sustain pedal when emulating a guitar sound!!!!! For goodness sake that was terrible with the nylon string STR1 demo. I also found the sitar sound to be unconvincing when it comes to actual realism.

Not hanging it on Korg because I've been an avid user of Korg equipment and still own, love and use a vintage(!) 1990 Korg T3EX (the Kronos of 1989/1990!).

I've always found korg lacking when it comes to acoustic pianos (up until now with the release of the Kronos) and acoustic guitars and electric guitar and bass sounds. Honestly, Yamaha Motif (from the ES series onwards) leaves Korg for dead when it comes to realistic guitar and bass sounds! I certainly hope that the Kronos has addressed this major shortcoming which existed in previous Korg instruments (including the Oasys and M3).

They've put in 12GB or sample content and I certainly hope that a good portion of that includes quality sampled guitar and bass sounds. If not, an expansion dedicated to these instruments should be high on their list of eventual updates!

Lets make a positive or negative verdict once we can get our hands on an actual instrument once the Kronos is released!

Who cares about guitars on a workstation anyways. That's not what it should be about, IMO.

I've rarely experienced good guitar from a hardware synth. I always route my guitar patches through an external guitar processor like the POD X3. That little trick gives me a wide range of acceptable guitar sounds, and I can tweak them to my liking.
-Mike

If guitars and orchestral strings are important u shouldn't be using any synth not even a Motif. There are even cheap guitar VI's at $99 that will kill anything that the Motif can generate and acoustically Motif has been better than Korg. For realistic orchestral instruments no synth can hold a candle to Vienna or East West Platinum.

A synth cannot compete with over 100gbs of orchestral samples and the complex coding for realistic articulations. Even the slimmed down bersoin of vienna that comes bundled in Kontakt sounds stunning compared to what u can get out of any synth, even the Kurz. I do a lot of orchestral scoring and use a sparse amount of guitars. I'm a hardware guy but have no shame in stating that my work comes from VIs like Vienna and EWQLSO. That's pretty much studio standard. If u haven't looked into these and are serious about music, you should! U'll be happy u did. My OASYS is a workhorse, but when it comes to orchestral strings she's just the world's most expensive midi controller!

Now what Korg has done with the SSD and disk streaming is revolutionary in the fact that it's similar the sample engines like Kontakt, Play and such. It isn't 100's of gb of samples only 12gb, so yes the VI's will be better at acoustical, but it opens the doors for a hardware synth so have a 1TB drive and stream samples with round robin etc. For uber realistic articulations. I'm not sure if Korg will ever go that route, if they do the acoustic instruments will be just as good as VI's if coded properly. That would be yet another game changer, a portable synth that has VI like articulaions... U'd need lots and lots of ram, but i think that may be where we're headed. Until then leave the acoustics in the computer.

Mike Bunker wrote:I've rarely experienced good guitar from a hardware synth. I always route my guitar patches through an external guitar processor like the POD X3. That little trick gives me a wide range of acceptable guitar sounds, and I can tweak them to my liking.
-Mike

Great tip mike! I've done the same with Electroharmomix pedals and gotten some decent results. ProTools users also have The free SansAmp in the box to use which helps a lot.

I bought Boss BR-800 digital multitracker to get Rolands amp modelling effects. Now electric guitars on even my Alesis QS6 sound like Fantom-X.

Mike Bunker wrote:I've rarely experienced good guitar from a hardware synth.

Check out Motif very nice guitars IMHO

Rocness wrote:

Mike Bunker wrote:I've rarely experienced good guitar from a hardware synth.

Check out Motif very nice guitars IMHO

I've got a Motif and would have to agree, best guitars on a synth. But any synth against a sample library VI... No contest. Gotta get in the box for acoustic. But... U can use the string engine for crazy synth textures that would be pretty difficult to make otherwise.

Some excellent points are raised above regarding VI's and acoustic instrument emulations.

However, if a Yamaha Motif has been able to pull off very acceptable guitar and bass sounds since the release of the Motif ES in 2003, then why can't a vastly more powerful 2011 synth like the Kronos pull the same quality of guitars and basses now?

Surely with a combination of samples and STR1, some truly amazing guitar and bass sounds could be created even if they aren't quite on par with 100GB sound libraries!