Does anyone use HD1 for piano, organ, etc?

BasariStudios · Post by **BasariStudios** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 5:05 pm

SanderXpander wrote:HD-1 is not without usefulness altogether, and it also serves as the synth-engine processing user samples/external libraries that are not EXis.

HD-1 is usefull as much as all the other EXis and in cases even more but one
has to understand the Kronos as deep as it needs to to get the usefullness
out of it...as Sanders said there is many things that can be done with HD-1
and i use it on a daily basis...especially as a feeding signal to some of the EXis.

cello wrote:HD-1 is very powerful - one just has to learn how to use it.

Rorcus · Post by **Rorcus** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 5:18 pm

Haven't got mine yet so this may be a stupid question, but can we unload EXs and does it give more room for samples?

I.e can I dump EP-1 & CX-3 for more memory in HD1?.

michelkeijzers · Post by **michelkeijzers** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 6:41 pm

Rorcus wrote:Haven't got mine yet so this may be a stupid question, but can we unload EXs and does it give more room for samples?

I.e can I dump EP-1 & CX-3 for more memory in HD1?.

You can remove sample sets, however, EP-1 & CX-3 do not use sample sets. All EXI's (EP-1 -> actually SGX-1 if I"m right & CX-3 are two of them).
HD1 is the 'rompler' and it uses sample sets and those you can remove.

shawnhar · Post by **shawnhar** » Thu Sep 15, 2011 6:52 pm

Whoah, not sure how this conversation got on to the idea of removing HD1 entirely!

That would be insane. HD1 is not only a great sample playback engine, it's also an improved version of the Wavestation, which in turn was an improved derivative of the PPG Wave. That's a couple of the greatest, most strangely creative and wonderful digital synths ever! Fantastic stuff, and goes way beyond 'just' sample playback.

Actually, it's status as a super-Wavestation was one of the main things that initially got me interested in the Kronos! The only thing I don't like about this engine is how HD1 is somehow special and cannot be combined with an eXi voice within a single program. I know you can layer it via a combi, but that's a rather awkward workflow (for instance it is a pain to pull in such a two-program sound for use with a sequencer). I wish it was possible to directly combine Wavestation sounds with Mod7 or AL1 within a single program.

But anyway. I love the creative Wavestation style sounds, and I love the orchestral samples, drums, etc. Just not convinced by the value of all those ok-but-not-quite-as-good-as-what-you-can-find-elsewhere HD1 keyboard sounds.

This doubt was inspired by my first experience of finding a Kronos in a music store, set to an HD1 piano voice. Down I sit. I play for a while. Hmm, think I. This is an ok, solid, workable piano, but it doesn't blow my socks off. Not sure why everyone was making such a fuss about the pianos in this thing. So I dial through a bunch of adjacent sounds. Hmm, bunch more variations on solid but not awe inspiring pianos and EPs. Ok, here's an FM EP sound - this must be that Mod7 thing I read about. Sounds fine, but weirdly sterile - I don't understand why people were making such a fuss about how expressive FM sounds can be, because this sounds just like a sample with velocity mapped to LPF cutoff. And on to the organs... wait a moment, the drawbars aren't working like I expect? Hang on, this is just a sampled organ!

At this point I realized what was going on, switched bank, and was duly blown away by the German Grand, awesomely expressive, responsive EP sounds, and had great fun with the CX3. But I'd been playing the thing for a good 10 minutes before I realized I was auditioning entirely the wrong set of sounds!

I can sort of understand wanting to include these sounds for backward compatibility and completeness, but I wonder if something simple like naming them differently ("Legacy piano"?) would avoid the risk of people judging the whole board based on them?

Slovenec · Post by **Slovenec** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 3:03 am

HD1 shouldn't be removed! Just remove those older 'bread and butter' sounds that are covered much better in other areas like SGX1, EP1, CX3 etc.

michelkeijzers · Post by **michelkeijzers** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 8:29 am

Meaning that the EXIs are better for equally sounds than HD1 does not mean it just can be removed. Most of the reasons have already been mentioned:
- polyphony of HD1 is good
- EXIs does not support all sounds available in HD1
- HD1 is 'easy' to program
- HD1 sounds different than equal EXIs, not perse better but different.

Slovenec · Post by **Slovenec** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 9:58 am

Pity about those HD1 guitars! What happened Korg? I do like the new brass, woodwind and bases though. Strings are ok but not any better than what I heard in am M3.

maestrophillips · Post by **maestrophillips** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 2:25 am

vstkeys wrote:I totally agree with you.... it is waste of space IMO. And please don't get me started on the triple GM banks .
. Man that oasys piano patch to me sounds as bad as a casio, i wonder if that was the real oasis piano yach .
But then again there will always be a user stating his love for this inferior sounds.
Well, at least the farting and sneezing sounds efx are funny.

General Midi...yuck! I am with you there.

I so tried to like the Oasys piano when I had it. I tweaked, reprogrammed, etc...it still did not make me happy. It got to a point where I NEVER used these pianos, instead opting for my Vienna Imperial VST.

Now with the Kronos, PLAYABLE PIANOS!!! Yes I still prefer Vienna, but I am not at all embarrassed by the Kronos pianos. I even really enjoy playing the piano sounds. Great job Korg!

Now, A/Bing the new sounds with the original Oasys pianos (and EP stuff) on the other banks is like night and day.

Impressive!

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 1:49 pm

I ask myself why anybody should plead for keeping HD-1, if nobody proposed to remove HD-1, and I even explicitely stated above that this is NOT the point to be discussed.

Instead there are two real points to discuss:

- if it is preferable or not to keep all the older HD-1 patches from Oasys times, or if there is enough reason to cut down redundant and lower quality patches/samples to reülace them by perhaps fewer HD-1(!) sounds of higher quality. There are pros and cons (backward compatibility, some cultish low quality sounds etc.)

- if there is ANY sound reason (pun intended) to keep the incredibly long and in most cases absolutely irrelevant GM sound list display in the present form. From my view it is crystal clear that these sounds do not deserve to be anything more than a display option, certainly not a default part of patch lists.

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:08 pm

I would presume that, if you are working on a project where piano or organ or EP sound is buried in the mix, in a song or combi, you may find it beneficial to use a sampled sound because it may yield better CPU usage (i.e. polyphony).

No point running a fancy modelling engine when you can hardly hear the detail.

Might also imagine that some factory combis from OASYS that are also present in KRONOS would use these sampled sounds in some places.

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:58 pm

Sorry to name it, but music where anything is "buried in the mix" doesn't sound too great anyway, ever, doesn't it?

I'd rather leave off half of these tracks/instruments than use a thick mix of mid/low quality stuff. There may be a sparse substitute here and there for good reasons, but all in all, I guess we will know that we made less good music, as soon as we hit the polyphony limits too soon, or fail to recognize the character of single instruments in the mix.

Imagine a Donald Fagen album like "The Nightfly", where suddenly something would not sound clear and recognizeable, with its own place in the mix, or with some low quality strumming in the background - hardly imagineable!

SanderXpander · Post by **SanderXpander** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:15 pm

I can think of plenty of Prince albums that sound fantastic exactly because things are the opposite of "clear" and "recognizable".

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:51 pm

Even Prince has done very clear mixes in a lot of his songs.

Name one crowded-mix song from him which still sounds "fantastic".
Maybe then we will just agree to disagree.
I happen to hate muddy, over-reverbed, and later overcompressed stuff from the 80s and 90s.

X-Trade · Post by **X-Trade** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:56 pm

A lot of the ambient and soundscape themes I used to work on relied on stacking layers of instruments in different octaves.

Again, buried in a mix doesn't necessary mean inaudible or messy, but for example a lot of detail in a simple piano sound could be lost when mixed with heavy guitars and drums.

jimknopf · Post by **jimknopf** » Sun Sep 18, 2011 9:40 pm

Ok, see what you mean.

Still I rarely use many of the patches in the first HD banks, just as I didn't use two thirds of the medium/low quality sample set sounds from old JV/XV generations in my former Fantom G. Even if I don't need a 4Gb grand for each piano sound in a mix, a certain amount of quality would most times be welcome, no matter for what kind of instrument and mix, and then I would always prefer some of these over those "redundant dozen" kind of small patches.

Anyway, just my two cents...