Where does the "Korg sound" come from?

[shawnhar]

There is a broad consensus that different manufacturers have a characteristic sound, which crosses multiple generations of synths even with radically different architectures. Most would agree that a Korg sounds like a Korg, and that this is fundamentally different to the sound of a Roland, Yamaha, etc.

I find myself wondering, where exactly does this distinctive sound come from?

It seems obvious that preset programming is a big part of it. The same voicing team will create presets for many generations of synths, and even if there is some turnover of individuals, newcomers will learn from those around them so it makes sense that a particular way of doing things and a specific aesthetic would persist for many years.

In a similar way, it seems obvious that rompler style instruments would keep this character even when programming custom sounds. No matter whether you use a preset or not, you are still using the ROM samples which are created by the manufacturer voicing team, and thus will always be influenced by their specific aesthetic.

But what about pure synthesizers which are programmed from scratch? Is there really something about, say, the different synth engines in Kronos which makes them all similarly Korgish, and somehow related to other Korg synths such as Z1 or Radias, in a way that sounds different to eg. a JP8000?

Personally, I'm not hearing it. It's certainly true that the Kronos presets (regardless of synth engine) have that "Korgish" quality, but when I program my own patches from scratch, they don't sound especially Korgish at all.

I'm curious how others feel about this?

[JPWC]

Interesting topic,

my comments are my opinion, but don't alwayd indicate a preference.

After many year of various keyboards;

I find Korg to bright sounding, excited and outfront great for dance music and keyboard solos, but the I find the kronos to be more well rounded and polished than past keyboards.

Yamaha is rock and roll sounding. great for backing parts. but solos can get lost in the mix.

Roland is pop music. Kind of middle ground inbetween Korg and Roland.

Kurzweil is much like Yamaha.

Of course, again, there are no rules and given any situation and depending on waths available, they'll all work just fine.

[popmann]

Recycling of sample libraries, overall sound design ethos, and likely some amount of converter level components.

Fwiw, the only past Korg keyboard I ever desired to own was the cx3. O recently bought a Kronos88 because on the sounds that matter to ME (traditional acoustic and electric pianos organs and strings) Korg has never really been very realistic. Everytime I sat down at one, I immediately heard creative synth sounds-not MY instruments.

Meanwhile, sitting a Kurzweil, those sound sets were broadly more realistic. Roland as a back up with a little more "studio hype" to the realism.

But the new piano engines in the Kronos changed that. Strings aren't much more advanced unfortunately...but, of less concern since I sequence those anyway-software will be fine. Pianos and organs are played with ten fingers live-and the Kronos is the bestfor those that I've ever used in hardware.

[shawnhar]

likely some amount of converter level components.

I hear this theory a lot, that the output DAC is a major factor in the sound of a synth.

Not sure I buy it.

Consider, when you run a digital synth through its built-in DAC, down an analog cable, to a cheap PC soundcard which turns it back to digital, then MP3 encode the result, stick it on Youtube, and I play that back through my different cheap PC soundcard, it is hard to imagine anything of the quality of the original DAC survives all that subsequent mangling! And yet, when I listen to Youtube videos I still hear that Korgs sound like Korgs, Rolands like Rolands, etc.

Also, my various softsynths in some cases have distinctive tonal characteristics which remained the same even when I upgraded to a new PC with a different soundcard.

If the converter hardware was really this important, I'd expect to be able to distinguish one soundcard from another by ear in a blind test (like I often can one synth from another). Yet I cannot.

I'd be inclined to suspect filter design as a major factor (there are some tough challenges in designing a good digital filter which any given manufacturer is likely to follow a similar path across many different instruments). And yet, this manufacturer character seems to be present even in PCM based sounds where there is little if any filtering going on.

[xmlguy]

I disagree with the assertion that there is a broad consensus. Nobody asked me to vote, and I bet nobody here was asked to vote either, so anyone who did vote, speak up so that we can see how broad the vote was. To me, a Triton Extreme, R3, and Z1 sound remarkably different from each other.