The ESX will allow you to sample all kinds of common drum sounds - and indeed any sound you want to use from pots and pans to jack plug fumblings to synth notes.
The Volca Beats is just a drum synth machine. meaning it has a few built in samples for hats and then the rest are synthesized with a limited sound palette. It has quite a classic analog drum sound but you'll never get the big sampled drums used in a lot of modern music, and you won't get real acoustic drum sounds out of it either.
ESX also has a comprehensive effects section and a couple of melodic (keyboard) parts in the sequencer. So I think it's the superior machine overall especially if it's your only drum machine.
Current Gear: Kronos 61, RADIAS-R, Volca Bass, ESX-1, microKorg, MS2000B, R3, Kaossilator Pro +, MiniKP, AX3000B, nanoKontrol, nanoPad MK II,
Other Mfgrs: Moog Sub37, Roland Boutique JX03, Novation MiniNova, Akai APC40, MOTU MIDI TimePiece 2, ART Pro VLA, Focusrite Saffire Pro 40.
Past Gear: Korg Karma, TR61, Poly800, EA-1, ER-1, ES-1, Kawai K1, Novation ReMote37SL, Boss GT-6B
Software: NI Komplete 10 Ultimate, Arturia V Collection, Ableton Live 9. Apple OSX El Capitan on 15" MacBook Pro
thanks x trade, i am interested in sampling and layering sounds to create drums, bass and lead. so it is alll a bit new to me : )
i have looked at youtube videos showing the kaossilator pro with the mk etc , it looks like the reall deal and appears to have modern drums and patterns etc. aand sampling/sequencing
i am assuming is more programmable etc , but would appreciate your opinions regard pro - cones between the too.
The KOPro is just a preset machine mostly with a live looper tacked on.
You can loop into it's four looper banks. But recalling or swapping those loops involves loading from memory card which isn't fast and definitely requires you to stop playing. They're great for creating loops on the fly with the built-in sounds though.
The built-in sounds on the KOPro are a variety, including some drum oneshots but mostly short drum loops with variations on different parts of the pad (e.g. move your finger to one sound for a fill, etc.
Basically there's the 99 sounds it comes with and that's it. Actually less than that because some of them are effects or vocoder processors.
The main point of the Kaossillators (KO1 and KOPro) are that they are a unique input experience for playing melodic sounds, and key-locked too so perhaps great for someone with little real (traditional) musical instrument experience.
Also being a looper and not a sequencer, you can't easily correct mistakes after you make them. There is no undo and you can't just 'un-program' it like you would on a pattern sequencer.
The drum loops themselves I think are okay.. But for me the big point would be that you can't really program them. At all. So you can't get very original. OTOH if I were a little less pretentious myself perhaps I'd admit that I'm rubbish at programming drums anyway and be happy to stick with the preset loops in the KO1
Basically with a Kaossillator you can build up short loopy things and employ various tricks to perform a song out of those loops and by adding additional parts as you go.
I still feel the ESX is a better choice. It's designed as an entire production workstation almost. Indeed some artists have programmed entire tracks on them. I've tried too and if you like a hands-on hardware experience that is going to be fairly flexible and do exactly what you want, then I think this is the right class of instrument and definitely the best offering from Korg for that.
Current Gear: Kronos 61, RADIAS-R, Volca Bass, ESX-1, microKorg, MS2000B, R3, Kaossilator Pro +, MiniKP, AX3000B, nanoKontrol, nanoPad MK II,
Other Mfgrs: Moog Sub37, Roland Boutique JX03, Novation MiniNova, Akai APC40, MOTU MIDI TimePiece 2, ART Pro VLA, Focusrite Saffire Pro 40.
Past Gear: Korg Karma, TR61, Poly800, EA-1, ER-1, ES-1, Kawai K1, Novation ReMote37SL, Boss GT-6B
Software: NI Komplete 10 Ultimate, Arturia V Collection, Ableton Live 9. Apple OSX El Capitan on 15" MacBook Pro
cheers x trade! good synopsis - exactly what i am looking for for. i am going to pick up the electribe later today. the kaossilator vids do show some real gnarly tricks - right out of the box.
It kinda looks like a magic bullet for the musically inept and the synchronisation between user input and output makes it looks like some real clever wizardy - thats why it was initially (and still is ) appealling - as the song goes- i'm wicked and i'm lazy
maybe look at it again next year - after coming to terms with my electribe.
Current Gear: Kronos 61, RADIAS-R, Volca Bass, ESX-1, microKorg, MS2000B, R3, Kaossilator Pro +, MiniKP, AX3000B, nanoKontrol, nanoPad MK II,
Other Mfgrs: Moog Sub37, Roland Boutique JX03, Novation MiniNova, Akai APC40, MOTU MIDI TimePiece 2, ART Pro VLA, Focusrite Saffire Pro 40.
Past Gear: Korg Karma, TR61, Poly800, EA-1, ER-1, ES-1, Kawai K1, Novation ReMote37SL, Boss GT-6B
Software: NI Komplete 10 Ultimate, Arturia V Collection, Ableton Live 9. Apple OSX El Capitan on 15" MacBook Pro
As an owner of both of the flagship Kaoss products, I was initially underwhelmed (especially by the Kaossilator Pro). You don't have nearly the dynamic control as you would with a sequencer, and there are some negative workflow aspects that you wouldn't necessarily notice in one of Beardyman's awesome videos.
HOWEVER. Now that I've had both for a few months, I can say that the two chained together makes for an awesome vocal effects processor/instrument/noise machine. I typically stay in the live instrumentation sample bank on the Kaossilator Pro, along with the key-locking vocoder and audio effect bank, while the Kaoss Pad's large arsenal of amazing effects makes for a great second link in the chain.
If you want quick and live, the Kaoss products are great, but they definitely are not sequencers, and if you want that sort of control you would likely be better with the electribe.
to use alongside mk xl plus.
