Korg Forums

[Kontrol49]

The S3 compact is being advertised in the UK at £3049(Sterling) which is a high premium for the cheapest in the range,currently the Stage 2 EX 88 is still being sold at £2900,so I would expect to see a price drop on those models soon in order to clear old stocks,I would also think the actual price of the S3 will be lower than what stores are advertising them currently when it actually hits the shops its a rather inflated price at £3049 and a massive premium to pay.

I'm a Stage 2 88 Owner,I like the updates of the MK3 but it's not enough to make me jump ship straight away,and judging by the word on the Nord Forums there are many Other S2 owners who feel the same,There hasn't been much word on whether the S3 and S2 have direct sound file transfer so I guess that would be a massive deal breaker for many existing Stage 2 Owners planning to upgrade,I think it would be foolish for Nord to not allow file transfer or at least a convertor editor,as I expect a large portion of the sales of the S3 would come from users hoping to upgrade.

To me Nord command a high price because they pretty much had the market to themselves for this type of all in one Instrument for a long time,But I think they are going to have to rethink things due to the recent other additions coming onto the Market from Roland and Korg.

The Stage Keyboards have a good following though,I see a lot of other keys players using them Live in the UK either a Stage or an Electro model,there's no doubt they are a great Instrument they are superb live tools and there is very little that comes close to the Nords for ease of use and tailoring the instruments to your needs with very little fuss to setup.

They are pretty lightweight too for the gigging musician but they perhaps are not the best sounding sample Libraries in comparison to other high end workstations/Synths,(i.e. Kronos)If your particular about the Sound Quality.

I think there is always going to be a compromise with the Nords in that respect but most users I'm aware of are happy enough with the Sound libraries and buy into the Stage/Electro for the all in one instrument/ease of use aspect mostly.

[GregC]

Just a casual thought, but I sense these MI cos are pushing the envelope
on price, out of the gate.

While dealers will discount, that is a rocky road for them getting allocation of inventory refresh.

I can share with you that the retailers/dealers that stick closely to MSRP get top ranking for future allocation.

Dealers that do cost plus 5% often find themselves at the back of the line for getting hot new product.

So much for that inside baseball stuff.

Yamaha also charged a premium for the Montage. IMO, that is 1 over priced board. Obviously, the new Nord stage is a premium price.

I can't find anything on the price of the new Korg stage piano. I suspect thats not under $3000

The Korg K2 pricing does not exactly fit into this side debate because the model is essentially + 5 yrs old.

Maybe its not a trend, I just see a few desirable new keyboards as being over the top for price vs value
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Kronos 88. MODX8
Achieve your musical dreams
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[keego]

Roland RD2000 retails at £2119. Will be interesting to see what the Korg Grandstage retails at when/if it is released.
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Current Arsenal:
Kronos 61, Kurzweil PC3K6, Nord Stage 3, Yamaha MOXF8, Muse Receptor 2+, Mainstage


Previous:
Korg:X5D,Wavestation, N364, Trinity,Triton Classic,Triton Studio, Korg M3 61 w/ EXB-Radias
Ensoniq:TS12, SD1, ASR10
Roland:XP10, JD-800, Roland XV88, A90ex
Kurzweil:K2500RS, K2661, PC3
Nord: Electro 3

[skinmechanic]

I had the Stage 2 EX88 for a few weeks, it had an excellent keybed and built very very well. The problem with Nord is they haven't done anything worth looking at as different since the Lead X2, the Lead 4 sounded nice and so does the A1 but they haven't moved forward. They are overpriced but built very well (The Stage).

[Devnor]

Nice see they added the A1 synth to the new Stage. Understandable current Stage owners aren't going to upgrade because if complex synthesizer sounds are an important component of their gig they probably are using something else in addition to the Stage.

In gigging bands i.e. paid gigs where I'm playing bass guitar, all of the keyboard players including subs are using either a Stage or Electro 5D as their primary instrument. It didn't happen overnight but the shift to Nord happened very quickly. When you are making $250+ a night it doesn't take long to recoup your $4k investment.

What I appreciate about the Nord sound is it blends very nicely in the live environment.

[Bachus]

[SanderXpander]

I guess that's why you see so many laptops with Seaboards on stage, instead of Nords.

[Bachus]

[SanderXpander]

I know exactly why you don't see as many laptops as Nords on Stage. Because live players prefer simplicity, a lightning fast unified interface and playable sounds over lots of options that might sound better in some circumstances. The VST system has a long way to go before it reaches even the same level as the Kronos for live use, let alone that of Nord keyboards.

[Bachus]

[SanderXpander]

I'll believe it when I see it
Even major companies like NI and Akai are not anywhere near Kronos levels of "instant use". Specialized software companies like Brainspawn and Cantabile are even further behind.

I would love for this to happen but I think the trade-off between instant usability and high quality sound will exist for quite some time still.

I say that while owning plenty of VSTs that could replace all Kronos functionality, running on very recent high end hardware. There is just no way I can turn it all on and have over 3000 sounds ready to play within 2 minutes, with 9 easily combinable/splittable engines and 16 fx processors all from a single GUI.

[Bachus]

[SanderXpander]

Kinda close in the amount of available controllers, maybe halfway close in pre mapping them in a consistent way. I have no doubt that MainStage and its competitors are gig worthy an sich, I've even gigged with it. I'm just saying, for all the flak Kronos gets for being a closed system on low level hardware (by current standards), all these wonderful VSTs running on state of the art systems are still not close to becoming a true alternative when it comes to speed and ease of working in a live context. I'm running one of the fastest SSDs on the market at the moment, and one of the fastest mainstream CPUs, on Windows 10 which boots faster than any Windows before, yet I get nowhere near Kronos levels of performance if I want to boot and have something similar to the Kronos ready to play.

I don't even see how traditional VST architecture allows for something like seamless sound combi switching, something the Kronos does in a fraction of a second. Do you realize you can have 8 PolySixes, 4 HD1s, an SGX-2 and three MS20s (including sixteen fx) switch to any other combination of the 9 engines in a fraction of a second? How would that even work in VST land? Would I need to have 16 Massives loaded at all time on the off chance that I might need a few in a combination? Or sixteen Kontakts just with strings, then sixteen with piano (just one piano!), etc.

I'm sure there are some workarounds but I don't think we're even remotely close to "similar performance".

[Bachus]

[SanderXpander]

We all have hopes and I have dreamt similar dreams. I just think the issue is a lot more complicated than it might seem at first sight.