Korg Forums

[beatifictatter]

After waiting a year for a firmware update it seems obvious it's not happening.

Just some poxy sample banks. I make my own samples so these are useless to me, and not what I bought the machine for.

I just got the akai synthsation for Xmas. Now I'm using it with nanostudio on my iPhone 4 and all of a sudden, for £70 and a £10 app. I have 8gig of sample storage, easy switching of sample/keyboard sounds, very useable sequencer and the promise of updates. Which so far have been great with nanostudio. Plus a synth engine, endless song memory etc and heaps more.

I'll miss the effects a little bit but I'll be running nanostudio in to my sp-555 so I'm sure I'll live. Shame, if korg just listened and cared a little it could have been a great little live tool. As it is I might keep it for the ease of sampling it provides in a couple of the modes, but that doesn't warrant £380 I spent on it.

Goodbye microsampler. Hope korg made a massive loss on this machine.

[lloydsmith]

Yes I get where you are coming from as you would expect.

Mike from UK support took some kind interest back in Feb, but nothing came back. It's a minor low level product for Korg as others have said. Looking at their past form - they don't return to update hardware very often. I get the feeling it will be obsolete soon. That & the Kpro feel to me like two dead ducks in the water commercially.

It is obvious that the ipad apps genre will change hardware direction away from home user biased products like the MS. Like you say they do the job at most levels for massively less outlay thus taking away much of the MS reason for existing, given that it's horrible to use live.

If they release a successor it needs to sell on the strength of its ergonomics not despite of them. KORG already have the answer I imagine. So many apps have taken the Kaoss pad surface & run with it - now they need to come up with something like a more upmarket kp3/electribe hybrid. Whatever they come up with I am sure KORG will adapt & survive.

I may buy KORG again but I am not altogether satisfied with this experience so would be wary of rushing to grab the next sexy thing. I am sure it's no loss to them!
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[beatifictatter]

Yeah I know what you're saying. Just think that these days companies need to show their customers a little more appreciation for parting with their money.
Could have been a good product if they'd made a tiny bit of tweaking to the os.
I bought it primarily as a way of multi-sampling sounds from laptop softsynths and for ease of sampling/chopping. I'd say the only thing it got right was the sampling modes. Super quick. I imagine all samplers will have those modes in future. Everything else is a bit of a shambles...
I don't expect korg to lose sleep over it, but I hope at some point they get superseded by some of the smaller more forward thinking companies that are doing a great job with pushing products and customer relations in to the modern world.

[SMK]

so beatifictatter, how much do you want for your micro sampler? I might buy it off of you...if you have not thrown it in the trash by now LOL...
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[johnschwarz]

sort of feel like a jerk.

[piplefou]

I guess it depends on your expectations...

I absolutely love the microsampler, because it enables me to have a small, portable instrument with very high quality sounds. In addition, creatively using various sampled sounds as instruments is so easy with this device.
I think that most people who don't like it expect functionality from the sequencer that is not there (and was never promised by Korg). It's like buying an MPC500 and being disappointed that it is not an MPC1000. And then complaining there are no updates to give it the functionality of an MPC1000.

I can imagine those iPhone apps are nice, just as VST synths can be a good replacement for real ones...
But you definitely miss the (rather nice) keyboard of the microsampler. Except when you connect a MIDI keyboard to your iPhone (not battery powered I assume), you cannot even play a simple chord very well...

[jbl]

[kilon]

[piplefou]

[quote]but the mpc1000 can share some if not most of the functions of its elder siblings if [b]open sourced[/b][/quote]

Yup, I know , I nearly bought an MPC1000 because of the features it offers with JJOS.

Some people on this forum are frustrated with the microSAMPLER, and I think it is because they tend to think of the machine as an MPC with keys. And if you compare the sequencers of these devices, MPC clearly wins. If you see it as a sampler with good keyboard and the sequencer as a useful extra, you probably won't be disappointed: it's extremely handy and versatile at home, while traveling, and at rehearsals & gigs (for a few extra sounds in compact format).

[beatifictatter]

I know the ms has some good points. Of all my samplers it's by far the easiest to just plug YouTube in to and bang through some abstract videos, use key-gate mode and stumble upon some really cool juxtapositions of sounds. But you run out of memory real quick doing that and forever going back to the daw to drop files off either to develop a song or simply free up banks (STILL stuck with the factory bank, even if they just did an update so I can delete that s**t/free up space I'd have been a little happier). I should have researched more. If I'd known how long banks take to load etc I'd have given it a miss. And selecting samples for keyboard mode is way too fiddly with the dial. And it sucks for live looping/overdubbing. It's very limited as a live tool, which is what I bought it for. I can use a pc and poison vst for sampling/chopping at home and be much happier with the effects from other vsts etc. As a means of grabbing samples I'd say it's the best out there, that's why I'll probably keep but every other aspect is pretty weak or has major workflow issues....

My point is that's fun and can be inspiring, but it isn't worth the money and I feel let down by korg.

[kilon]

[beatifictatter]

Kilon, I can see you're chuffed with your microsampler and that it does what you need it to. That's cool, I'm glad some people are happy with it. But for me it doesn't work in a live situation. Which is what I bought it for. I can resample endlessly (and with live looping/overdubbing to separate file on each pass...) inside my daw just as easily as with the microsampler(Roland sp 404 and 555 also do it with one button, no menu etc), with many more effects and possibilities to boot. And I didn't buy it to edit or record long clips etc. Again, I can do that much easier in a software than hardware. I run out of room because i like to take loops/rhythms/sounds from film/live etc and layer them and develop in to an evolving song arrangement. With different effects amd resampling. MS memory doesnt allow for much per bank by todays standards. It irritates me when people say 'oh but we used to have to cope with only 2mb of memory and find workarounds'. That's cool and I respect people who have made the most of hardware and got us where we're at. But its 2011, just because once upon a time there were no roads would you still be happy to walk 100 miles today because a train wasn't on time? No, you'd drive, get a bus, fly. Because these things are available in todays world. As are a lot of things that should have been on the MS....I guess it depends on what you want to do with the MS, I was probably a little optimistic/naive thinking it would excel in any field. But the price tag should reflect that. £250 would have been fairer.

[beatifictatter]

Kilon, I can see you're chuffed with your microsampler and that it does what you need it to. That's cool, I'm glad some people are happy with it. But for me it doesn't work in a live situation. Which is what I bought it for. I can resample endlessly (and with live looping/overdubbing to separate file on each pass...) inside my daw just as easily as with the microsampler(Roland sp 404 and 555 also do it with one button, no menu etc), with many more effects and possibilities to boot. And I didn't buy it to edit or record long clips etc. Again, I can do that much easier in a software than hardware. I run out of room because i like to take loops/rhythms/sounds from film/live etc and layer them and develop in to an evolving song arrangement. With different effects amd resampling. MS memory doesnt allow for much per bank by todays standards. It irritates me when people say 'oh but we used to have to cope with only 2mb of memory and find workarounds'. That's cool and I respect people who have made the most of hardware and got us where we're at. But its 2011, just because once upon a time there were no roads
would you still be happy to walk 100 miles today because a train wasn't on time? No, you'd drive, get a bus, fly. Because these things are available in todays world. As are a lot of things that should have been on the MS....I guess it depends on what you want to do with the MS, I was probably a little optimistic/naive thinking it would excel in any field. But the price tag should reflect that. £250 would have been fairer.

[beatifictatter]

Also, I maybe wasnt clear in the original post. But akai synthstation is a battery or mains powered midi two octave keyboard that you dock your iPhone in. Buy the nanostudio app for your phone and Voilà, 8+gb of sample memory, decent 5 track sequencer, decent field recorder, decent polyphonic synth, resampling, visual sample chopping, x/y pad, virtual drum/sample pads etc etc. In your pocket. Or a small bag when attached to the keyboard. It's not as fully featured a sampler as the MS, doesn't have very good/many effects or as many hands on dials etc. But it is certainly more revolutionary and successfully designed/programme than the MS, and as a complete songwriting/ideas tool it kills the microsampler. It's like having a very basic version of reason 5 in your pocket/live without a laptop.

[kilon]