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Hi all,

Although the Kronos comes loaded with many drum kits and samples, the workfow for analog beat creation isn't that easy.

Would it make sense to complete the Kronos with the Dave Smith Instruments Tempest in order to get a wider palette of analog drum sounds with a better workflow in the creation process ? Plus the fact that it does have a 6-voice analog synth...

I haven't had the chance to try one and it seems to have mixed reviews.

Interested to have the opinion of DSI Tempest owners who use it together with the Korg Kronos.

Also, does the price tag of this machine makes sense or is it clearly overpriced for what it can deserve?

Thanks in advance for your views on it.

No Tempest owners over here apparently.

Anyone ?

Would it add more analog feeling to the Kronos ?

I have a Kronos and a Tempest.

Depends what you're after really.

Obviously, one potential downside to the Tempest, is that there's no on-board effects. It's also a machine which (to get the best out of it i.m.o.) needs to be *played*. Muting tracks, tweaking filters etc.

You might also want to consider the Elektron Rytm (which I also have). That has some on-board effects and is arguably better geared to recording automation in patterns. It will also take user samples.

Thanks for your feedback Purusha.

I'm mainly looking at improving two things:

1) Adding a modern analog synth (full analog signal path) in the OB-Xa style but with a budget limit of max 1400 euro (mainly looking at quality).
2) The diversity of analog drum kits that I currently have in the Kronos.

The Tempest seems to have both but haven't had the opportunity to try it yet. How does the polysynth sound and are the analog drums different to what we can do on a Kronos (with a nanoPad2) ?

How does your Tempest complement your Kronos ?

I already have a Waldorf Blofeld that is sounding great for PPG style synthesis but doesn't have that analog warmth and fat sounds.

=> most ideally a rack/module analog synth that can also have analog drums and a step sequencer. I'm fan of Depeche Mode and Vince Clarke analog sounds.

Well, the synth engine is geared towards percussive sounds. Everything is very-much from scratch, there's no macros level stuff, like you'd get on some other percussion modules.

You have to know how to construct your sound from the 2 analogue and 2 digital oscillators.

It's fairly easy to dial-up your own kicks and snares, but complex stuff like metalic cymbals is difficult. There are some on-board samples, which you can modulate and apply filtering to.

You'll have finer control over the sound, but not sure you'll gain that much. You'll also probably want to externally EQ and compress.

I don't tend to use the Tempest alongside the Kronos, since I normally use them as part of different projects.

The tempest is basically a poly Evolver with 6 voices, if you like the sound of the poly Evolver you will like the sound of the tempest. There are some issues with using it as 6 mono Evolvers as legato doesn't work which is a bit of a pain.

The tempest isn't really a drum machine in the sense that the voices are specialised to particular drum types like most drum machines, the sequencer is very drum oriented though. Also the way it handles more than 6 tracks/sounds over the 6 physical voices is pretty clever.

So really the sort of drum sounds you can get out of the tempest using the analog voices you could probably get pretty close using AL1, the tempest beats the Kronos hands down on the sequencing front though.

As a hands on drum machine/sequencer the tempest is great, to get good drum sounds out of it though you need to know how to create drum sounds with a normal subtractive synth or buy some!

Thanks to both of you for your clever view. It does make things clear to me.