). It was because of the overwhelmingly positive experience I've had with the M50 and its plugin editor that I took a leap of faith and bought a Kronos sight-unseen. But enough of this. Onward to...My Kronos 88 Critique
First, build quality...
YES, it has plastic end-pieces, and this might be an issue for gigging. But my board is for studio use only, and the shape of the end-pieces make it a rather handsome beast, IMO.
YES, the sliders and scroll wheel could have perhaps a better feel, but I wouldn't call them strictly junky, either.
YES, the vector joystick is rather, well how should I say this... 'dainty'? But hey! Just treat it gentle, like you would a certain dainty lady-part, and she'll sing for you (OOPS, hope that wan't too risqué!
).YES, there's a fan. In my case, it's just loud enough to be audible, but quiet enough that it's a non-issue. Only my iMac runs more quietly.
NO, I haven't tried pulling any of the knobs/joysticks/sliders off the board. Why on Earth would I want to do that?
YES, it has the good old RH3 action. Although I play mostly pop, I was classically trained, so I do better with keys that hit back. I loved the RH3 on the M50, and I'm lovin' it now. After banging away on it all last night, I haven't run into any odd noises or funny keys. The gaps between keys are not absolutely consistent from one to another, but IMO this is also what you'd see on a set of genuine ivories... just adds a touch of realism.
YES, the display is gorgeous, and it looks to me like it has a smudge-resistent surface, which helps. The fonts are a little on the small side, but I still find them readable. What I find a little more tricky is the touch navigation. I think it's a combination of that there's an overall higher density of data on the screen, so that targets for your finger are smaller, plus there's very little tilt to the screen, making for some parallax effect (and yes I calibrated the touch screen). Aiming just a little high when navigating seems to help.
Overall, I'd give build quality a 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Okay, now on to the sounds.
I'll try to keep this short and sweet. I played... I laughed... I cried with tears of joy. And to sum it all up...
I HAVE DIED AND GONE TO KEYBOARD HEAVEN!!!
Was that sweet enough?
Now for the bad news
The aggregate device I created that was a combination of my Kronos and Apogee Duet has proven to be unstable. It has exhibited pretty much all the nasty hobgoblins I've heard about wherein after a few minutes of playing, audio quality will degrade, starting with clicks/pops, stuttering and finally changing to a terrible ring modulation-sounding distortion, and/or a huge latency in playing from the keyboard. I've tried playing with the setup of the source clock in the Mac OS X Audio/MIDI utilities, as well as assigning the resampling of the 2 devices in various combinations, but to no avail.
Since I do my music projects in typical fashion, recording instrumental tracks first and then vocals, It looks like I'll have to start with the Kronos chosen as my input audio device in Logic preferences, then switch to the Duet input device when I'm ready to record vocals. Not the end of the world, but I hate having to 'lock in' my Kronos instrumental mix before I can lay down vocal tracks. Anyone know of a way around this? What do other folks do that have similar studio setups?
