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why you should not get the Korg Kronos and a great idea


RazorBladeRay

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But if I had designed the control surface of the Kronos, I'd have given it the same recessed sliders/faders as the Oasys, the same pitch bend / modulation joystick with separate X-axis mechanism, I would have kept the Oasys/M3's drum pads, I would have given it the fatter buttons and knobs of the Oasys and a big data wheel with a distinct notchy movement, and I would have given it a 10.4" tilting touch screen -- even if it raised the cost of production and MSRP by a few hundred dollars.

 

 

The problem with your assessment is the assumption that adding all of the OASYS hardware would only raise the MSRP "by a few hundred dollars".

 

I have been told that Korg's keyboard pricing model is a fairly constant multiple of the actual production cost. I suspect the cost of the items you listed would have made the Kronos more expensive by $1,000 or more instead of a few hundred dollars.

 

I think the current Kronos price points are about as high as they could be while still attracting a large number of buyers.

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The problem with your assessment is the assumption that adding all of the OASYS hardware would only raise the MSRP "by a few hundred dollars".


 

 

I'm willing to bet that better buttons, faders, data wheel, M3 drum pads, and a slightly bigger touch screen would be about $500-$700 more. Many of the suggestions I made were really surface differences -- fatter buttons versus thinner, recessed mixer style faders versus the ones it has, etc. And come to think of it, I suppose I could just change those myself anyway.

 

The largest expense would be the touch screen, and they've come down a LOT since 2005 when the Oasys debuted. I'm now seeing self-contained 21" touch screen computers by Dell sell for $599 new.

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The largest expense would be the touch screen, and they've come down a LOT since 2005 when the Oasys debuted. I'm now seeing self-contained 21" touch screen computers by Dell sell for $599 new.

 

 

Not sure that's a great comparison to make; a lot of computer touchscreens use a different technology than Korg's TouchView. (Most computer screens are capacitative so they can be used with a light touch; Korg's are resistive.)

 

And that's not even considering Dell's economies of scale. I'm guessing they sell many orders of magnitude more $599 laptops than Korg sells Kronoses. They can afford smaller margins, since they make up for it in quantity.

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Not sure that's a great comparison to make; a lot of computer touchscreens use a different technology than Korg's TouchView. (Most computer screens are capacitative so they can be used with a light touch; Korg's are resistive.)


And that's not even considering Dell's economies of scale. I'm guessing they sell many orders of magnitude more $599 laptops than Korg sells Kronoses. They can afford smaller margins, since they make up for it in quantity.

 

 

I understand the differences in touch screen technology, and the differing economies of scale. But again, touch screens -- all touch screens -- have gotten a LOT cheaper since the Oasys debuted in 2005.

 

Consider, for example, that Music Computing can add a 10.1" touch screen to their Control Blade workstation for $299.

 

http://www.musiccomputing.com/store/product.php?productid=17545&cat=249&page=1

 

That is, $299 not as an upgrade from an 8 inch screen to a larger one, but $299 to add a touch screen where there was none. And the number of workstations *they* produce is an order of magnitude fewer than Korg. It's resistive, it's over 10 inches, and they can do it (retail) for $300.

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I think the Kronos is an excellent piece of kit. If I didn't already have Logic 9 and the Korg Legacy Collection (KLC-1), it would have been a strong purchase consideration.

 

I really don't like that there's no "Kaoss Pad" in it but it is for more of the performing musician than the dance music artist. The M3 IMHO is more suited for dance music.

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I understand the differences in touch screen technology, and the differing economies of scale. But again, touch screens -- all touch screens -- have gotten a LOT cheaper since the Oasys debuted in 2005.


Consider, for example, that Music Computing can add a 10.1" touch screen to their Control Blade workstation for $299.




That is, $299 not as an upgrade from an 8 inch screen to a larger one, but $299 to add a touch screen where there was none. And the number of workstations *they* produce is an order of magnitude fewer than Korg. It's resistive, it's over 10 inches, and they can do it (retail) for $300.

 

 

I get your point.

 

Talk about order of magnitude. The iPad 2 is $599.

 

Should be cheaper, right ?

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I really don't like that there's no "Kaoss Pad" in it but it is for more of the performing musician than the dance music artist.

 

There's 2 in the Kronos. All the Kaoss Pad feature of the touch screen did was allow you to perform what you could do with the OASYS vector joystick. And once you plug in a nanoPad, you have an actual pad that can perform the kaossilator type stuff.

 

You can buy it now. I'll let you. :)

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That's what it's degenerated into perhaps as a joke. I'm referring to post #1
;)

... which you evidently didn't read, because it's not "laptop and controller", it's "Korg Microsampler and controller", which is even more laughable, without even going into the fact that that M-Audio controller is almost universally panned by keyboardists. 160 seconds per bank, 8 banks -- can you use all 8 banks for one sound? If so, you might squeeze a decent grand piano in. At 14M per bank, you'd have to do a truly excellent job of sampling, mapping, and looping to get a good grand piano. (Frankly, you have to do a lot of work no matter how many samples!) My mono unlooped Rhodes is over 70 MB, and that's at most 5 layers and every 4th white key sampled -- barely works for Rhodes, which is far less demanding than a grand piano. The looped stereo version is 30M, so mono would be 15M, showing that looping saves a lot of memory. My MR76 has a good piano for its day (1997) and has only 32M for all sounds, and with two rather different grands (one mono, one stereo). Very looped, though, and with careful attention to filter and amp decay in the loop.

 

So, the MicroSampler would, with extensive labor requiring a quality piano and considerable sound engineering expertise, maybe get an acceptable substitute for one of the Kronos's sounds.

 

But, what about the subtractive synthesis engine? The additive synthesis engine? The FM synthesis engine? The tonewheel organ emulation?

 

Not to mention the other ROMpler sounds.

 

Serious eyeroll moment. :rolleyes:

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Do you mean that the MicroSampler doesn't support switching between samples based on velocity? Even my Prophet 2002 from 1985, with a total of 512K 12-bit words of memory, supported that!

 

Somehow I don't think this will be an issue with Ray. ;)

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Sampling those leads won't give you the same behavior of those sounds, especially for Derek's lead. Besides, you can get Derek's lead on a TR-Rack much, much cheaper, sometimes even less for $200 (it's a rack version of Korg Trinity, the board from which the patch originated from).

 

Likewise, the same goes for Jens' lead. Sampling the patch won't do it any justice, because it's PWM based, and it is really really vital to have the distortion tuned in well. Sampling the lead along with the distortion will not yield the same behavior of the patch. So, you're thinking in a very wrong direction here.

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On 2/19/2012 at 10:11 PM, MartinHines said:

 

but I got a better solution,you should get a M-Audio Keystation 88 keyboard controller and get a Korg Microsampler,the thing about the Korg Microsampler is you could sample a Grand Piano sound if you wanted to and you would get your money's worth,

 

 

You have a different solution, not a better one.

 

If you don't really play the piano then perhaps you don't care that midi controllers like the Keystation have significantly lower quality actions than workstation or stage pianos from Korg, Roland, Yamaha, etc.

If you don't really care about the sound you can sample a piano yourself. I prefer to let skilled experts create my quality samples, whether it be in a workstation or a computer-based sample library.

 

However if your solutions works for you knock yourself out.

No, he found a better one, the korg kronos costs waaaaay too much money, unnecessary and useless features galore, compressed unnatural piano sound, all 10 piano samples sound the same, heavy ass keys that feel nothing like a real piano, when has 9 different engines in one keyboard ever been needed? this synth is overrated on soooooo many levels, yamaha has mid level and even beginner boards that have all the features that 90% of musicians will ACTUALLY use and a price tag your wallet will thank you for, there's no sense in paying $4k for a 7 year old, technologically outdated synth just because korg thinks their kronos is worth that amount

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I play AT the keys and frankly none of the old digital stuff does anything at me. I've gotten used to the Clavinova action and the newer wooden stuff wants to feel sluggish; probably isn't at all but I haven't lived with any example. I like everything else about the newer stuff. Mostly...

I feel like a feral animal marking all these threads...

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