Nintendo Korg DS-10

I have a Korg "MS-10", and I'm thinking about getting the Korg DS-10. Anyone got bought one of these? I don't even have a DS.

It's great, I really enjoy it.

The DS-10 is quite a nice little dual monosynth and drum machine. I actually bought the NDS just so that I could install the DS-10 on it. I'm surprised they could do so much with the DS's available processing power.

The interface is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. The sound quality benefits from external EQ if you're using it at home. Otherwise, it's a great little portable unit for cooking up beats, basslines, and leads.

They need to update it to where you can compose and play the synth parts while in song mode -- i.e. have multiple measures play in sequence while recording. Other than that, no real complaints.

Question: If it's duo mono-synth, why didn't they just make a duo-osc MS-20? I wonder how atonal the DS-10 can get. I'll probably get one in a month or so.

If you already have a DS, then the DS-10 at $30-$40 is an easy purchase. But if you don't own a DS, then the decision is a bit harder. Buying a used EMX-1 for around $300 is a better value, in my opinion. I like the DS-10, but it isn't pro quality, mostly due to the DS hardware limitations like poor bass response. The software has many quirks that keep me from recommending it. The synth is very noisy, and it's difficult to get a crisp sound because there are so many artifacts that muck up the result. The song mode has no editing: you can only pick existing patterns to string together. The patterns are short and it's a real pain to string together a melody across patterns.

It's remarkable how much they packed into it, so it has a lot to like. It has 2 OSC + 1 filter per synth, with 2 synths (each monophonic), plus 4 rhythm tracks for drums (&bass). It can do FM too. If you just want a mini step sequencer with synth, it's a lot of fun. The Kaos pad is my favorite feature on it. But if you want to use it for any kind of professional work, look to the EMX or ESX instead to get the sound quality and features you'll probably need.

Not pro quality? What do you expect? It's a fun toy. It's not going to make you famous. You can make some nice synth lines with the Kaoss pad approach while riding the bus or train or hovercraft. If you're buying it for your pro studio so Kayne West can come by and drop some dope rhymes about his Bentley, well, then you're out of your depth.

For the cost of a DS and the cartridge, it's worth it for anyone with a steady job, imho.

Yeah you should also get Mario Kart DS along with it.

My French Coach and Brain Age 2 were my most used carts before I lost them (separately from the DS itself).

My Japanese Coach might be fun to have. Or maybe Ubisoft should put out a My Chinese Coach so we can learn to talk to our future overlords.

I was thinking of getting my Spanish Coach if I got the DS

Bought one for my kid. I love it! Best bang for buck on the market- hands down.

I love my EMX-1 but even with a car invertor or a portabel battery I rigged-up it's not practical on the go. The bass of the DS-10 will surprise you if you do it right. I hooked up the DS-10 to my FM transmitter and ran it through a friends subs in his car... damn that was boomin'.

By the way there is a Chinese coach program as well. It's fun but hard. For music don't forget Electroplankton. It's cool if you spend the time to set it up.

If you have access to homebrew software on the DS it really shines. They even have MIDI over standard cable or WiFi with the right hardware/software.

Dayyum... you're right!

My Electroplankton cart was one of the ones I lost when I lost my DS carry case.

On the contrary, I think that it's much more than a toy, and that's why so many people are interested in it. It is remarkable because nearly all the other music software for game hardware are toys, but the DS-10 is a REAL soft synth & sequencer. That's also why some of the limitations are a disappointment to me, not because it isn't good and fun, but that it's just missing so little to make it more useful to take the music created on it to the next step without having to redo it all from scratch. MIDI export is sooooo needed, even if it's limited to just what's in the patterns and nothing else, no live transmit/receive or anything complex. Maybe someone is already working on it.

I haven't given up on the DS-10, and I really don't want to sound completely negative about it. I'm looking forward to see the next version, given how much I think they got right in the first release.

I've compared the DS-10 side-by-side with the Kaossilator, KP3, and miniKP. The DS has the weakest bass of the lot. The Kaossilator is very comparable in size, weight, and price to the DS, yet it goes deep into the subsonic while the DS bass starts dropping like a rock below 120Hz. I'm not saying that the DS-10 is terrible, particularly if you've got some EQ and subs to boost the bass. I'm also not blaming the DS-10 software, since it just seems like the DS audio hardware is the problem. The lack of bass is just easier to hear and feel by comparison, and a lot of people might not notice or care about this at all. I've been a bit spoiled by my other Korg gear. The KP3 drum patterns are so clean and have so much punch that I can easily hear the difference with other gear.

Have you tried building drum patches on the DS-10? The envelope and filter seem to have a lot of excess noise that keeps me from getting a clean kick with any substantial boom. I've spent several days on building drums without getting something I like, so I'd be happy to hear any tips from anyone who has done better. (That brings up another limitation - there doesn't seem to be any way to share patches.)

Knowing that the dedicated design of the Kaossilator will give it an edge on the sound (that's expected, isn't it?) in the grand scheme of things, which do you find the better sketchpad device?

I played with a Kaossilator for a long weekend. I loved the sounds and the loop sampler but really didn't connect because I like tweaking sounds and because you can't do much with the Kaossilator as a composing device without also carrying around some kind of recorder and doing a little computer editing afterwards.

The DS-10 in theory seems to answer those needs but did you find so in practice?

The limitation of the DS-10 is the DS itself, no doubt. The output is quite noisy. The drum synths are great for glitchy stuff, but the bass drum tones sound like you're stomping in {censored} puddles. I've worked hard to get something that sounds ok, but at best you have to accept more mid-rangey kicks, and are still stuck with the squish noise. Of course, one could use one of the main synths as a kick, but that limits the instrument.

It's rather hard to compare the Kaossilator with the DS-10 because they are two very different approaches - audio looping vs. step sequencing. The DS-10 does have permanent memory, a feature sadly missing on the Kaossilator. I use the KP3, SP-404, and MRS8 multitrack to record the Kaossilator.

As far as a sketchpad, it's like comparing drafting pen and graph paper to a dryboard pen and whiteboard: it depend's on what approach works best for what you're trying to do. The Kaossilator is much more touchy, feely, go with the flow, and other than changing the program/arp, you can jam with your eyes closed. The DS-10 is grid, check, drag knob, grid check, page, page, grid, check....seemingly forever, to get the patterns and synths setup until you're ready to jam. The Kaos feature on the DS-10 is very much like the Kaossilator, but the touchscreen works more like the EMX arp - note on the X and gate on the Y, while the Kaossilator usually has note on the X and some useful timbre parameter on the Y - with the extremely useful arp as a separate dimension that is much more powerful than merely the gate length.

Changing the Key and scale is a bit more difficult on the Kaossilator when playing live, since they are done separately and you can't store a chord progression. On the DS-10, the scale and key are stored with the pattern, so you can set up a chord progression using the patterns, and it's quick to change between patterns and the Kaosspads when playing live. The DS-10 also has two different Kaosspad settings, one per synth, and the synth setting get saved with the pattern too. So if you spend the time to get it setup well, you can have a series of chord progressions and 2 different kaoss sounds ready to go in sequence. It just might take a few days to get a 4 minute song set-up, with umpteen hundreds of checkboxes and pages.

Thanks for those comments. Your graph paper vs dryboard analogy actually makes a whole lotta sense. And of course my personal decision should be: "If you're bored, Angstwulf, go outside and play, or read a goddamned book."

By the way, Game Revolution has a DS-10 review on its website. They come to some very similar conclusions on the workflow problems but they rate it very highly as a DS app.

I think the only real solution for the DS-10 as a performance instrument is to have two of them.

The workflow gets pretty fast as you become familiar with the layout. Other than having to page through the entire drum edit menu to get back to square one on drums, it's pretty breezy.

I use pretty nice in-ear monitors with the DS and def consider the noise issue the biggest overall problem. Anyone know if the PSP has a similarly noisy output?

True, I love the Kaossilator and Mini KP. The sonic quality is completely different and can be incredibly deep. I think I almost blew out the same friend's subs in his car with the Kaossilator.

But then again, didn't the real MS-10/MS-20 sound kinda crappy (signal-wise) compared to other synths of the day?

I made my own template to deal with the saving patch issue. I'll post it here shortly. I took the idea from the old write-on charts of the Moogs, etc.

I think the only real solution for the DS-10 as a performance instrument is to have two of them. The workflow gets pretty fast as you become familiar with the layout. Other than having to page through the entire drum edit menu to get back to square one on drums, it's pretty breezy. I use pretty nice in-ear monitors with the DS and def consider the noise issue the biggest overall problem. Anyone know if the PSP has a similarly noisy output?

Only two?

[YOUTUBE]vmIwZDVJSwI&fmt=18[/YOUTUBE]

But I think it's much, much, better to get an EMX + ESX (or other sampler) than four DS+DS-10, and I would never give up the EMX except for a newer model. I'm only waiting for Korg to update the Electribe sampler to use modern flash before I buy one.

While the bass problem seems to be the NDS hardware, the noise issue seems to be the low rez software algorithms they've had to use to get it to run on the NDS processor. I don't think that problem is going to be easy to fix short of going to the superior CPU horsepower of the PSP. The envelope release is terribly noisy as the signal gets attenuated slowly. The only thing that works for me is to have the envelope cut off the sound as quickly as possible to keep it out of that in-between zone. That's one reason I haven't been able to get a clean, booming kick drum out of it, extending the release sounds ultranoisy to me.

The biggest workflow issue I have isn't creating patches - it's using patches. There is no copy/paste/move/transpose of notes, even within the same piano roll. That's just crazy stupid to me. Copying patterns isn't enough. That irks me every time I use the DS-10. It seems like I have to play a pattern hundreds of times to all the notes in the right place, and recording from the Kaosspad doesn't help me at all because it doesn't have a preroll/metronome to know when to start and stop for the pattern. I've spent more than 40 hours with this sucker and the quirks are wearing on me.

The Kaossilator could easily blow speakers that don't have a properly set amp limiter and an active crossover cutoffs above and below the speakers' safe operating range. It WILL put out strong signal below 20Hz, and the only sound you might hear is the rattle of the speaker cone and voicecoil self destructing as they exceed their excursion Xmax.

I look forward to seeing your templates!

I thought about getting a kaossilator and carrying around my old minidisc recorder and just recording all the output. But that never happened.

in Japan these days you won't get famous WITHOUT a DS-10

I don't care about Japan.