Tried a Kronos again the other day....

[Dave B]

.... (found a Guitar Center whilst working in the US) .... and .... meh (still)

Wasn't impressed by the keyboard - I thought it was the 88note version, but it couldn't have been with such a light touch keyboard. Didn't feel connected to me. Especially on the piano patches.

It took nearly 5 mins to boot up. Wow. I thought my Kurz was slow!

Piano was nice but had no body to the sound and with the keys the unit had, I couldn't really dig in to the sound. Probably good for the Wakemanesque brigade though - very good attack to the sound. EPs were better - nice bit of body there.

It does overlap patches. Finally! Only a couple of decades since they last had a synth that did that!

Sound was much better than recent Korgs - down to having decent synthesis engines and not relying so much on the effects. Good move Korg.

Too many of the combis had Karma turned on!! Bah!! Fail.

Also, if you have a proper organ sim, then I'd recommend following Kurz by having some buttons on the top to control leslie speed, key click, etc - if they are already there then mark them clearly!

Probably the best Korg in a long, long time (excluding the Oasys : a) I haven't tried one and b) I never really thought of it as a mass produced unit, more of a boutique synth experiment).

But still not enough to lure me away from the Kurzweil owners club.

Just thought I'd share

[Exalted Wombat]

Yeah. If you want "features" there's plenty of competition. But for SOUNDS, once you've tried Kurzweil it's hard to go back. Nothing special about the keyboards - the PC2X used a real turkey from Fatar that was notorious for plastic bits falling off, the jury is out on the newer Pb-free version in the PC3X but I'm not over-impressed. But they do somehow get the sounds right - in a remarkably small amount of memory too!

[Zukan]

Dave, can the joystick be used to morph between sounds or to create a real-time domain for movement a la kaoss?

Because, at 2 and a half gees, it better make my coffee as well...

[vinyl_junkie]

Dave, can the joystick be used to morph between sounds or to create a real-time domain for movement a la kaoss?

Because, at 2 and a half gees, it better make my coffee as well...

Not sure about morphing sounds but it comes with evil Japanese mind control; The joystick can be used to control other humans like robots much like in that od ball french cartoon la planete sauvage

[Random Guitarist]

I'm glad it's not just me.

I was starting to think there was something wrong with me. I was in Andertons a week or so ago and found the piano on the Kronos utterly uninvolving. In comparison I couldn't keep away from the Roland RD300. I know the Roland is 'just' a piano and the Kronos is much more but the sense of playing an instrument on the Roland wa amazing. I've been told that the Kronos piano is really great so I was surprised by the distance I perceived between them.

[Exalted Wombat]

The joystick can be used to control other humans like robots

"If you grab my joystick in the right way, you can make me do just about anything!" W.E Johns, "Biggles flies undone" 1939

[Dave B]

I realise that I'm coming across as a bit negative here and I should really have prefaced my post with 'It was actually better than I thought but ..'. I mean, if someone put a gun to my head and told me to chose between that and the equivalent Roland, I would probably go for the Kronos. It's not perfect, but - and this is the critical thing for me - Korg have finally got a synth to sound good without a gazillion effects being added. The fact that it has an organ sim rather than a set of samples is a major point in it's favour iho.

Zuke raises an interesting point as well. I'm guessing the answer to his question is 'no' (happy to be proven wrong though) but with the Kronos, Korg have the starting point for a whole new set of units. Morphing, modulating and general wackiness may have to wait for a software revision or a mkII but I'm guessing they will come.

But for me, it's still a little too expensive and missing a couple of killer things. Good, but not brilliant.