Nice looking synth, with plenty to offer. Lots of oscillator options and lots of modulation and FX. Nice provision of named filter and VCA options. Seamless patch cross-over too - great for live performance. Yet another yawnful sequencer for the YouTubers...
Shame about the external PSU, lack of aftertouch (Korg - why am I *still* having to say this?!), and wheels *behind* the keyboard. Yet another synth instantly torpedoed from my interest list by Korg's accountants...
The price is a little tubby to my way of thinking too - £799. Hopefully the stores will be able to discount this.
No doubt others couldn't give two hoots about the negatives I've mentioned - that being the case there's a lot to like here.
If manufacturers got rid of those pesky wheels (who uses them anyway? ) and replaced them with a ribbon strip across the full width of the top panel, capable of pressure detection and splittable to act as Modulation controller and Pitch (or any parameter one prefers)...
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They could just put the wheels on the side, outside the wooden end, no?
No AT. Is AT really so expensive for the bean counters.
Wallwart we should lobby the EU by wearing lots of wallwarts lol singing a wallwart song copying The Wombles song as to the enormous environmental waste caused by wallwarts (I don't have numbers just sounds persuasive) then EU will make them ditch, just as EU made apple ditch lighting for usbC.
There is one good thing about wallwarts. Most synths are 12v and draw well under an amp, so I can run them on a battery pack. I do a lot of jams, some of them outdoors, and I can easily run my Linnstrument, a Hydrasynth desktop, a small eurorack and now even my Osmose. Add a couple of Bose S1 pros and off I go
Forum Admin wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2024 9:38 am
If manufacturers got rid of those pesky wheels (who uses them anyway? ) and replaced them with a ribbon strip across the full width of the top panel, capable of pressure detection and splittable to act as Modulation controller and Pitch (or any parameter one prefers)...
Well the Hydrasynth has a ribbon across 4 octaves (full keyboard on the 49 key version but not right across on the 76 note version) and although it's not pressure sensitive (well, it is in that you have to press down to trigger it) it can be assigned to pitch bend, theramin mode (controls one voice independently leaving 7 or 15 free depending on model and patch mode (single/multi on the Deluxe), or you can assign it to act as a modulation source. 'Course you got the wheels as well if you want. Also can quantise by pitch if you want.
You could pick up a second-hand 49 key HS for the price Korg are asking here and get pretty much all your wish list it seems.
€/$900 makes it the most expensive one of these Raspberry Pi based digital synths. I like some of the features like the 60 voices & 4-part multi-timbrality, but the packaging continues to leave something to be desired (stereo outputs with 4 part multi-timbrality, sigh. Also the knob placement blocks access to the buttons from the keyboard, it's all a bit of a mess) and the fact that it's all standardized should mean they're amortizing costs, which means prices should decrease because all they're changing is the software, paint and button/knob placement. Apparently the keyboard is a new semi-weighted job, but again without aftertouch which begs the question, why??
I'm interested because the recent Access Virus VST emulations have whetted my appetite for VA, so I'm very interested to see the price of the module version without the fancy new keyboard and wooden sides. It might make me reconsider just buying an old Virus B rack for $600.
resistorman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2024 3:37 pm
There is one good thing about wallwarts. Most synths are 12v and draw well under an amp, so I can run them on a battery pack. I do a lot of jams, some of them outdoors, and I can easily run my Linnstrument, a Hydrasynth desktop, a small eurorack and now even my Osmose. Add a couple of Bose S1 pros and off I go
Were you in Blighty I would gladly gone along to your outdoor jam with jam sandwich and cucumber sandwich for us.
That's an excellent point aboot running them from a battery pack. I liked Novations Xio Xstation BassStation2 because I could run them from usb battery pack. Hydrasynth Explorer been on my radar over a year now as it runs oorrff internal batteries.
resistorman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2024 3:37 pm
There is one good thing about wallwarts. Most synths are 12v and draw well under an amp, so I can run them on a battery pack. I do a lot of jams, some of them outdoors, and I can easily run my Linnstrument, a Hydrasynth desktop, a small eurorack and now even my Osmose. Add a couple of Bose S1 pros and off I go
Of the gear I have that requires an external PSU, none of them require the same Voltage, Ampage, polarity or physical connector. How do you solve this?
For my own low-power live mini-rig solution I only take USB-powered gear and run the whole thing from a powered USB hub. This limits my choices, hence my curiosity.
resistorman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2024 3:37 pm
There is one good thing about wallwarts. Most synths are 12v and draw well under an amp, so I can run them on a battery pack. I do a lot of jams, some of them outdoors, and I can easily run my Linnstrument, a Hydrasynth desktop, a small eurorack and now even my Osmose. Add a couple of Bose S1 pros and off I go
Of the gear I have that requires an external PSU, none of them require the same Voltage, Ampage, polarity or physical connector. How do you solve this?
For my own low-power live mini-rig solution I only take USB-powered gear and run the whole thing from a powered USB hub. This limits my choices, hence my curiosity.
Elf, does your USB hub run off the computer, or a separate PSU?
Arpangel wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 11:38 am
Elf, does your USB hub run off the computer, or a separate PSU?
Separate PSU (with spare to hand!). Passive hubs can be problematical (and wouldn't power USB-powered gear), and having a powered hub puts less strain on the PSU/battery of the laptop.
The Korg Multi/Poly sounds great audio-wise. I also like the ability to apply a separate sequencer to each of the 4 layers. For these reasons I'm sure it'll sell well but I'm never going to go there due to the wall-wart, truncated keyboard and lack of aftertouch.
The engine looks great TBH and in a 5 or 6 octave keyboard with aftertouch and a built-in power supply I'd have been interested. In one of those formats with Poly-AT I'd have preordered it already.
As it stands, just ... no. Korg offer some great sound engines but these days seem determined to do so in packages that are too compromised in one way or another to be interesting to me.
Eddy Deegan wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2024 12:31 am
As it stands, just ... no. Korg offer some great sound engines but these days seem determined to do so in packages that are too compromised in one way or another to be interesting to me.
That's true, bring back proper keyboards, big ones, a proper length, with big proper screens, and proper big knobs, just big, just proper, just everything.
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound...
(But generally posting my own personal views and not necessarily those of SOS, the company or the magazine!)
In my world, things get less strange when I read the manual...
The Elf wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 8:04 am
Of the gear I have that requires an external PSU, none of them require the same Voltage, Ampage, polarity or physical connector. How do you solve this?
For my own low-power live mini-rig solution I only take USB-powered gear and run the whole thing from a powered USB hub. This limits my choices, hence my curiosity.
Surprisingly, many if not most externally powered devices these days use 2.1mm/5.5mm coaxial DC connectors 12v center positive, and the only synth I've run into that didn't is a Cobalt 8, which took 9v. Buck/ boost DC to DC modules are small and cheap for these cases. Also, many devices now use USB power delivery which is easy to get from a 12 volt battery via adapters like this:
The Elf wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2024 5:02 pmI do have some MyVolts USB adapters (e.g. from my X-Touch to my TC Clarity), but so far I've not had to use them for a live rig.
Can confirm the MyVolts Ripcord will power a Novation Peak from a USB power pack/hub just fine. There's a decent selection of alternative tips and in my experience the only disadvantage of the Ripcords is that the USB end can be a bit bulky for power hubs with closely stacked sockets. I've also found though that the little lug that holds the loop on can be unscrewed, which makes them a lot thinner, and doesn't seem to affect the physical integrity of the device.
I just got around to watching the Korg videos. The overview is very impressive. Given how much I like the sound of the 10+ year-old KingKorg, I expect that this next generation VA sounds great. However, if I had recently bought a KK Neo, I think I would be pretty peed off - this is what KK Neo ought to have been, an actual step forward in sound capability, not just a re-package.
Having said that, it looks like an awful lot crammed into a really tiny package. 4 layers deserve a decent-sized keyboard, and Luke even looked like he was struggling to turn the filter cutoff knob due to spacing… I may be wrong. No keyboard aftertouch, no expression pedal input.
Whatever the limitations, I’m sure it would be a great synth for people living in small spaces! Good luck to it, I hope it does well.
BillB wrote: ↑Wed Oct 30, 2024 9:16 pmGood luck to it, I hope it does well.
I can't be so charitable. While accountant-friendly gear like this does well, the manufacturers will keep dishing it up. It needs to fail in order for them to try harder.
If I was advising a bang-for-bucks synth purchase for the hard of space, this wouldn't be in my top ten.
Yet another synth instantly torpedoed from my interest list by Korg's accountants...
) and replaced them with a ribbon strip across the full width of the top panel, capable of pressure detection and splittable to act as Modulation controller and Pitch (or any parameter one prefers)...
Get your 
Thanks for that. It's always interesting to hear how other people solve these kinds of problems.
