New Korg Legacy instruments

[Rich Hanson]

Korg have just released two new legacy plug-ins: the miniKorg 700S, which doesn’t interest me particularly, but more interesting for me is the other is the Prophecy.

Just when I’m trying to save money too, the bastards

[Guest]

What I don't understand about Korg is the measly upgrade price from the original collection, basically only 15% off.

[Rich Hanson]

Scroll right to the bottom, there's an upgrade price of $99 for existing Collection v2 owners.

[Guest]

Unfortunately I'm V1 so its $249, which I seem to remember was also the price from V1 to V2.

[Rich Hanson]

That is a little steep given what the normal price is! I think I did my v1 to v2 when Korg did a promo, so maybe they might have a fit of further generosity further on down the line.

As well as the new synths, though, it would also add the original Triton as well as the new Extreme version and the Odyssey and the latter is a very good instrument IMWO.

[Guest]

If they did it for half price $149 I might bite, I will keep an eye out for any offers.

Korg did upgrade all my existing V1 plugins to V2 for free though.

[BJG145]

VST MOSS finally.



https://www.korg.com/uk/news/2021/0729/
https://youtu.be/6fIuJxTJono?t=128

[Tomás Mulcahy]

VST MOSS finally.

This is fantastic. Even though I bought a Triton Rack with MOSS board recently so am slightly peeved . I hope they add MPE support.

[nickle15]

It seems a little strange to release the minikorg in a VST version when a new full sized hardware is on the way. At least, it seems strange to me. But obviously the new version could be significantly different than the old, so you can get both this way (?)

[Eddy Deegan]

I've had the SOLO MOSS card in my Trinity since it came out. There are a few voices on there that are worth the asking price alone.

Great to see MOSS in VST form. I'll certainly be grabbing the virtual Prophecy; I'm holding off until I've mulled over whether to get the whole collection or not but I'll figure that out later this evening. Either way, the Prophecy is a no-brainer

Thanks for the heads-up Rich.

[Rwkitch]

Still have my Phrophecy - I even read the manual (yes, they used to exist!) and programmed my own patches. Nice little synth.

[Eddy Deegan]

I installed the software Prophecy today and had a quick play on my work laptop. I'm impressed with it, although the less said about Korg's 'Software Pass' mechanism* for licensing and installing it the better

Anyway, flicking through the sounds it comes with I was pleased to hear a number of old favourite patches and it definitely captures the character of MOSS hardware.

It would have been nice of them to add a 'hold' feature to the virtual keyboard and the frequency on the standalone version (I've not tried the VST yet) is fixed at 48kHz, as was the Trinity, which seems a little quirky these days but neither of these things are a major gripe.

I'd say the introductory price ($99) is money well spent. After work tonight I'm going to do some A/B comparisons of those sounds against the expansion card in the Trinity but that's just out of curiousity.

* Maybe I'm spoiled by how nicely put together the Arturia software centre is!

[Steve A]

I really like this update. I didn't think I wanted or needed a Triton or a Prophecy but I'm finding them surprising entertaining and I think I might be getting more use out of them than I expected. And I really like the Minikorg emulation. I can't compare it to a real life example but it sounds pretty good to my ears and I can recognise sounds from the records and artists I know used it. And to be able to use it polyphonically is a treat (it still irks me that Roland's Promars plug-in/out doesn't allow this).

They don't really shout about it and tend to fly a tad under the radar but I think the Korg collection contains some of the best VSTs out there, at least as far as emulations go.

[BJG145]

After work tonight I'm going to do some A/B comparisons of those sounds against the expansion card in the Trinity

I'll be interested to see what you think - maybe you could post some. The other thing is...the Prophecy was mono, and the expansion card was poly, right...? Have they made the VST Prophecy poly...?

I don't suppose they've added MOSS to the new Triton Extreme...?

*edit*

(Oh, OK...so the Trinity card was solo like the Prophecy. I thought the Triton card was poly, though I may be mistaken. @Tomás Mulcahy? It would seem daft not to offer a poly MOSS VST.)

[Eddy Deegan]

After work tonight I'm going to do some A/B comparisons of those sounds against the expansion card in the Trinity

I'll be interested to see what you think. The other thing is...the Prophecy was mono, and the expansion card was poly, right...? Have they made the VST Prophecy poly...?

I'll report how it goes and post up some samples on SoundCloud later

There were two versions of the expansion card; the SOLO-TRI, which was mono and the MOSS-TRI, which had 6 voice polyphony. I could be wrong by I think that the Triton only supported the MOSS-TRI. I have the SOLO-TRI in my Trinity.

If memory serves the original Prophecy was the keyboard instantiation of the mono board, and the Z1 was the poly.

They have indeed made the VST poly; you can specify the desired maximum polyphony (it accepted a value of 256 without question on my laptop though I've not been able to test it yet) and there's also a unison mode (up to 16 voices) with detune and spread controls, which thickens up certain sounds nicely.

I don't suppose they've added MOSS to the new Triton Extreme...?

I'm afraid not. I've only bought the Prophecy but checking the specs for the Triton and Triton Extreme VSTs, although they come with all the expansion library EXB-PCM card sounds they do not include MOSS.

I really hope they add a virtual Trinity going forwards. Mine's 26 years old now and although it works fine at the moment I would imagine that at some point it's going to change its mind on that front!

[Eddy Deegan]

About to finish work (hurrah!).

I have been able to test polyphony a bit by editing a few sounds to have very long releases. Some sounds really don't like being used polyphonically and start breaking up after only 2 - 4 notes are ringing. These appear to be those sounds with distortion and/or more complex timbres, which makes sense. Simpler string sounds stack up with no worries at all - I got every note on the virtual keyboard sounding just fine on an analogue string patch.

I also noticed that some sounds will consume CPU once you start adding more notes. My work laptop is a Lenovo Legion 7 with an i7-10750 CPU (6 cores) running at 2.6GHz and I was able to get the Prophecy to require 20% of the available capacity with a few clicks on some edited sounds with long tails.

Others not so much. In fairness, those sounds that started ramping up the CPU requirement didn't sound very nice when played polyphonically. I suspect it's down to the various oscillator types.

[Eddy Deegan]

Here are the results of my far-from-scientific comparison of 4 patches, which are present as factory presets on both the Trinity SOLO-TRI and the Prophecy VST.

The Prophecy VST sounds broadly similar to the SOLO-TRI hardware but in this case I much prefer the real thing in terms of 'the sound'.

https://soundcloud.com/eddy-deegan/trin ... ophecy-vst

The hardware sounds more detailed, smoother and beefier to me. It certainly responds better to my playing. However on the other side of the coin, the VST offers polyphony and much easier programming.

My current conclusion is that the VST is worth the money even so. Each to their own preference of course!

[nickle15]

Thanks for posting that comparison. Both versions sounded good but I tended to prefer the hardware a touch more. It seemed to have a bit more sizzle and sounded brighter. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to compare the two!

[Eddy Deegan]

You're welcome

For a version 1.0, the VST really isn't bad at all. I'd also say in its defence that the mapping of controllers to modulations is a bit different in places in the presets which I think is the main reason for the stark difference between the 3rd pair of riffs.

The fourth pair are the closest. I did try a few other patches as well but it was mainly more of the same story.

In any case, the Prophecy VST is perfectly usable, a darn sight better than any other emulation I know of and maybe Korg will continue to enhance it.

I did a bit of research and it appears that the MOSS synthesis as implemented in the Korg Z1 involved quite a few more synthesis algorithms than the Prophecy VST does. You can start on an interesting rabbit-hole run here if you're interested and there is also a very engaging Sound On Sound review of the Z1 here.

[nickle15]

You're welcome

For a version 1.0, the VST really isn't bad at all. I'd also say in its defence that the mapping of controllers to modulations is a bit different in places in the presets which I think is the main reason for the stark difference between the 3rd pair of riffs.

The fourth pair are the closest. I did try a few other patches as well but it was mainly more of the same story.

In any case, the Prophecy VST is perfectly usable, a darn sight better than any other emulation I know of and maybe Korg will continue to enhance it.

I did a bit of research and it appears that the MOSS synthesis as implemented in the Korg Z1 involved quite a few more synthesis algorithms than the Prophecy VST does. You can start on an interesting rabbit-hole run here if you're interested and there is also a very engaging Sound On Sound review of the Z1 here.

Perfect - thanks for the links and additional info!

[Eddy Deegan]

Happy it was useful

By way of additional info to the casual passer-by, this is the description I put on the SoundCloud track linked previously in the thread:

This track contains 8 patches, 4 from the Korg Prophecy VST and 4 of the same name from the hardware SOLO-TRI card in my Korg Trinity .

There are four riffs, each of which is played twice from the same MIDI data. In each pair, the first is the softsynth and the second is the hardware.

There was no attempt to match the FX on the presets (I just used the ones they came with). I did not use any controllers other than pitchbend and aftertouch.

There has been no processing in terms of compression, EQ etc.

The first two riffs are played with the preset "Grungy", the second two with "Control Bass", the third pair with "Airworks" and the last two with "The Big One".

This is not intended to demo the capabilities of MOSS, just to contrast the hardware from 25 or so years ago against the software from today.

Listeners can draw their own conclusions!

[Guest]

Unfortunately I'm V1 so its $249, which I seem to remember was also the price from V1 to V2.

I was wrong, I can't even get an upgrade price. I have to pay full price.

Very strange as their is an upgrade price if you have the Special Collection ($149) and I have all the plugins that are in that collection!

I will email them and see what they say...

[BJG145]

That's great Eddy, thanks for doing that.

If people want a "blind test", I've uploaded an alternative version where I've applied some normalisation and shuffled the order.

https://soundcloud.com/qchord/v2-1/s-wjLhXEe0ADZ

(To recap, these are four factory patches played on a Trinity MOSS card and Prophecy VST.)

I agree with your verdict; the fourth shows the potential though, and with a bit of tweaking you could probably get them pretty close.

I did a bit of research and it appears that the MOSS synthesis as implemented in the Korg Z1 involved quite a few more synthesis algorithms than the Prophecy VST does.

Interesting; it was high on the wanted list at one point. I wonder if they might give that one the VST treatment as well. They were always a bit underappreciated I think.

[BJG145]

...the mapping of controllers to modulations is a bit different in places in the presets which I think is the main reason for the stark difference between the 3rd pair of riffs...

I'm interested in MOSS because it's Korg's version of Physical Modelling and should work nicely with breath controllers. It sounds like the hardware in the third section is responding to the expression data as "breath pressure" or "overblowing", whereas the VST seems to be interpreting it as a wide vibrato.

The Z1's keyboard is sensitive to both velocity and aftertouch, and this is complemented by 12 dedicated controls (four filter knobs and eight envelope knobs), pitch‑bend and modulation wheels, and four foot‑pedal inputs. Unfortunately, a dedicated input for a breath controller is missing. This is a shame, especially when you consider how many wind instruments the Z1 seeks to emulate.

(The Z1 trumpet at 0.26 in this MP3 shows the potential of MOSS with a breath controller, as a purely synthesised sound reacting to pressure...no samples here AFAIK.)