Korg Forums

[Deadkeys]

Have had my Nautilus on a back burner as its heavy AF to take to gigs...Have used the sequencer but not in depth yet. In your opinion would the Nautilus be a good master sequencer vs a MPC in a studio to control a Nord Electro5D, Roland FA06 Yamaha MODX and Yamaha CK61?

Thanks

[Koekepan]

My apologies in advance, but this is going to come as a nasty shock to team KORG.

I think that the modern MPC line is vastly better-suited to master sequencer duties than anything from KORG unless your needs are so basic that you can address them with an Electribe.

The Nautilus will do real-time recording of sequences - so will the MPCs. The Nautilus will do step recording - so will the MPCs. The Nautilus will not, however, give you a pianoroll so detail editing is not as easy nor as smooth, and the Nautilus is equalled in terms of MIDI output channels by the MPC One and exceeded by the MPC Live, especially given the comparative number of channels available in the sequencers of the Nautilus and any MPC.

Sorry, KORG didn't read the master sequencer memo after the Krome, and didn't raise their game to match the MPC lineup. The MPCs hit the street in 2017, as I recall - they've had plenty of time to roll up their sleeves anyway - and KORG has not even blessed us with an Electribe Master edition or whatever you'd call such a thing.

If you'd just wanted another sound source, the Nautilus does a great job. Sequencing? ...well, it's better than the Fantom, I guess.

[SeedyLee]

Things the MPC Sequencer can't do that the Kronos' can:

- Record tempo changes.
- Multiple time signatures in one sequence (you can change multiple sequences into a song, but you can't then (for example) overdub over the song with an audio track without converting back to a sequence, which loses time signature (and tempo) changes
- Record Sysex (might be useful for a master sequencer!)
- In-track sampling
- Audio tracks the entire length of a song
- Audio track streaming from disk (audio tracks have to reside in RAM)
- Sequences need to have the same track order to chain into a song, but there's no option to re-order tracks
- No RPPR (and pad mute/track mute automation and the way it interacted with loops was weird too)
- No ability to record multiple midi tracks/channels simultaneously.

There were a few other weird things that made the MPC sequencer unsuitable for me compared to the Kronos.
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Current Equipment:
Korg Kronos 2 88, Reface CS, Roland JV-1080, TE OP1, Moog Subsequent 37, Korg ARP Odyssey, Allen & Heath Zed 18, Adam F5, MOTU MIDI Express XT, Lexicon MX200 & MPX1, Yamaha QY700, Yamaha AW16G, Tascam DP008ex, Zoom H6, Organelle, Roland J6 & JU06A

Previous: Triton LE 61/Sampling/64MB/4GB SCSI, MS2000BR, Kronos 1 61, Monotribe, NanoKontrol, NanoKeys, Kaossilator II, Casio HT3000, Roland VP-03, Reface DX, Novation Mininova, MPC One

[Mike Conway]

[Koekepan]

I have a Force too - I chose it over the MPC line. Of course, they have much in common.

You're right on tempo and time signatures. Of course, I ignore the metronome when recording and when I want to use rubato. It's a workflow thing more than a fundamental capability. You can play into it, and turn off quantisation, and it will record just what you put in. You can also use Sibelius or Musescore or similar to generate a MIDI file and transport it across and then that works just fine. Multi-recording works fine as well.

I consider the sampling and audio recording considerations to be orthogonal (although the Force will do disc streaming) because we're talking sequencers rather than recorders. With devices in your studio that will do that, a sequencer's job is to fire them off regardless of whether or not the function is integrated. Again, in the Force, no big deal. For the MPC line that is a standing limitation.

Similarly, the pattern chaining thing is explicitly an MPC thing; Force arrangement works differently. This isn't to say that I didn't wish it were more sophisticated in the Force (I can think of several software packages that do it better) but it's not the same limitation. Also, in both MPC and Force you can simply specify a single pattern/clip and make it as long as you want. I've done it a lot when I wanted a linear workflow, and simply recorded things in directly. Works just fine.

In the Force, multitrack recording works flawlessly (or if there is a flaw, I haven't run into it yet), and I'll grant you RPPR although I never used it on my Krome either; I just entered what I wanted.

Honestly, I do wish that Akai Professional would spruce up the sequencing power of the MPC and Force lines. They're very powerful already, and only getting better. For me the real slam-dunk argument is the number of parallel tracks. If you're doing a string quartet, it's not important but in a dense avant garde arrangement, 16 tracks can feel pretty claustrophobic. When you find yourself trying to overdub tracks on each other, printing some to audio and then shuffling things around when instead you could slap down fifty tracks at a time and call it a day - why would you wear the shackles? Just glancing around my studio I count over 50 tracks in various devices ready to go at my command, even ignoring a couple of grooveboxes.

In the end, for me it comes down to scale and ease of management. The Nautilus/Kronos family never offered a good detail editing solution, but Akai did and does. If they just tarted up their arrangement and tempo management, I'd be happy as a clam.

[SeedyLee]

I bought an MPC One hoping it would be a drastic improvement over the Kronos, and whilst it was certainly better in some areas (eg editing), it was drastically worse in others.

In the end though, I really don't do that much piano-roll style editing, preferring instead to simply play the part again. For creating new parts I find the step record mode sufficient.

By all accounts the Force is probably more what I was looking for, however when I purchased the MPC One the Force was relatively new and known to be plagued by software issues.

I've since gone back to the Kronos as my primary sequencer, and an MPC1000 using JJOS.
_________________
Current Equipment:
Korg Kronos 2 88, Reface CS, Roland JV-1080, TE OP1, Moog Subsequent 37, Korg ARP Odyssey, Allen & Heath Zed 18, Adam F5, MOTU MIDI Express XT, Lexicon MX200 & MPX1, Yamaha QY700, Yamaha AW16G, Tascam DP008ex, Zoom H6, Organelle, Roland J6 & JU06A

Previous: Triton LE 61/Sampling/64MB/4GB SCSI, MS2000BR, Kronos 1 61, Monotribe, NanoKontrol, NanoKeys, Kaossilator II, Casio HT3000, Roland VP-03, Reface DX, Novation Mininova, MPC One