Korg Forums

[ITguy54]

[jick]

Back on topic, I'm actually very curious if a Kronos V3 will emerge.. I've been looking into the Nord stage 4, seems to be a great synth, but to me it feels like it's not enough of an upgrade to my Kronos V1. That tells a lot, it shows how much the Kronos was it's time ahead imo. Anyway. If a V3 will be released, I'll probably buy it instantly. Are you listening, Korg? Maybe incorporate some nice VSTi's in a nice hardware enclosure
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Rick
Youtube!

[Koekepan]

[MehranPa5x76]

[ITguy54]

[jick]

[Koekepan]

The thing is that companies such as Roland have decided that performance keyboards are more salable than workstations. Their Fantom, Fantom-0, and FA lines have all moved away from core workstation capabilities but are great performance tools. For gigging musicians, this isn't a problem. After all, nobody's going to a wedding to craft new music in front of a crowd. You could say the same for the Yamaha Genos, although it kinda-sorta can be a workstation if you close one eye and squint with the other. The Nautilus is a worse workstation than the Kronos but roughly on par with the Kronos for performance (if you ignore what they did for faders and hands-on control in general).

Composers and producers simply are not KORG's focus here, and it shows. They've been very quiet about it, but their actions speak so loudly, they hardly need to say a word.

"Thanks for the good times, composers. It was swell. Hope you like software workstations or staff paper. Thanks for all the fish. Can we interest you in a metallic red guitar tuner? What, you're leaving us for Akai? That's fine, nobody cares, we were done with you anyway. We broke up with you, not you with us. You'll come crawling back when the MPC Keys breaks your heart. You always will. Can we interest you in a metallic blue guitar tuner?"

[vertig0spin]

[SeedyLee]

I've heard some rumblings in the new Montage M discussion threads around the place that there may be an announcement of something new around 16 November...

Okay, completely unsubstantiated but got to have something to discuss here, right?
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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

[ITguy54]

[steveyoung29]

[ITguy54]

[steveyoung29]

[blazerunner]

Why bash on korg and the rasberry pi like it hasn't been responsible for creating some of the most amazing synths of late. ??? Sounds kind of nit picky.

Seems to me like it comes down to the corporate structure of Korg and what the people sitting around in the executive office feel the direction of the brand show be going in. Apparently they don't see the flagship keyboards that made their brand name relevant something to focus on or take seriously anymore.

Personally I've moved on in life far away from the stupidity of "brand loyalty". If Korg's not doing it and "someone else" is than "someone else" is what I'm going to be purchasing. I don't have years of my life to waste waiting for a company to get a clue.

I'm not happy at all about how they handled the end of the Kronos product line and how they just abandoned it with all the bugs it has. That was very sloppy and makes me not want to put my faith in a brand. Compare their ending the Kronos to how Yamaha handled ending the previous Montage.

The Kronos sequencer really needed more time and programming. Matter of fact the whole keyboard could have been brought up to speed with an actual legitimate update they fixed any number of things we complained about in that super thread.

Korg doesn't believe in updates they just believe in dropping an entirely different keyboard with a few "tweaks".

Everything has caught up to the Kronos as far as sounds go. Other synths, VST's etc. Korg is still trying to sell you Piano Sounds paks for $300 like this is still the early 2000's.

The Korg interface is vastly outdated. It could not survive another rendition of windows 3.1 with a touch screen. The way the Kronos operates is super clumsy. Especially with menu diving, saving,loading, accessing this, that and all that jazz. You feel like you're doing a lot of tedious programming work where on any other device that would have just been a single push button job (Akai's interface software has perfected that).

Anyway...

The only thing that keeps the Kronos somewhat useful is the sequencer. Buggy,flawed and extremely outdated but still it's the only Workstation part of the keyboard. I could go on for hours complaining about what would make it better but at the end of the day Korg has enough companies and VST's to model a better sequencer from so they have to already know where they went wrong and what they need to improve.

That being said... a whole generation of musicians have skipped out on a Korg Workstation because there hasn't been one to represent their era. Instead Korg is targeting them with mini synths, VST's and drum machines, and the like. Workstations got the back burner because Korg who used to set the trend decided to follow the trend by not focusing on them.

Why I don't know but Roland and Yamaha ignored the trend and kept pushing forward with their keyboards. Fantom has taken up the workspace the Kronos once did. The new Montage will also be taking up the workspace the Kronos one had. Meanwhile year after year after year the Kronos falls further and further behind and becomes more obsolete.

Now me I'm not a guy who needs to chase the latest and greatest. I still use my Kronos daily it's part of my main workflow. I've learned its ends and outs that how I find all the "bugs" that shouldn't be there but are. Things the programmers probably didn't even realize existed.

At the same time I've put in all these years of learning this Keyboard I can't be ignorant to the fact that there is equipment out there that does what I try to accomplish on the Kronos in a much simpler fashion. There are parts of the Kronos I don't bother with because of that like the cumbersome "sampler" for one. Never use it. Got gear that does it better. For example right now I'm trying to fix a song. If I made it on a DAW I could easily cut out the segment I wanted right where I needed it cute precisely with a 2 mouse clicks. On the Kronos... that's impossible and it becomes a challenging task to edit tracks with precision because it lacks the programming tools to do so. It's technology that it's lacking.

That's the same mindset any modern musician looking at this keyboard is going to feel about it. "Okay this is cool but "insert gear here" does a better job at doing this". That's just what happens when technology gets old.

Main thing is that the Kronos has no way to truly interface with a DAW and become a real studio power horse like a protools or an ableton. It's difficult to take what you create in the Kronos and move it into a DAW. In 2023 you need that seamless workflow or your product won't survive.

So to me it just seems that either Korg has been spending these years in secret creating a super workstation to one day release to the world or they've just decided to fizzle out the Workstation side and leave whatever left over parts they have for the Nautilus production till they exhaust that.

Either way I'm not waiting. I'll be an old man in a retirement home before Korg wakes up and says "Lets release a new workstation".
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I make all the mistakes for you so that you can learn what not to do.

[steveyoung29]

I've got just one Kronos, an LS 88 key. I need at least two more Kronos's, an 88 key with fully weighted keys (priority) , and a 61 key with aftertouch. If there's another 61 key going spare, I'll have that too.
Steve