Just picked up my Kronos 61!

kday · Post by **kday** » Tue May 24, 2011 10:38 am

jahrome wrote: I have one negative so far about the Kronos. It's data wheel is not robust. I am a sample guy so I do a lot of onboard sample editing. With very little use, the data wheel popped out on me. It's easy to insert back in...but you can pop it back out with very little effort. This is the worst data wheel of any workstation I have owned (Fantom X/G, Motif ES, MPC 2000/2500/3000/4000/5000).

The data wheel popped out on you?

WTH?

What did Korg do, have this synth made in some cheap sweat factory in Korea?

Korg tried to maximize their investment by having these keyboard cases cheaply made, just like Alesis did with the Fusion.

There is no way in hell, the Kronos should have a data wheel pop out during use. No way.

There were people saying the Kronos looks cheap, now we know the Kronos really is of cheap quality.

orpheus2006 · Post by **orpheus2006** » Tue May 24, 2011 11:14 am

kday wrote:There were people saying the Kronos looks cheap, now we know the Kronos really is of cheap quality.

The Kronos doesn't look cheap, quite the opposite. Display and keybed are really good, the surface is appealing. It's assembled in Japan.
Just the data wheel is of very poor quality.

EXer · Post by **EXer** » Tue May 24, 2011 11:42 am

Maybe not only the data wheel.

They took care to make the Kronos look well built, but what about the hidden components?

At least let's hope they put an industrial grade slider for the 'Value' (data entry) slider. This is gonna be the most used slider.

orpheus2006 · Post by **orpheus2006** » Tue May 24, 2011 12:14 pm

EXer wrote:Maybe not only the data wheel.

They took care to make the Kronos look well built, but what about the hidden components?

We definetely will hear about in this forum during the next weeks. Up to now there is only an issue with the data wheel (and maybe the long boot time).

donjuancarlos · Post by **donjuancarlos** » Tue May 24, 2011 5:30 pm

As far as the boot time goes, my guess for the reason for the long load times will not be loading data from the SSD (although I wouldn't be surprised if Kronos has a fairly slow SSD). It will either be from:

- initializing multiple hardware systems
- Startup is unoptimized to ensure no errors occur during startup. Also, Korg could be using uses a chip vendor's unoptimized driver.

or both. Either way, if I can cold boot into windows 7 in 25 seconds with my SSD-equipped laptop, there definitely has to be some room for improvement.

Thoraldus · Post by **Thoraldus** » Tue May 24, 2011 6:05 pm

jahrome wrote:-snip-

I have one negative so far about the Kronos. It's data wheel is not robust. I am a sample guy so I do a lot of onboard sample editing. With very little use, the data wheel popped out on me. It's easy to insert back in...but you can pop it back out with very little effort. This is the worst data wheel of any workstation I have owned (Fantom X/G, Motif ES, MPC 2000/2500/3000/4000/5000).

Check the knob/wheel and see if it might be missing a metal spring tension device that would keep it secured to the shaft better. You could put a small dab of rubber cement on the shaft to secure the wheel, but still be able to remove it when necessary.

brimoore · Post by **brimoore** » Tue May 24, 2011 6:46 pm

I see a niche market - Kronos knobs! Check these custom glass knobs out

http://www.4mspedals.com/knobs.html

ozy · Post by **ozy** » Tue May 24, 2011 6:53 pm

the glorious days of prophet08's knobs are back!

Oh, the smell of deoxit and superglue in the morning...

More: women love guys who can fix things.

So: the Kronos will smell vintage AND will get you laid!

Here's the Adjunctive Reference Guide Manual. I just downloaded it from
Korg Belgium website.

MartinHines · Post by **MartinHines** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:06 am

EXer wrote:Maybe not only the data wheel.

They took care to make the Kronos look well built, but what about the hidden components?

At least let's hope they put an industrial grade slider for the 'Value' (data entry) slider. This is gonna be the most used slider.

I have used and played workstations from Korg, Yamaha, Kurzweil, and Roland, and most of their parts are very similar in quality. I am confident the quality of the Kronos will be similar to other previous Korg workstations.

jahrome · Post by **jahrome** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:14 am

MartinHines wrote:
EXer wrote:Maybe not only the data wheel.

They took care to make the Kronos look well built, but what about the hidden components?

At least let's hope they put an industrial grade slider for the 'Value' (data entry) slider. This is gonna be the most used slider.
I have used and played workstations from Korg, Yamaha, Kurzweil, and Roland, and most of their parts are very similar in quality. I am confident the quality of the Kronos will be similar to other previous Korg workstations.

The build quality of the Fantom G (data wheel, sliders, knobs, buttons, etc) has a look and feel that is of higher quality than the Kronos. This is my opinion with having them side by side. This opinion will not changed since the keyboards are already shipping. So fan-boys/non-fanboys alike can keep talking about this useless debate or more focus can be put on what can be accomplished with these workstations.

gjvti · Post by **gjvti** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:00 am

ozy wrote:...Oh, the smell of deoxit and superglue in the morning...

... judging from the level of activity on this forum - I can't resist admitting that glue stimulates you quite well

Akos Janca · Post by **Akos Janca** » Wed May 25, 2011 7:54 am

donjuancarlos wrote:...if I can cold boot into windows 7 in 25 seconds with my SSD-equipped laptop, there definitely has to be some room for improvement.

After 25 seconds Win7 itself on a laptop is still very far from being ready for first-class music production. Kronos is different.

EvilDragon · Post by **EvilDragon** » Wed May 25, 2011 8:28 am

Akos Janca wrote:After 25 seconds Win7 itself on a laptop is still very far from being ready for first-class music production.

Depends on how you streamline your W7 build. It can be stripped down to essentials, just like XP. nLited XP was up in less than 25 seconds for me. Running Reaper with my project template (softsynths, Kontakt) is additional 10 seconds. I'm pretty sure same thing can be achieved with W7 too, especially after killing Aero, all networking and similar crap. Boom-headshot!

Shakil · Post by **Shakil** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:35 pm

EvilDragon...

Win 7 itself is not a music workstation. You still need high quality, low latency audio interface, a master keyboard with that many controllers..... Then load 16 softsynths, each with a lot of polyphony.. 16 effects busses.. ability to route live audio to any of the effects busse... etc. Don't forget touch screen and KARMA.....

To build a system with this much capability, you are to spend more or very close to the cost of a KRONOS.

Anyway, you can not compare KRONOS to a computer DAW, because it will never win... compare it to other music workstations.

jahrome · Post by **jahrome** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:43 pm

It seems like everytime a new piece of hardware is released...the first words you hear or read about is a computer and software is much powerful. I am not sure why anyone would spend any significant amount of time in a hardware forum talking about software is better....

Long live hardware......