Why I use the Kronos

[sigiriuk]

There is quite a bit of bitching about Korg on these forums, and some people are quite negative about the Kronos. Here are my (positive) (and opinionated) thoughts:

The Kronos is superb:
Because the pianos and EPs are far superior to the Roland RD series, the Motif or the Nord S2.

And yes, the action isnt as good as a Roland, (or my old Oberheim MK) but my audience can't appreciate that, they just want to hear a half decent piano.

No other keyboard on the market gives me so many choices of sounds. Although I have played the Nord live for a couple of years, it is very limited sound-wise and overpriced. The Roland just does pianos and not that well either - its EPs and organ are tepid. The Motif is a contender.

And lastly, there is no way on God's Earth that I am going on stage with an 88note Fatar and an MacBookPro running Mainstage!

[Musicisme]

Thank you sir for my thoughts exactly.

[DennyC]

Sounds like an experienced opinion to me. Glad you are enjoying it

[popmann]

I think I've said before...I've been playing keys and sequencing for 25 years or so. For the last decade, I've used mostly software instruments, as most of the hardware was not even in the ballpark of quality after Gigastudio/sampler change the sampling paradigm with disk streaming sample tech.

No matter how good the sound design of a 256mb ROM bank, you're not going to TOUCH a PC with access to as much sample content as you have hd space. Not exactly that much, but...you get the point-a loop less piano sample will have to go out of its way to not beat one squeezed into 12mb.

I play every generation of new boards hoping to be able to go back to hardware, which responds better to touch...and is more reliable, as a rule.

The Kronos was the first in a decade to bring what I needed. A nice feeling keybed with sounds that are in the ballpark of the best software...at least for pianos and eps and organs-my bread and butter.

I still, apparently will need to use software for the things I sequence rather than play live-strings, horns, and drums(though I rarely sequence drums any more). I am excited by the potential of writing the new album (finishing one now) using the Kronos with a single mic per plugged in. Ive been playing around with the sequencer/audio...I think it will do well for song demos.

If it didn't exist, there is nothing in the current market I'd replace it with. I'd have kept my pc2x as controller and continued using software. I did want to compare the pc3k8...but, no one locally had it, and with disk streaming? I knew it would be at a disadvantage.

[rrricky rrrecordo]

Can't speak for Roland, but courtesy of the Motifator shop, I have installed some brilliant acoustic and electric pianos, excellent organs with drawbar control, and so much more into my bulletproof Motif XS.

Love gigging with a Macbook and a few iPads as well. They're in my blood now.

Kronos would not be a step forward for me at this time. Certainly, It's a great idea, probably the best all-in-one standalone "workstation" concept post OASYS - but it's unfortunate that there are some disconcerting (pun intended) issues outstanding in regard to live performance reliability.

[Shakil]

popman.... you do know that KRONOS has more than 256MB ROM... right? KRONOS is doing what Gigastudio did.... disk streaming.. KRONOS streams large library of sounds from SSD.....

[WorknMan]

Can't speak for Roland, but courtesy of the Motifator shop, I have installed some brilliant acoustic and electric pianos, excellent organs with drawbar control, and so much more into my bulletproof Motif XS.

Yeah,I'm currently evaluating the Kronos and I wasn't blown away by these sounds vs what is available in the Motif shop. Of course, Kronos has these out of the box, but for those of us who have already invested in these Motif 3rd party libraries, it's not a huge draw.

Let's see, what else? The guitars on the Kronos are weak sauce, and the build quality is questionable. And where the HELL is the wurly Supertramp patch? Isn't that supposed to come standard with every workstation? I like that it has 3 VA synths to play with and I looooooooooove MOD7, but they haven't released an editor yet (AFAIK), so what good are they? Either you're going to stick with the presets (almost all of which feel to me like they need some tweaking), or you're going to use that clunky-ass touch screen to edit patches, which means you're probably a masochist. With the XF, there's a kick-ass shareware editor/librarian, plus I can use an iPad as a control surface.

One reason I could never part with the XF is because of all the 3rd party stuff with the classic sounds from the 70's and 80's. IRIC, Korg was talking about releasing some of these as aftermarket libraries. IMHO, they'd be wise to do so.

Personally, I think Kronos does a lot of things right that the M3 didn't (the tiltable console notwithstanding) and it's probably better than the Motif all things considered; it just doesn't blow me away like I thought it would.

Edit 1: I understand there's some new sounds in the 1.5 update, which I have not tried.

Edit 2: I saw the thread from the guy who did all the Motif 80's sounds, saying he was planning to port them to Kronos. That would definitely be cool

[popmann]

popman.... you do know that KRONOS has more than 256MB ROM... right? KRONOS is doing what Gigastudio did.... disk streaming.. KRONOS streams large library of sounds from SSD.....

Yes...that was my point.

Re: third party pianos for the motif...they're not in the store to play. How would I know how they play?

I know a great piano player who thinks the sv1 has good piano sounds. I have never played a ROM based piano that sustains or is as rich as no loop disk streaming. I've played ones that sound decent...ones that play very nicely...but, they don't ring right.

[Ivorys88]

Put simply I am downsizing and wanted one keyboard that does it all. On an unfortunate note I had three pages set up with my needed programs and after five weeks the unit would not boot up. My dealer has sent it back to Korg and I am hoping for a replacement. I need my confidence restored.In my opinion it is the ultimate board for stage performance both lightweight and versatility.

[jimknopf]

To each his own, and the Motif is a nice wokstation.

Still my evaluation won't follow those of worknman and ricky. From my view,
the only advantage a Motif has over the Kronos right now is the superiority of some well done sample sounds (especially concerning acoustic and electric guitars).
The other possible advantage is only momentary: at the moment there are some more often used out of the box patches (for the lazy folks ) available on the Motif (we talked about the the very useable 80s package). This situation is changing fast, as LOTS of premium third party Kronos libraries are round the corner. And normally the Kronos streaming libraries are simply at least one level above the Motif material in quality.

In everything else I regard the Kronos as superior as well.
- signifincantly better Grand Pianos
- MUCH better Rhodes sounds (I listened to the new Chick Corea Mk V library for the Motof and didn't like it better than all the other weak and outdated Rhodes sounds on the Motif, with the only middle-class exeption of one thrid party library)
- The Wurlys aren't as great as the Rhodes, but flexible enough to get close to the Supertramp sound within five minutes. Just that I wouldn't use this clichee sound (unless playing Supertramp in a cover band, just like the Jump sound and others beaten to death) and rather enjoy the flexibilty to be able to tweak these Wurlies much more, than ever possible with static Yamaha samples, doing anything from NuSoul to Acid Jazz in a more flexible way.
- three first class synth VAs giving the Kronos a HUGE advatage over the sampled Motif sounds (and you don't need an editor at all to program something like a Polysix or even MS20 sound)
- an advanced organ VA much superior to the sampled Motif solutions
- a real FM engine closer to DX sounds than anything on a Motif
- waveshaping
flexible software system allowing to add steaming sample extensions plus possible other VAs or modeling engines anytime

How can anyone in the world think that a Motif, despite being a great package, even remotely compares???
As I said, to each his/her own, but my choice has certainly been clear and very conscious, without a second of doubt.

[WorknMan]

The other possible advantage is only momentary: at the moment there are some more often used out of the box patches (for the lazy folks ) available on the Motif (we talked about the the very useable 80s package). This situation is changing fast, as LOTS of premium third party Kronos libraries are round the corner.

This may be true, as I saw that the guy who did the Motif 80's library is playing around with the Kronos, which is definitely a good thing. However, once these libraries do come out, how the hell are we supposed to find them? Meaning, why is there not something akin to the Motifator shop, where we can browse for libraries in a single location, with audio demos and such?

Also, a couple more things I love about the Motif. First is this software by John Melas:

http://www.jmelas.gr/motif/products.php

The librarian software alone has saved me hours when moving patches around. Hell, it even has automatic dependency tracking between the Motif's equivalent of Programs and Combis when you're dragging sounds in between banks. I can save entire banks on the PC, and transfer them over to the Motif in an instant. It also has a voice editor, but Yamaha also has iPad apps for this purpose.

You say that you don't need an editor to program the MS20 or Poly Six on the Kronos; we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. Personally, I'd rather tongue the sweaty asshole of a Kenyan marathon runner than do ANYTHING with the Kronos touch screen. And even assuming I was willing to suffer through it, does that mean MOD7 and AL-1 are lost causes?

After having gotten used to smartphones and tablets, the touchscreens on these Korgs feel primitive by comparison. Last night, I was just trying to edit the velocity curve, and it took like four presses before the screen even recognized that I was doing anything. Compared to what I'm used to, it really is shockingly, embarrassingly bad. Not to say that the Motif is much better in this regard, but there's a lot of ways to work around it on the Motif. On the Kronos, there are none (AFAIK).

Look, I'm not trying to start a flame war here. I like the Kronos, and recognize that it does have its advantages. But right now, the libraries (esp the 70's/80's stuff) and the various ways I can edit and organize them using a PC or tablet is enough to keep me on the Motif, as I am one of these lazy people who have neither the time nor patience to make my own; I just want to play And even if these things do make their way to the Kronos, Korg is gonna have to find ways to allow me to better find and organize them.

[WorknMan]

BTW: Speaking of 3rd party libraries, somebody needs to get Korg to hook this guy up with a Kronos;

http://www.motifator.com/index.php/foru ... 452948/P30

He does a lot of the stuff for the Motif.

[jimknopf]

I completely agree that Motifator is a very useful place, and that it is nice to find most third party stuff in one place there.

But are you aware that the two main sources for libraries to come (Korg and Karo), with around 30 or more offers all in all, will simply be available at Korg.com? Add this central forum for information exchange here (where you will hardly miss a hint at new libraries), plus a central place for user patches (korgpatches.com), and the difference isn't big.

I also agree that the Motif editor is well done, while we still wait for ours, so we can't say anything about it's quality. But basically it will do a similar job.
And already now there are two librarian programs available for the Kronos, making it very easy and convenient to organize your patches however you like: Michel's free "PCGtools" and the commercial "Aldan Librarian" for the Kronos. So organizing patches hardly makes any difference already now.

Concerning programming: I have had no problems at all working with the touchscreen and programming sounds there. Add the fact, that many basic patches already have the rich controller field available for common functions, and you won't even need to use the screen all the time.

So all in all I can't see much I could have on a Motif which I don't have or get on a Kronos. But I see a lot which the Motif doesn't offer and which the Kronos delivers in an excellent way.

Still we agree that the Kronos needs more up to date patches of the "right out of the box" kind for gigging and recording musicians, and that the Motif has been well over the years at providing a lot of that.

[SanderXpander]

While the Kronos touch screen might not be as perfect as you'd like, I often find myself poking at the screen of a Motif or Fantom until I realize that doesn't do anything at all.

[michelkeijzers]

While the Kronos touch screen might not be as perfect as you'd like, I often find myself poking at the screen of a Motif or Fantom until I realize that doesn't do anything at all.

I think it's quite good considering the amount of widgets on it.