No editor ?

[McHale]

Well that's one opinion, but as an onwer of many keyboards, I have never seen a keyboard in the Kronos price range built to such low physical standards. I would say the orignal wheel that had to be redesigned was a cost cutting measure that ended up costing them more. The use of spacers instead of proper construction was definitely not the result of thoughtful design. The vector stick is put together like junk. The plastics and metals used in general are definitely not high grade materials.

All of that being said, if it works it works, even if crap is crap.

The data wheel may have suffered from an inferior design, but it wasn't a result of a cost cutting measure or anything intentional. The new data wheel and the original data wheel have no cost difference to manufacture. A single piece of molded plastic costs the same as an almost identical piece of molded plastic. Same with the keybeds or any other issues that I'm aware of. Korg is also one of the best for responding to issues and resolving them.

I have opened every Korg synth dating back to the early 80's (and posted the pictures). I'm still waiting to see someone point out how the Kronos is built by lesser quality standards than any other Korgs. Metal casings, high quality pots and buttons, solid keybeds have always been the standard on everything but the low price point models. Other manufacturers may choose to use different metals or types of plastics, but choosing to use one type of metal vs. another to give the necessary strength yet save on weight is a step forward, not backwards in design.

Additionally, I have yet to see anybody post any pictures of the Kronos compared to whatever they call a better or more solidly built keyboard and point out what makes the other one better. There's not a single side by side comparison. I have posted quite a few pictures from the DW-8000, Triton, Oasys, Kronos, DSS-1, M50, M3... can someone find me ANY pictures of any other keyboards and compare them? I've opened and serviced keyboards for about 30 years (and not just Korg). I've also torn apart nearly everything I've ever owned since I was about 6. Here's a little trick I learned a LONG time ago to notice when companies are starting to cut costs on new stuff. Look at the screws. If they ever go from hardened steel to some cheap pot metal that strips easily, they are watching pennies. ALL of Korg's gear uses hardened steel and quality parts.

It's easy to say that they are built cheaply or with poor quality parts or whatever. But if you've never actually seen the inside of one or seen the inside of others to compare it to in person, how is that anything but an uneducated opinion? I won't argue that every design has been perfect and not every OS never needed a revision, but there's a difference between sacrificing quality to save money and someone making a goof on the design that didn't get caught during testing. All manufacturers have issues and how they handle and support them is what makes Korg stand out in my opinion.

-Mc

[Bruce Lychee]

The data wheel may have suffered from an inferior design, but it wasn't a result of a cost cutting measure or anything intentional. The new data wheel and the original data wheel have no cost difference to manufacture. A single piece of molded plastic costs the same as an almost identical piece of molded plastic. Same with the keybeds or any other issues that I'm aware of. Korg is also one of the best for responding to issues and resolving them.

I have opened every Korg synth dating back to the early 80's (and posted the pictures). I'm still waiting to see someone point out how the Kronos is built by lesser quality standards than any other Korgs. Metal casings, high quality pots and buttons, solid keybeds have always been the standard on everything but the low price point models. Other manufacturers may choose to use different metals or types of plastics, but choosing to use one type of metal vs. another to give the necessary strength yet save on weight is a step forward, not backwards in design.

Additionally, I have yet to see anybody post any pictures of the Kronos compared to whatever they call a better or more solidly built keyboard and point out what makes the other one better. There's not a single side by side comparison. I have posted quite a few pictures from the DW-8000, Triton, Oasys, Kronos, DSS-1, M50, M3... can someone find me ANY pictures of any other keyboards and compare them? I've opened and serviced keyboards for about 30 years (and not just Korg). I've also torn apart nearly everything I've ever owned since I was about 6. Here's a little trick I learned a LONG time ago to notice when companies are starting to cut costs on new stuff. Look at the screws. If they ever go from hardened steel to some cheap pot metal that strips easily, they are watching pennies. ALL of Korg's gear uses hardened steel and quality parts.

It's easy to say that they are built cheaply or with poor quality parts or whatever. But if you've never actually seen the inside of one or seen the inside of others to compare it to in person, how is that anything but an uneducated opinion? I won't argue that every design has been perfect and not every OS never needed a revision, but there's a difference between sacrificing quality to save money and someone making a goof on the design that didn't get caught during testing. All manufacturers have issues and how they handle and support them is what makes Korg stand out in my opinion.

-Mc

If they had to redesign the wheel, there are costs associated with the redesign and new molding. I think that is a fairly obvious point. You have no idea what they were thinking when they designed the wheel, so let's just leave it at that. I don't know what their intentions were but I know it resulted in an orignal data wheel made of cheap plastic and secured by a piece of tape.

This is my first Korg board so I can't compare it to their other products. Perhaps I would have been equally unimpressed with their prior efforts. That being said, I can compare it to other products I own or have owned and think that the quality of materials and overall build quality is clearly inferior on the Kronos. Nevertheless, as I have said on many other occasions, the functionality and sounds of the Kronos outweigh whatever reservations I have about the way it was built.

[McHale]

If they had to redesign the wheel, there are costs associated with the redesign and new molding. I think that is a fairly obvious point. You have no idea what they were thinking when they designed the wheel, so let's just leave it at that. I don't know what their intentions were but I know it resulted in an orignal data wheel made of cheap plastic and secured by a piece of tape.

This is my first Korg board so I can't compare it to their other products. Perhaps I would have been equally unimpressed with their prior efforts. That being said, I can compare it to other products I own or have owned and think that the quality of materials and overall build quality is clearly inferior on the Kronos. Nevertheless, as I have said on many other occasions, the functionality and sounds of the Kronos outweigh whatever reservations I have about the way it was built.

I don't think it's fair to Korg to assume they were cutting corners to save costs which resulted in a poor design. Since I've been a long time user of their products I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt since that would not be in character to how they have always done things. Again, the current design vs. the original design is basically the same cost so I highly doubt they had both designs and chose the poorer of the two.

As far as how inferior, can you give some examples? What makes it inferior?

-Mc

[michelkeijzers]

Like software and even more in hardware, changing something after publication is far more expensive (in both time and/or money) then to design things properly.

So I'm sure the keybed was unintended, same as the data wheel. Both are corrected by Korg in a good way. They only thing that could be improved is lack of communication.

[McHale]

Like software and even more in hardware, changing something after publication is far more expensive (in both time and/or money) then to design things properly.

So I'm sure the keybed was unintended, same as the data wheel. Both are corrected by Korg in a good way. They only thing that could be improved is lack of communication.

you're 100% correct.

I'm only addressing the point that they purposely used inferior items (when better items were known or available) to cut costs. Their choice of data wheels and keybeds was not a cost cutting measure. They were the best they had come up with for the job. When issues arose, they went back to the drawing board, doubled up on labor towards those issues, resolved them and gave all affected users the upgrades. There wasn't a better design they could have gone with at that time that they opted not to use because it cost more as others have claimed. Many companies don't go to these lengths to satisfy the customer.

[michelkeijzers]

Like software and even more in hardware, changing something after publication is far more expensive (in both time and/or money) then to design things properly.

So I'm sure the keybed was unintended, same as the data wheel. Both are corrected by Korg in a good way. They only thing that could be improved is lack of communication.

you're 100% correct.

I'm only addressing the point that they purposely used inferior items (when better items were known or available) to cut costs. Their choice of data wheels and keybeds was not a cost cutting measure. They were the best they had come up with for the job. When issues arose, they went back to the drawing board, doubled up on labor towards those issues, resolved them and gave all affected users the upgrades. There wasn't a better design they could have gone with at that time that they opted not to use because it cost more as others have claimed. Many companies don't go to these lengths to satisfy the customer.

I also fully agree and I also think they thought the items were good. If they knew it had problems they never would built in such a data wheel or keybed. I think it's fixed rather soon, especially the data wheel.

[Mystic38]

Or..it could have been the pragmatic view of understanding that the folks working on the Kronos are a small, resource limited group with more work to do than people available and needing to respond to a couple of unplanned events.

been there done that.

Obviously the editor took a back burner in resource allocation to the new os and also the keybed related issues... but, with things more stable now i think "soon" is back on track..

This sounds like a creative interpretation of events to serve wishful thinking, to me. I doubt the the people working on the editor were taken off the project so they could work on fixing the keybed. These would be different people with different skill sets.

[Scott]

Or..it could have been the pragmatic view of understanding that the folks working on the Kronos are a small, resource limited group with more work to do than people available and needing to respond to a couple of unplanned events.

been there done that.

Obviously the editor took a back burner in resource allocation to the new os and also the keybed related issues... but, with things more stable now i think "soon" is back on track..

This sounds like a creative interpretation of events to serve wishful thinking, to me. I doubt the the people working on the editor were taken off the project so they could work on fixing the keybed. These would be different people with different skill sets.

You don't think it is highly unlikely that the people working on the editor were told to stop in order to address the keybed issue? Skilled resources are not interchangeable. Yet you say this is not only possible, you say it is obvious that this was done? I don't see it. I wouldn't even consider it obvious that prioritizing resources for the new OS was a source of delay, in that even those programmers might be different, though it is at least more feasible.

One thing I think was interesting, though, is that one of the "features" of 1.5 is "Support for the Kronos Editor." It makes me think that the delay in the editor might be, in part, a result of discovering issues in the OS that were preventing an editor from working, which had to be addressed before much of the work of the editor could even be undertaken. Or maybe the whole editor functionally had been intentionally omitted from the initial release because it was not a priority for getting shippable units out the door, and they didn't expect it to take as long as it did to upgrade the OS to the point where an editor was even possible. Either way, it's possible that little-to-no work was done on the editor prior to the existence of the 1.5 version of the OS which supported it.

[Scott]

If they had to redesign the wheel, there are costs associated with the redesign and new molding. I think that is a fairly obvious point.

Of course redesign costs money. But that doesn't mean the new version is any more expensive to manufacture than the first version was... it could just have been a design error the first time, having nothing to do with attempts to shave pennies.

[Sharp]

Like I mentioned earlier - Dan is looking for beta testers!!!!

Why might that be!!!!

Exactly...!!!!
Doesn't take a genius to work that one out.

Regars
Sharp.

[Cpilot]

There's a very good reason that Dan is looking for beta testers. We're the guys that are finding the problems. No organisation has enough people to do this, especially with something like the Kronos which as we all know is extremely detailed.

Bryan

[michelkeijzers]

There's a very good reason that Dan is looking for beta testers. We're the guys that are finding the problems. No organisation has enough people to do this, especially with something like the Kronos which as we all know is extremely detailed.

Bryan

The problem is that testing is a very difficult subject. In the company I work in and work for special testers are available and being a test engineer is a separate job.

I'm not one of them but I know some things about testing. There are automated tests and manual tests. Automated tests (mostly called regression tests), test if when some function has changed, all other functions still work and are not broken by the changes. This costs a lot of time to develop, but once when developed, they can be run overnight or immediately.

Manual tests need only to be written down how to do them, but they are to be done manually. Sometimes it is not possible to make an automated test and manual is the only way to go (e.g. when the outcome is random or too difficult to see what is good behavior).

The main problem: testing is mostly done by testing a certain scenario and checking the results (automatically or manually). However, to test EVERYTHING you need a huge amount of tests, and it costs more development time than the actual software to test. Therefor only some tests are being performed.

(btw, there are ways to formally test software requirements/design but this is quite difficult).

As an example: in PCG Tools (the app I created), I have 100 test cases. And it only covers a small part of the list generator. If I want to test everything (and not even in any kind of order etc), I probably need 1000 testcases, if I wanted to test every possibility, I probably need a billion test cases. This would take a lot of manyears to develop.

What is also important: since the design team of Korg probably is not that big, the people creating the test cases are involved or maybe the same as the people writing the software. Users always do things different than the software engineers or the people creating the requirements think.

[ronnfigg]

Isn't the OS in the Kronos based on Linux. I thought I read that somewhere. If so, I would imagining porting to a Windows based OS would be dicey...

[michelkeijzers]

Isn't the OS in the Kronos based on Linux. I thought I read that somewhere. If so, I would imagining porting to a Windows based OS would be dicey...

There is no possibility to port it to a Windows based OS, unless you have all Korg's source code and development tools for it.

And what would be the point of it?

[ronnfigg]

I don't know much about writing software. what I was referring to was the editor. If the kronos OS is based on linux, and the editor is based on windows, wouldn't did too operating systems have to talk to each other?