Korg Forums

Like many others I have been waiting for some news on KORG compliance with Catalina ... notably the USB-MIDI Driver. Below is my correspondence with the UK office. I thought some of the group might be interested.

Question: Looking for some feedback on when the KORG USB-MIDI Driver is expected to be updated. I need to update my iMac and this is holding me up. An estimated delivery date will be appreciated.

Response: There is no confirmed release date for a version of the KORG USB MIDI driver that is compatible with macOS Catalina. We expect it to be in the very near future we cannot confirm a date at this stage.

If you use your computer for making music, not only us but many other manufacturers and software developers in the music industry are recommending not upgrading your computer for some time in order to avoid a number of potential issues.

we discussed this a few months back. Not surprised here

whelafam wrote:I need to update my iMac and this is holding me up.

I'm always interested in this. Why do you "need" to update your iMac? What is your iMac not doing for you, that an upgrade to Catalina will fix?

Quite often, the latest Mac OS Update breaks a ton of software that people depend on, and then everybody is complaining about it.

Everybody seems to jump on the Apple upgrade wagon, must have newest OS, must have newest sh*t they told us we need... but seriously, why do you need to immediately upgrade to a new Mac OS? Just asking, friendly like.

"Need" is a bit overstated! I am (or was) in the technology field and as a rule we tried to stay somewhat current so I continue to follow that rule. Updates mostly allowed you to take advantage of newer products that required a certain level of software. That being said we generally stayed within a arms reach of the latest software and let others blaze the trail and knock off all the bugs. I added the need to my note to KORG to try to find out when they might be releasing the updates. Once they release I will probably wait a bit longer to update my driver and let others experience its effectiveness first. I have been a KORG KRONOS owner for only a few months so I definitely don't want anything to impede my learning progress.

whelafam wrote:"Need" is a bit overstated! I am (or was) in the technology field and as a rule we tried to stay somewhat current so I continue to follow that rule. Updates mostly allowed you to take advantage of newer products that required a certain level of software. That being said we generally stayed within a arms reach of the latest software and let others blaze the trail and knock off all the bugs. I added the need to my note to KORG to try to find out when they might be releasing the updates. Once they release I will probably wait a bit longer to update my driver and let others experience its effectiveness first. I have been a KORG KRONOS owner for only a few months so I definitely don't want anything to impede my learning progress.

I am not sold on chasing the future. I can wait for whatever benefit to tangibly arrive and be field tested. This saves time , from my experience.

There is a entire world to explore on Kronos without needing Catalina, etc.

And I recommend 2 computers. Have 1 for your work, tech stuff, games. etc etc.
Then dedicate music production to a second computer.

Sounds expensive but I think its a solid approach , long term.

On my 2nd computer (Windows 7 32bit) I got many 32bit VST running and I don't intend to go for a 64bit OS. This has nothing do to with being 'modern' or not. I don't need more than 4GB RAM.

I've seen many artificial barriers aka 'incompatibilities' made by OS vendors but making a 64bit OS which refuses to run 32bit programs is the harshest I've seen so far.

As an Apple user I would continue using the old OS and look around for alternatives (dualboot system with windows and linux for example)

Well you are certainly entitled to your opinion on upgrades. There are a lot of folks still using their flip phones and don't like change. But change is what brings us the latest technologies. Without it we would be playing our upright pianos and recording to wax tubes. I like to stay current and hopefully we will continue to innovate. Good luck staying at 32 bit.... I assume you upgraded from 16 at some point. Happy Korging!

There are instances that update brings performance gains. The good example would be a recent update to Final Cut Pro ( https://barefeats.com/final-cut-pro-bru ... alina.html ).
And 64-bit apps benefit from more RAM. In audio/video apps, more RAM means more to the user.

Hopefully Korg update its software to 64-bit soon, and fix "broken" Kronos Editor !

One last comment to my friends who don't seem to embrace software updates. I assume that they feel compelled to update their Korg Kronos which is at version 3.1.3. Enough said

whelafam wrote:One last comment to my friends who don't seem to embrace software updates. I assume that they feel compelled to update their Korg Kronos which is at version 3.1.3. Enough said

no one size fits all. I do updates when it fits my music production goals. Thats the bottom line for me.

Also consider Kronos is + 8 years old.

Bits matter ! , wider address registers, faster bus architecture, and function calls, better scalability.
Today’s CPU are 64-bit, and running 32-bit apps is an inefficient.
When Adobe released 64‑bit version of Creative Suite 5, Photoshop and the others has been seen to run 15 times faster on a 64‑bit OS.

32-bit is a PAST on 64-bit systems.
All users and developers should embrace it.

Poseidon wrote:Bits matter ! , wider address registers, faster bus architecture, and function calls, better scalability.
Today’s CPU are 64-bit, and running 32-bit apps is an inefficient.
When Adobe released 64‑bit version of Creative Suite 5, Photoshop and the others has been seen to run 15 times faster on a 64‑bit OS.

32-bit is a PAST on 64-bit systems.
All users and developers should embrace it.

32 bit code running on a 64 bit processor uses the same bus and cache and in fact can run faster than 64 bit code. Vector/SIMD instructions can run twice as fast (twice the data processed in the same timespan) if the data size is half the size, you can also fit more in the cache.

BobTheDog wrote:

Poseidon wrote:Bits matter ! , wider address registers, faster bus architecture, and function calls, better scalability.
Today’s CPU are 64-bit, and running 32-bit apps is an inefficient.
When Adobe released 64‑bit version of Creative Suite 5, Photoshop and the others has been seen to run 15 times faster on a 64‑bit OS.

32-bit is a PAST on 64-bit systems.
All users and developers should embrace it.

32 bit code running on a 64 bit processor uses the same bus and cache and in fact can run faster than 64 bit code. Vector/SIMD instructions can run twice as fast (twice the data processed in the same timespan) if the data size is half the size, you can also fit more in the cache.

64-bit architecture double the amount of data a CPU can process per clock cycle.

In 2017 at Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple informed developers that macOS High Sierra would be the last version of macOS to run 32-bit apps without compromise.



In Windows OS, 32-bit apps on 64-bit OS, have to be run through WoW64 subsystem ( emulation ).

From Wikipedia:

This emulation is a much more computationally expensive task than the Wow64win.dll's functions on the x86-64 architecture, which switches the processor hardware from its 64-bit mode to compatibility mode when it becomes necessary to execute a 32-bit thread, and then handles the switch back to 64-bit mode.

Apart from all else mentioned, if at some time your computer dies and you need to buy a new one, you may not have the option of running an older OS any longer.

stevewahl wrote:Apart from all else mentioned, if at some time your computer dies and you need to buy a new one, you may not have the option of running an older OS any longer.

My 2010 iMac (HighSierra) got fried in a lightning storm last year. (Thankfully I had backed up!) Found another one just like it on facetube marketplace in excellent cond. Was running again in a day! Saved tons of $$ and can still run the Korg drivers with my DAW.
My wife has Catalina on her MacBook for the latest in organizing our photos and watching her videos.