thinking over purchasing an oasys - advice needed

[korglifeguy]

could someone help me with the following questions as Im mulling over whether it would be worth it to simplfy my set up of 8 various synths by selling individual components and replacing most of them with an oasys 73 (including my PC computer and sequencing software). I dont know a lot about the oasys but I know roughly what its capable of. sorry if some of them sound a bit novice.

1. Can you plug an external monitor into the oasys so you can do editing/recording on the sequencer on a bigger screen?

2. can I midi up a another couple of rack synths to the oasys (like a v synth xt and kurzweil), and then record them into the oasys sequencer?

3. does a fully expanded oasys cover everything you need with enough variety? (including piano/orchestral/wavestation/karma/VA/mellotron)

4. is the polphony good enough to use several different types of synthesis on it, and record different combi's/programs from the different expansions/synthesis types in the same song without problems or running out of polyphony? (is this easy to do or is it fiddly). and on top of that the midi's up additional rack synths?

5. can you use external VST's on it like komplete elements , alchemy player and any other korg plug ins?. If so would this eat up the harddrive space quite quickly.

6. is it easy to record audio like acoustic and electric guitar? how many tracks of audio can it manage? (and with midi on top of that?)

7.is it easy to use generally as compared to say a tex?
the sequencer in particular as say compared to cubase?

8. is the harddrive on it big enough?

9. does it have good mastering and effects capabilities? can you burn to CD-R and export/import wav/mp3's?

10.are they reliable?

thanks

[MarPabl]

1. Can you plug an external monitor into the oasys so you can do editing/recording on the sequencer on a bigger screen?

No AFAIK =(

2. can I midi up a another couple of rack synths to the oasys (like a v synth xt and kurzweil), and then record them into the oasys sequencer?

Of course you can do it on COMBI or SEQ modes.

3. does a fully expanded oasys cover everything you need with enough variety? (including piano/orchestral/wavestation/karma/VA/mellotron)

Yes you have 7 synth engines to get any kind of sound you would like.

4. is the polphony good enough to use several different types of synthesis on it, and record different combi's/programs from the different expansions/synthesis types in the same song without problems or running out of polyphony? (is this easy to do or is it fiddly). and on top of that the midi's up additional rack synths?

The majority of the synth engines have pretty high poliphony and also you have a Performance Meter where you can actually see (and detect) when you're getting stealed voices. Also, you can configure timbre priority to get a better control of the method for voice stealing.

5. can you use external VST's on it like komplete elements , alchemy player and any other korg plug ins?. If so would this eat up the harddrive space quite quickly.

Are you planning to integrate the Oasys on a DAW (maybe better) or to sample those VST and create them on Oasys as a new HD-1 Program?

6. is it easy to record audio like acoustic and electric guitar? how many tracks of audio can it manage? (and with midi on top of that?)

AFAIK you can have up to 16 audio tracks and Oasys has many inputs for doing this.

7.is it easy to use generally as compared to say a tex?
the sequencer in particular as say compared to cubase?

The sequencer on Oasys is not particularly great... you may be better using an external DAW.

8. is the harddrive on it big enough?

I think so... Great for saving multisamples, configurations, recordings, etc. however the issue is that the samples you load must fit on the RAM (up to 4 GB AFAIK) to be actually used.

9. does it have good mastering and effects capabilities? can you burn to CD-R and export/import wav/mp3's?

Yes, there are some great effects there and you can generally have 12 IFX (insert effects), 2 MFX (master effects), 2 TFX (total effects) and a EQ. Also, there are some synth engines which have additional internal effects.

10.are they reliable?

Pretty reliable... some guys even think this is more reliable than the new Korg Kronos.

[cello]

Added to post below

[cello]

1. Can you plug an external monitor into the oasys so you can do editing/recording on the sequencer on a bigger screen?

No AFAIK =(

Correct - not possible

2. can I midi up a another couple of rack synths to the oasys (like a v synth xt and kurzweil), and then record them into the oasys sequencer?

Of course you can do it on COMBI or SEQ modes.(

Yes

3. does a fully expanded oasys cover everything you need with enough variety? (including piano/orchestral/wavestation/karma/VA/mellotron)

Yes you have 7 synth engines to get any kind of sound you would like.

The OASYS is HUGE

4. is the polphony good enough to use several different types of synthesis on it, and record different combi's/programs from the different expansions/synthesis types in the same song without problems or running out of polyphony? (is this easy to do or is it fiddly). and on top of that the midi's up additional rack synths?

The majority of the synth engines have pretty high poliphony and also you have a Performance Meter where you can actually see (and detect) when you're getting stealed voices. Also, you can configure timbre priority to get a better control of the method for voice stealing.

Have never run out of polyphony ever.

5. can you use external VST's on it like komplete elements , alchemy player and any other korg plug ins?. If so would this eat up the harddrive space quite quickly.

Are you planning to integrate the Oasys on a DAW (maybe better) or to sample those VST and create them on Oasys as a new HD-1 Program?

No experience of this so can't comment!

6. is it easy to record audio like acoustic and electric guitar? how many tracks of audio can it manage? (and with midi on top of that?)

AFAIK you can have up to 16 audio tracks and Oasys has many inputs for doing this.

16 audio and 16 midi tracks are available at all times.

7.is it easy to use generally as compared to say a tex?

the sequencer in particular as say compared to cubase?
The sequencer on Oasys is not particularly great... you may be better using an external DAW.

Agreed.

8. is the harddrive on it big enough?

I think so... Great for saving multisamples, configurations, recordings, etc. however the issue is that the samples you load must fit on the RAM (up to 4 GB AFAIK) to be actually used.

2Gb is max on OASYS - yes, takes careful planning but works for me with no issues with organisation.

9. does it have good mastering and effects capabilities? can you burn to CD-R and export/import wav/mp3's?

Yes, there are some great effects there and you can generally have 12 IFX (insert effects), 2 MFX (master effects), 2 TFX (total effects) and a EQ. Also, there are some synth engines which have additional internal effects.

Astounding effects available.

10.are they reliable?

Pretty reliable... some guys even think this is more reliable than the new Korg Kronos.

I think this is fairly easy to prove. Look in the OASYS section here about how many complaints there are about failing to boot up ('disconnect USB devices'), noisy fan, faulty keybed, knobs falling off, small screen/fonts...

You'll see there are none.

Then search again in the Kronos section.

There in a nutshell, is the answer.

The ONLY weakness in the OASYS build is that the push buttons/switches do fail. So when buying an OASYS, click every button to make sure all is well - except the Function button of course - (seriously) it doesn't do anything!

There's a reason why the Kronos is half the price of an OASYS - part of it is the spreading of the development costs of the OASYS through the Kronos. The rest of the production cost reduction is because the Kronos is simply not built to the same high standards.

[SCHWEATS]

Monitor … Yes, an additional monitor can be connected , HOWEVER, the added monitor will NOT have any touch screen capability. You must also be sure an wire the added monitor correctly. I've seen it done many a time at the NAMM show by KORG

Reliability … Yes & No . I personally have hardly taken my machine out of the house , yet a number of switches when pressed have long since stopped working. I have experienced a weirdness while starting the machine manifested by icons on the touch screen indicating the touch screen has been disconnected from the CPU resulting in multiple power on/offs until the machine finally starts. My machine is now 6 going on 7 years old.

Ultimately, the machine simply sounds so damn good !!
Other users' experiences may vary
HTH - Schweats

[korglifeguy]

korglifeguy wrote:
5. can you use external VST's on it like komplete elements , alchemy player and any other korg plug ins?. If so would this eat up the harddrive space quite quickly.

Are you planning to integrate the Oasys on a DAW (maybe better) or to sample those VST and create them on Oasys as a new HD-1 Program?


I meant can you use external VST's install them for use actually onto the oasys and then record them into the oasys sequencer?

[korglifeguy]

Monitor … Yes, an additional monitor can be connected , HOWEVER, the added monitor will NOT have any touch screen capability. You must also be sure an wire the added monitor correctly. I've seen it done many a time at the NAMM show by KORG

Reliability … Yes & No . I personally have hardly taken my machine out of the house , yet a number of switches when pressed have long since stopped working. I have experienced a weirdness while starting the machine manifested by icons on the touch screen indicating the touch screen has been disconnected from the CPU resulting in multiple power on/offs until the machine finally starts. My machine is now 6 going on 7 years old.

Ultimately, the machine simply sounds so damn good !!
Other users' experiences may vary
HTH - Schweats

Can you then plug in a mouse and control the sequencer with that on the external monitor?
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Do Oasys users find the LCD screen big enough and do any of you only record everything using just the oasys sequencer and not an external DAW?
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thanks for all your answers!! havent decided about this for sure yet but used oasys are coming down in price all the time and it might be a better deal than the kronos by the sounds of it as all in one recording unit.

[SCHWEATS]

Can you then plug in a mouse and control the sequencer with that on the external monitor?

NO… the usb ports on the Oasys are only for storage access.
That functionality was not built into the Oasys OS
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Do Oasys users find the LCD screen big enough…
It is for what I need it to do

Do any of you only record everything using just the oasys sequencer and not an external DAW?
From what I've read , some ONLY use the on board sequencer from start to finish. I , personally, only use the onboard sequencer for quick ideas, otherwise I use a computer based DAW… Digital Performer and have for 23 years.
HTH - Schweats