New M3 owner with a few questions...

[2diamond]

Hello all, I’m a proud new M3-88 owner as of last week for home playing and studio use. I’ve been obsessively reading this forum to learn about the M3 and understand what additional expansion hardware I should be considering. Since the M3 is probably on the backside of its technology lifecycle, I’ve decided that I ought to pick up what I can relatively soon. I just wanted to confirm these thoughts with the collective wisdom of this group and ask a couple of related questions:

1. I'd like to get the M3 memory expansion. This seems like the most important item to pick up. It sounds like the best place to get it is directly from korg.com.

2. I'd like to get the EXB-Radias expansion. I’ve spent a ton of time reading the many comparisons between getting this and the Radias-R. While I would really enjoy the physical knob twisting fun of the Radias-R, it does appear that the best first purchase for the M3 would be the EXB version due to its integration into the M3 architecture. The recent big price drop on the Radias-R was teasing me a lot, but even with that price drop, I’m thinking that the EXB is the way to go for now. I was hoping that the M3 editor for the EXB would make it look like the Radias-R on the PC to at least seem a bit more “knob intensive” but from what I can tell, it doesn’t do that.

3. I think I'll hold off on the EXB-FW. I’m running it with a Windows box and USB 2.0, so I’m not sure what more I get with the firewire expansion. It sounds like I would be able to drive M3 audio over firewire back into a DAW, but I’m not sure I need that. From what I’ve read, there isn’t a huge latency difference between USB 2.0 and firewire, but I would be curious to hear if anyone has experience on this—I haven’t read a lot about that yet.

4. I’m also on the hunt for a simple USB interface. I know that this could drive a huge discussion on its own, but right now I’m thinking about just a Tascam US-144mkII. Any experience with this one?

Thanks in advance for your insight and for all of the other information that I’ve read here. I'm pretty pumped to start exploring all of the sonic possibilities of the M3!

JP

[jeffrey]

Congrats on the new board. It truly is awesome! The only question I can answer for you is the first one since I've only had mine a couple of weeks too.

I just popped my memory expansion module in the other day and I have to agree with some other people on here: get the Radias first. The only thing the memory does is allow you to load all the updated sounds in at the same time. You already have about 5 billion sounds to play with now and being able to load another hundred or so doesn't really make a difference because you can always go into the menu and unload one to load the other. I certainly don't regret the purchase, but it's not giving you any 'new' sounds, just allowing you to have them all loaded when you turn the unit on.

And yes, I ordered mine directly through Korg's website and it only took about 3 days to arrive!

I will probably be ordering the Radias soon, but don't have a use for the firewire option now since I'm not connecting to a computer at this time.

Good luck and enjoy!

[Rob Sherratt]

HI JP

Congrats on your new M3 purchase.

From what I’ve read, there isn’t a huge latency difference between USB 2.0 and firewire, but I would be curious to hear if anyone has experience on this—I haven’t read a lot about that yet.

Digital Audio - comments from Rob

On the M3 you cannot send audio via USB2 so latency comparisons with Firewire audio are not possible.

My own set up is with both a Korg Pa2x and a Korg M3 plugged via analog audio cables to a Yamaha N8 digital mixer deck which is also a Firewire audio interface to my laptop computer. The latency is 3ms. The N8 and N12 are highly recommended by all owners including me.

I used to have a Korg Firewire card inside my M3 but the minimum latency I could achieve (on the same laptop computer) exceeded 60 ms and it was not acceptable. Hence I invested in the N8 solution for digital audio recording, and it's been perfect.

MIDI Interface - comments from Rob

For external sequencing of MIDI (note information etc) and for use with Korg M3 Editor and Karma PC Editor, then the Korg MIDI over USB interface is the way to go. The Korg Firewire card can carry MIDI but it is wayyyy slooow, jno faster than the conventional MIDI DIN cables. The MIDI over USB link is at least 10x faster (ie 10% of the latency of the other "solutions").

Regards,
Rob

[2diamond]

Jeffrey and Rob, thanks for the responses. Rob, very interesting stuff on the FW interface. At this point, I am focusing on just the MIDI latency, so it is encouraging to hear that USB 2.0 will do the trick for me.

I still need to pick up some type of interface over time so I can get my signal routing managed better, but I'm content for the short term with USB to my PC and audio out to an amp (eventually some monitors...).

Thanks again for the advice.

JP

[snowbrow]

I used to have a Korg Firewire card inside my M3 but the minimum latency I could achieve (on the same laptop computer) exceeded 60 ms and it was not acceptable.

Funny that. Korg really seems to have fluffed this Firewire option, I've always been slightly bemused at that... they missed a golden opportunity for what could have been a big selling point there, and instead the bad vibe about it out there among its first purchasers probably scared a lot of people off buying the M3 at all. Wonder what was happening at Korg R&D that day.

[cminor]

Funny that. Korg really seems to have fluffed this Firewire option, I've always been slightly bemused at that... they missed a golden opportunity for what could have been a big selling point there, and instead the bad vibe about it out there among its first purchasers probably scared a lot of people off buying the M3 at all. Wonder what was happening at Korg R&D that day.

This is when you try to make something cheap and sell it expensive.
The firewire option doesn't have the minimul of a profesional audio card:
ASIO.