Andi wrote:
The user unfriendly data driven OS from 1995 makes the machine look more deep than it is. The sequencer is still just a tape for midi events and worse than the M3's. No wonder people have problems using it. I hope at least the RH3 keybed is now working properly.
I still use my Fantom G. The technology is old, but the UI is still much better.
Making a multilayered multisample is soooooo much easier on the FG. Kronos OS is a unwieldy mess. The filepath length is still 76 characters. Am I right?
Thanks for the GearSlutz slag on the Kronos UI. I've noticed it's ALWAYS 1995. No, the engines are in fact deep and not a simple sample-playback system based on technology from the early 1980s.
The sequencer supports 16 tracks MIDI and 16 tracks audio, so no it's more than a tape for MIDI events.
The RH3 issues are ancient history. At least Korg acknowledged the issue and provided free repair. Unlike so many other manufacturers who NEVER acknowledge issues and only offer the most basic bug fix updates for a short time after release and then seem to forget the product even exists.
I believe the Fantom G maxes at four-velocity layers per program. In comparison, the Kronos allows up to 16 velocity layers, full stereo. I had the Fantom X back in the day and the load time for a few hundred MBs of samples was horrible. Regarding the complexity of creating multi-samples, the other day I used SampleRobot Pro 6.5 to sample some of my VSTi pianos. After setting up some basic parameters in SampleRobot, I let it sample in the background. As the process is done much faster than realtime, in far less than an hour I had an eight-velocity, every note sampled to full duration version of the VSTi. I then chose to export to the Kronos and a .KSC was created. After bringing the files into the Kronos I loaded them and created a quick program to reference those samples. Simple as can be. Sonically the Kronos versions are very close to the originals. I suppose some people still use the internal sampled editing for the creation of the multi-samples, though with the software utilities that can be used instead, it's rather pointless.
So in my Kronos at the moment I have the three very large SGX-2 pianos (German, Berlin, Japanese) as well as resampled versions of the following VSTi pianos:
Ivory Steinway
Ivory Yamaha C7
TrueKeys American Grand
The Maverick from Native Instruments
HammerSmith
Piano in Blue
Plus several of my libraries, plus the KAPro EXs19 Private Collection, plus of course, all the other sounds that come standard on the Kronos.
AND I still have enough RAM remaining (211 MB) to load, which thanks to disk streaming, the equivalent of many gigabytes of samples, in fact, more than any Roland sampler ever made. Disk streaming is how sampling should be done and it's sad that the likes of Roland, Yamaha and Nord haven't figured this out. BTW there are, by my count, in excess of 275 3rd-party sample and sound libraries available at the Korg Web Store plus others not found in the store.
There was an issue with loading certain files with paths longer than 50 characters, but that was fixed in an update a long time ago. I don't know the upper limits of the Kronos file path, I suspect it's 256. I easily exceed 76 characters on my system.
Having a pretty interface is nice but hardly essential. I doubt most people would choose a vastly inferior product just because they like the UI.
Busch.
Kronos 73, Nautilus 61, Vox Continental 73, Monologue, Yamaha Montage 8, Rhodes Suitcase, Yamaha VL-1, Roland V-Synth, Yamaha AvantGrand, Minimoog Model D, Studio Electronics Omega 8, CSS, Spitfire, VSL, LASS, Sample Modeling, Ivory, Komplete 12, Spectrasonics, Cubase, Pro Tools, etc.
http://www.purgatorycreek.com
