Flagship upgrades

[ITguy54]

The sound engines of both boards respond to poly aftertouch, via MIDI In, even though their keybeds don't generate poly aftertouch data.

When you say "both boards," do you mean the Nautilus and Nautilus AT, or the Nautilus and Kronos?

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The Nautilus AT and the Kronos.

[HardSync]

The Kronos MIDI Implementation is [...] Essential bedtime reading, methinks ;-) Only joking about the bedtime reading.

Sure you're joking. ;) No need to be embarrassed. LOL.

I have read many a synth or workstation guide at bedtime, but never the full MIDI implementation specs -- that would be crazy hardcore since I don't write software or apps for synths. I have also taken synth user guides, paper and PDF, to work to read at breaks and lunch I have probably spent more time in the Kronos guides than I'd like to admit, usually to help answer people's questions, and I don't even own a Kronos. That's crazy, I know. I'm sure Dan at Korg will be delighted that someone is actually reading the guides he's had a hand in. But to be fair, if I'm thinking about buying a new synth, I will almost always track down the online guide and read much of it before making a decision. That saves a lot of heartache later finding out that something doesn't do what I would like it to do.

As for the Nautilus, if I had to replace my M3-88 tomorrow, I'd probably choose a Nautilus because I'm very familiar with how it works already and because it's considerably less expensive than Roland's or Yamaha's flagships, and I'm not sure I'd want to deal with a second hand Kronos unless it was absolutely mint, barely touched, and came in at some ridiculously low price. On the other hand, I just know that if I did buy a Nautilus, Korg would release the next greatest workstation within a few months of my purchase, just like they did when I bought my M3. Literally had my M3 for four months when Korg announced the Kronos.

[voip]

The sound engines of both boards respond to poly aftertouch, via MIDI In, even though their keybeds don't generate poly aftertouch data.

When you say "both boards," do you mean the Nautilus and Nautilus AT, or the Nautilus and Kronos?

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The Nautilus AT and the Kronos.

The Nautilus, Nautilus AT, and Kronos will all respond to poly aftertouch.
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[Mike Conway]

Yeah, they all can receive poly-aftertouch. I have the regular Nautilus.




Kronos and aftertouch:

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[ChrisDuncan]

That's cool, thanks Mike.

I haven't really taken advantage of channel aftertouch yet, probably because I spend so much time playing piano.

When I think about poly aftertouch, my fingers just glare at me like I'm not giving them enough to think about as it is.

[fomalhaut]

As we're speculating and having a little bit of fun, let's all imagine a new Korg workstation that runs on a Raspberry Pi instead of an Intel chipset and custom boards, etc. How much can Korg R&D squeeze out of a $40 Raspberry Pi? There's even a 7" Raspberry Pi color touchscreen.

I don't think the idea is that crazy. Obviously Korg hasn't released anything substantially new because they felt it was not necessary! The old OASYS platform still holds itself against the Montages and Fantoms.

Probably the Nautilius is still selling well (after all is a fantastic instrument and the price point is right) but this situation will not hold forever: Yamaha and Roland are somewhat redefining what a workstation is (Yamaha has this amazing editor as a VST, Roland is pushing the cloud with Zen expansions) iand sooner or later Korg has to make a move and sell a new flagship.

That move has already been made with the OpSix, ModWave, WaveState, and the future is Raspberry Pi based: I don't know what will be the next flagship, but it will not extend the OASYS legacy. And of course that takes time and a lot of budget on R&D. I would expect a new flagship in two years at the very minimum.

[ChrisDuncan]

That move has already been made with the OpSix, ModWave, WaveState, and the future is Raspberry Pi based: I don't know what will be the next flagship, but it will not extend the OASYS legacy. And of course that takes time and a lot of budget on R&D. I would expect a new flagship in two years at the very minimum.

I don't know anything about the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi. Is it equal to or better performance than an Intel Atom?

I know they're using it for their smaller synths. What I don't know is if it would gracefully bear the load of a flagship like the Kronos.

If they changed the CPU / hardware architecture they would at minimum have to rewrite the Linux kernal, but if they go this route lets hope they rewrite the UI as well. Changing the background color from grey to blue on the Nautilus is not a significant UI enhancement.

[ITguy54]

When you say "both boards," do you mean the Nautilus and Nautilus AT, or the Nautilus and Kronos?

.

The Nautilus AT and the Kronos.

The Nautilus, Nautilus AT, and Kronos will all respond to poly aftertouch.
.

I am talking about the capabilities of the physical keyboards with the Kronos and Nautilus AT, NOT the ability of the sound engines to recognize Poly-AT. Both keyboards generate channel aftertouch REGARDLESS of what the internals can respond to.

[ITguy54]

As we're speculating and having a little bit of fun, let's all imagine a new Korg workstation that runs on a Raspberry Pi instead of an Intel chipset and custom boards, etc. How much can Korg R&D squeeze out of a $40 Raspberry Pi? There's even a 7" Raspberry Pi color touchscreen.

Probably the Nautilius is still selling well (after all is a fantastic instrument and the price point is right) but this situation will not hold forever: Yamaha and Roland are somewhat redefining what a workstation is (Yamaha has this amazing editor as a VST, Roland is pushing the cloud with Zen expansions) iand sooner or later Korg has to make a move and sell a new flagship.

That move has already been made with the OpSix, ModWave, WaveState, and the future is Raspberry Pi based: I don't know what will be the next flagship, but it will not extend the OASYS legacy. And of course that takes time and a lot of budget on R&D. I would expect a new flagship in two years at the very minimum.

I don’t expect a new flagship from Korg ever, in any part of any multiverse. They are quite happy making musical toys using the Raspberry Pi. For anyone to produce a powerful workstation now, it will take the kind of processors Dexibell uses, or a powerful FPGA.

[HardSync]

I don’t expect a new flagship from Korg ever, in any part of any multiverse. They are quite happy making musical toys using the Raspberry Pi. For anyone to produce a powerful workstation now, it will take the kind of processors Dexibell uses, or a powerful FPGA.

"Musical toys" seems a bit harsh and unfair to describe those synths, even when conceding that keybeds on the 37-note versions aren't so great. It is fair to gripe about some things you don't like about them. I have a few myself. I could be wrong about all of that, but I haven't yet seen Wavestates, Opsixes and Modwaves stuffed inside preschooler toyboxes among the cheap wooden xylophones and plastic kazoos in any alternate universe. (Cue expertly done photoshop edits of this scene.) Personally, I'm well impressed with Korg R&D US for what they are able to do with a commercial industry Rasp Pi.

All of that said, no one should have taken my Raspberry Pi comment seriously, But it's the internet... in this universe.

[fomalhaut]

I don't know anything about the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi. Is it equal to or better performance than an Intel Atom? I know they're using it for their smaller synths. What I don't know is if it would gracefully bear the load of a flagship like the Kronos.

The original Kronos runs on a Dual Core Atom @ 1.66MHz.
The Raspberry Pi Module runs on a quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz.

Everything else being the same (which I don't think because we are talking almost about two decades in CPU tech), with these specs I'd say the current Raspberry Pi Module can run the workload of what we currently know as the Korg Kronos (with even 8GB RAM!) at a fraction of the price of the original Atom platform. So this begs an interesting question: what if Korg added not one, but several Raspberry Pi Modules in their flagship? For example, running different sound engines on different hardware comes to mind... not easy from an engineering perspective, though, and a full OS rewrite would be necessary.

[ChrisDuncan]

not easy from an engineering perspective, though, and a full OS rewrite would be necessary.

Well, if they change the CPU they'd at least have to rewrite the hardware layer of the OS. And if they were going to create a new flagship that, hopefully, would be a departure from Oasys in order to do something new, that would be a complete OS rewrite anyway.

I'm not disrespecting the Oasys platform. I love my Kronos, so I love its DNA. That said, I don't really see the point of Korg releasing another incremental upgrade of Oasys. If they come out with a new flagship line, maybe it's time to reevaluate the hardware and software options available with contemporary technology and come up with something new. Should that be the case, then the Atom processor might be a good option, along with your idea of multiple processors, etc. (because we all love debugging race conditions).

Pure speculation for the fun of it, of course.

I'm currently enjoying the Montage M8x I recently purchased very much. Cooler hardware (because who doesn't love shiny objects?), a fabulous keybed and great sounds. The UI, even though it's just an incremental update to Montage OS, is more modern than Kronos and nicely done. The Fantom is also more modern in both hardware and OS, and has many sounds I enjoy. And yet, I often still reach for the Kronos. Sure, the UI looks like Windows 3.1 and it doesn't have fancy lights, but after fooling with the UI to get where I want to go it's all about playing the instrument anyway.

Still, it's interesting to think of what Korg might come up with if they decide to do something new. The Kronos is a beast, but it looks long in the tooth compared its siblings.

[ITguy54]

I don't know anything about the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi. Is it equal to or better performance than an Intel Atom? I know they're using it for their smaller synths. What I don't know is if it would gracefully bear the load of a flagship like the Kronos.

The original Kronos runs on a Dual Core Atom @ 1.66MHz.
The Raspberry Pi Module runs on a quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz.

Everything else being the same (which I don't think because we are talking almost about two decades in CPU tech), with these specs I'd say the current Raspberry Pi Module can run the workload of what we currently know as the Korg Kronos (with even 8GB RAM!) at a fraction of the price of the original Atom platform. So this begs an interesting question: what if Korg added not one, but several Raspberry Pi Modules in their flagship? For example, running different sound engines on different hardware comes to mind... not easy from an engineering perspective, though, and a full OS rewrite would be necessary.

I think a well designed FPGA might have the power to be the basis for a significantly better workstation.

[Derek Cook]

It was interesting that in the Korg Collection 5, EP-1 has made an appearance, which is now 3 of the nine engines in plugin form. Hopefully they will release the other ones as time goes on.

[ChrisDuncan]

My primary excitement about the Kronos engines is that they're in hardware form. I chose Kronos over the original Montage because it seemed like the K had more horsepower in this regard with nine engines.

Once you get into plugins, however, you're competing with a huge array of offerings, from big companies like Native Instruments down to a gazillion boutique developers, all of whom specialize in this area.

Comparing the Kronos hardware to the Montage or Fantom is reasonably straightforward. Comparing a Korg plugin collection for EPs, pianos or anything else would require a lot more research, and it may not compete as favorably in that category.