Kronos feedback.

[vEddY]

PC3K8 is one immensly powerful synthesizer. I know it, I have one, too!
Kronos 61 will be a nice company to it... one day.

BTW, compatriot, little Tweety bird told me that in a couple of weeks there will be a PC3K8 OS update Still didn't manage to find out what's inside in particular, but I'm trying

[Sharp]

Sharp,

I was somewhat surprised at your statement which I paraphrase as " take the Kronus for the value it is now and don't worry about tomorrow as we don't know what that may be". I am a proud Oasys owner and am also and electrical engineer in the network field. I can sort of understand the "marketing slant" to the idea of not even mentioning the Oasys as the precursor to the fabulous technology contained in the Kronus. The problem though that I see and that I feel the Korg marketing folks have really miscalculated by ignoring the Oasys. Basically it is said that you really cannot look forward if you don't acknowledge the past. The market is different now in all fields. People today want long lasting value because people don't want to throw money around as before. People "expect" upgradeability and long term product commitment from vendors. It applies everywhere these days and before we commit to vendors and products for as good as they are. Synthesizers evolved from a modular origin meaning it's the design intention was about an upgradeable system. In today's market ignoring your previous successes or failures to your customer base will not sustain you as a company and your competitors will notice. The Oasys was an excellent creation born of pure imagination and hardwork so as to bring this to fruition, the Kronus is not pure imagination as it is evidently a variation on a theme called Oasys. I think the Kronus is an marvelous machine and I would be inclined to purchase one but for as good as it is there is no reason for me to have faith that Korg would support the growth of this instrument when they did not do it with the flagship of the company's arsenal. I can't commit my resources and hard earned money if the instruments' future growth is also not committed to in the future. The market has changed and investment in it's customer base for the long term is the new currency. Thanks

It's best to stick to exactly what I've say and don't try “Paraphrasing”. I always pick my words very carefully and I have very specific reasons for saying things the way I do.

You and others are somehow after coming up with the idea that KORG is trying to forget the past, when if you read my posts in this thread you will see I explain why the demonstrations took the direction they did, and how OASYS was spoken about freely when it was the right time and with the right people who would understand.

I even have the official Boucher on the Kronos here in front of me and it mentions the OASYS.

So you see, nobody is trying to forget the past. The OASYS is and will always be a deep part of KORG's history, and a history everyone who worked on the project are extremely proud of.

Kind Regards
Sharp.

[billysynth1]

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Hi Sharp,

You have the Kronos Brochure?
Is it possible for us to see it plz?

Billy

[Reggmail]

Sharp first of all Thanks for answering the questions and concerns about Korgs new Workstation.

Please don't take this as a personal attack, my intent is to see of Korg plan to support Kronos better than they have been on other pass Korg products.
I must admit I am impressed with Korg Kronos, but I am turned off, like many people are when it comes to Korg loyalty and support on their products.

For example, Korg came out with a inavative Midi DJ mixer a few yeas ago called the Zero 4 and the Zero 8, I purchased the Korg Zero 8 Mixer.
The whole time Korg may have came out with two updates and never really officially updated the OS and 64bit, thank to Windows 7 64 bit, most of it started working again.
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=48122 I personally boycotted any other product that Korg introduced since then.
The new saying from company's like Korg is that ( It Does What We Say It Do NOW ).
What about the future, people who spend lots of money on the Korg OASYS is saying the same thing, they feel like Korg take your money and leave you hanging dry with no long term future updates or support for their products.

Although I am disappointed with Yamaha XF for not using some of the new innovations like Korg used, at leas Yamaha support future upgrades for some time for their products (I give credit where credit is due)
Base on Korg's track record for lack of support on their passed products.

My question will be, can or will Korg get off the fence and commit to future support (upgrades, Updates, expandability maybe even 3rd party support ) for the Korg Kronos? If not, I think that I will be slow walking (Kronos) this one.

(PS, if this question is not being directed to the right person then who should give us this information?)
Peace & blessings.

[billysynth1]

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I think the question is insignificant in relation to the Kronos.
There is no make mention of updates for this instrument.
From what i can gather, you buy it complete, you get your warranty, you get your nine instruments and thats it. Who said anything about updates? Where?


With Oasys it was different, you bought it, got your warranty, and
you were told there will be updates. The updates stopped prematurely
and Oasys owners got...a little angry.

Billy

[Reggmail]

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I think the question is insignificant in relation to the Kronos.
There is no make mention of updates for this instrument.
From what i can gather, you buy it complete, you get your warranty, you get your nine instruments and thats it. Who said anything about updates? Where?
With Oasys it was different, you bought it, got your warranty, and
you were told there will be updates. The updates stopped prematurely
and Oasys owners got...a little angry.
Billy

I can see your point but that doesn't make it official.

That's why most of the people who supported Korg in the pass, as you said when the support stopped in a short time, they got mad, and rightfully so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the support should be forever, but after spending good money for any product you want the security to know that the company won't abandon their consumers and the product when it comes to upgrades, updates, and so on.

Heck, even my new Sony, Samsung LED's, DVD's and so forth updates and upgrade with features when they becomes available.

Trust me, Although the Kronos look good to me, I will demo it when it get's in stores, I think that the Kronos will complement my Yamaha XS, MPC and other moduals and software VST's.

However for me, this information could be a deal maker or breaker, I took that ride with Korg before as well as many others users did, and I will by no means DEFINITELY not take that ride ever again.

So the questions still stands to any Korg official that can answer them.

( My question will be, can or will Korg get off the fence and commit to future support (upgrades, Updates, expandability maybe even 3rd party support ) for the Korg Kronos? If not, I think that I will be slow walking (Kronos) this one. )

billysynth1 thank you for your opinion.

This is just my concern.
Peace & blessings.

[Hedegaard]

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Hi Sharp,

You have the Kronos Brochure?
Is it possible for us to see it plz?

Billy

Yeah, me too! I also want to see this elusive brochure.
Maybe you can do a hi-res. scan?

[EXer]

is the fact that the screen is smaller & non-tilting an annoyance, or do you think you'd get used to that very quickly?

A tilting display would be nice, but it is still the best quality screen KORG have put in a workstation yet. I could live with it very easily.

Regards
Sharp.

From the pics and the vids I have seen I guess the screen lies flat on the panel. Therefore I wonder whether reading it on stage when the instrument is lying in the lower tier of a keyboard stand could be an issue? Shouldn't Korg have angled the display like that of a Trinity?

[MartinHines]

at least Yamaha support future upgrades for some time for their products (I give credit where credit is due)

I disagree. I don't see Yamaha releasing any more functionality updates with their products than Korg does. The Motif, Motif ES, and Motif XS all had a few updates. The big accomplishment of Yamaha is their 3rd party support for new sounds. People always want new sounds.

My question will be, can or will Korg get off the fence and commit to future support (upgrades, Updates, expandability maybe even 3rd party support ) for the Korg Kronos? If not, I think that I will be slow walking (Kronos) this one.

Historically Korg has always provided a few updates for every workstation, which is very similar to Yamaha and Roland.

Also, traditionally Korg has not invested that much effort in lining up 3rd pary sound support, so I would not expect that to change.

As Sharp suggested, you should only buy the Kronos (or really any product) for what it does today. If not, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

[McHale]

Therefore I wonder whether reading it on stage when the instrument is lying in the lower tier of a keyboard stand could be an issue? Shouldn't Korg have angled the display like that of a Trinity?

I'm more concerned about the display when playing outdoors in the sun. I hate having to tape cardboard around the display so I can read it. The M50 was tilted enough it wasn't an issue. This is tilted like my Triton (which was HORRIBLE in the sun).

[JimH]

Although I am disappointed with Yamaha XF for not using some of the new innovations like Korg used, at leas Yamaha support future upgrades for some time for their products (I give credit where credit is due)
Base on Korg's track record for lack of support on their passed products.

I'm not sure we can get any company to keep improving a product for very long for free. My old Korg DSS-1 and EX-8000 still work just fine. But my newer Yamaha i88x and mLAN16E hardware are soon to be totally unusable as soon as I update to Windows 7 because Yamaha chooses not to update the driver. This seems to have more to do with how much devices these days interface with computers, and computers continuously change. So maybe the best we can do is be smarter buyers and watch out for that. I would never buy a Yamaha S90XS because I've heard that the only way to edit some of the deeper parameters is by using editor software on a computer. I know now that someday that editing functionality will not work (short of keeping an old computer and O/S around).

As Sharp suggested, you should only buy the Kronos (or really any product) for what it does today. If not, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

Someday it may do less than it does today because whatever software that allows the USB connectivity may no longer run on the current O/S of the day (like Windows 9 maybe?). Maybe all we can do is know that the USB connection may someday be useless and accept that. As long as there is still MIDI and 1/4” audio connections, the Kronos will still work. I would like to get a commitment from a company that they would update software to keep compatibility with computers for X number of years. But I just don't think you can really believe it. Company policies and employees can change. At the risk of sliding into a political rant, at the real root of it is probably just capitalism. Companies answer to shareholders and thus do what is most profitable, and capitalism says that is what's right. The only thing I know to do is to be smart and not forget a company's past behavior and then vote with your dollar. (I swore off Alesis a long time ago after I was the unhappy owner of a 1622 mixer, though I realize they neither know nor care.) But if all companies do it, I suppose we've got a problem.

[GiantSonicRobot]

I'm not sure we can get any company to keep improving a product for very long for free.

The brightest example in this respect certainly is how Access are supporting their VirusTI synths. When I bought mine, it was a pretty decent VA and wavetable synth. But since then, it evolved into a completely different beast — all due to the free updates they have released. Among the new functions which have been added are: new oscillator types (hyper-saw and graintable oscillators), a realtime beat slicing function, comb filter and vowel filter, several new overdrive effects, the possibility to route the arpeggiator to the mod-matrix ... and those are just the big ones I remember off the top of my head.
Why couldn't other companies have a similar policy? It surely creates a lot of loyalty among the customers.

[JimH]

I wasn't aware that Access was doing that, thanks. Yes maybe people will be more loyal. Has Access updated Virus models that are no longer being sold? One difference that comes to mind, is that when Access updates the Virus, they're not only helping out existing owners but they're also making their product more attractive to prospective customers. Whereas Yamaha is not selling the old mLAN anymore, and Korg is perhaps thinking they won't sell many more OASYSs. So diverting development resources to those would be only a cost.

Loyalty is a harder thing to measure than dollars. So if you're an employee inside a company, it becomes a harder thing to argue for. Sometimes there may be a relatively high-ranking person who champions a cause and has enough power to make it happen without needing a tangible argument. I suppose loyalty does translate into dollars in the end, but it's probably tough to identify which of the total dollars are loyalty dollars.

Then there's always the option for companies to sell the updates for enough money to make a profit. For example, mLAN users could agree to pay Yamaha X dollars to update the driver for Windows 7 64-bit. But that usually doesn't work because companies don't want to divert development resources to old technology, even if it makes some money. (And personally, as a software developer, I really don't even want to work on something I know is on the way out.)

[jimknopf]

What Access is doing, simply is a model case, how you get extremely satisfied customers, with a strong bond to a company with good service. And yes, they even updated older synths, though not to the same degree.


In general I as cusomer challenge and contradict the whole "you buy a device as is" attitude.

Frankly spoken, for modern, highly software based devices, that's plain nonsense from my view, though of course no customer can expect as fundamental updating, as Access has performed it over the years, from any other company. So far I agree not to raise unreal expectations.

BUT:

1. complex modern workstation devices and synths often have bugs when released. It is absolutely clear and not even debatable that companies have the duty (!), not option, to fix these bugs, and to do so not only after many months or years.
In case of the Kronos, bug level will probably be low, because this is an OS which matured on th Oasys.

2. same counts for some kinds of issues, of which some often go unnoticed, even when you test a new device for several days. If it is something of general importance with a smart alternative not requiring too much programming to fix, and causing constant trouble in everyday musical life, it's exactly the advantage of a modern, software-OS based system to fix it, and I would have no understanding as customer for a company which does nothing about it and refutes any customer dialog about such issues.

3. Besides bugs and issues, it is well possible to use the headroom of this kind of device (and every one of this kind has some) for future enhancements. These are no duty from my view (e.g. I buy a Kronos with 2Gb RAM and can't demand to make 4Gb accessible by OS update). I still expect SOME form of flexibility and creative willingness from each modern synth/workstation company. But in this case I have to leave the choice of what that could be completely to the company.


What I want to say is, I regard it as impossible for companies today, for the kind of device we talk about, to ignore user expectations 1-3 altogether. If a company exludes all of this kind of responsibility principally, it has not not understood the conditions of the present worldwide market for highly software-based hardware products. And each company ignoring that completely, will pay a high pirce for ignoring those conditions in the long run.

The "buy a thing as it is and shut up" perspective can no longer count on being accepted, and it can't for very good and solid reasons which have nothing to do with unreal expectations or company bashing.
It's a partnership issue, and good customers will award good partnership with money. I certainly do and am VERY aware how companies behave concerning this.

[apex]

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I think the question is insignificant in relation to the Kronos.
There is no make mention of updates for this instrument.
From what i can gather, you buy it complete, you get your warranty, you get your nine instruments and thats it. Who said anything about updates? Where?


With Oasys it was different, you bought it, got your warranty, and
you were told there will be updates. The updates stopped prematurely
and Oasys owners got...a little angry.

Billy

who is to say what was "prematurely".... that sounds like your word against theirs if you ask me....