Korg Forums

shap wrote: $4 of marginal build cost would have placed a second DIMM on the board

If you can buy 2GB DDR800 DIMMs for $4 in synth-market quantities, then you should forget about synths for now and concentrate on trading RAM. You'd make a fortune.

Dan, I think that what is more to the point is CAN the extra slot be filled and used, and at what cost?

danatkorg wrote:

shap wrote: $4 of marginal build cost would have placed a second DIMM on the board

If you can buy 2GB DDR800 DIMMs for $4 in synth-market quantities, then you should forget about synths for now and concentrate on trading RAM. You'd make a fortune.

RAM prices are highly volatile, and they've gone up somewhat from when I looked two months ago. Three months ago, over the counter consumer prices for 2G DDR800 DIMMs were running between $12 and $15 for quantity one here in the U.S. In Akihabra they were lower. I know this because I was pricing them for a project we're working on. I don't have today's prices in Akihabra, and I of course don't have a quote on hand for DIMMs at cost in 5,000-10,000 unit quantities, which ought to be where Korg is ordering. That would correspond to about the smallest cost-effective board manufacturing run (5,000 units) for the non-Intel boards within the KRONOS. The 5,000 or 10,000 unit decision on the DRAMS (two per device) would depend on Korg's corporate strategy for arbitraging against RAM price volatility. Things will get better for Korg on this front as more and more of their synths get built on commodity motherboards over time.

At today's list prices in Seattle, that extra DIMM is about $35. Add to that the price of a cable to bring out the ethernet port, but unfortunately it's senseless to examine list prices for cables - they aren't the same cables. Korg's cost on that cable with a suitably robust mounting on the enclosure should be in the range of $1.50.

But I think this discussion has exceeded the point of public utility, and that panrixx's question is the right one to focus on at this point.

shap, you said a lot of fascinating things, but most of them are nice thoughts for the future of electronic music, and have nothing to do with the current state of affairs in regard to hardware synths. Just starting with this assertion:

shap wrote:When synthesis relies on custom hardware, it's impossibly expensive to upgrade or augment a synthesizer in the field (that is: after it ships). If an upgrade involves sending you (the user) a new card, and requiring you (with some % success insured by warranty costs) to install it, it's damned expensive. Conversely, if an upgrade requires a software install, the expense is much lower.

I'll address this again with specifics, because frankly, I'm baffled as to what you consider "impossibly expensive." I bought a number of synths over the years which offered expansion. My first real serious synth was an Ensoniq SD-1 workstation, and when it hit the market, it had the original limitation of the VFX of 21 voices. Shortly after they produced it, they offered an upgrade which increased the horsepower and which gave the unit 32 voices of polyphony and some nice new effects. This did require me to ship the thing off to Ensoniq with a $200-plus check. In fact, a similar upgrade was offered for VFX-SD owners for around $670 which turned it into an SD-1. Let's say mine was $275. Considering that mine increased the synth power of an $1850 workstation by 50% and then some, and essentially gave VFX-SD owners a new instrument, I'm not sure the cost was all that crazy. Inconvenient, yes, but then this was the early 90s.

Roland offered sample library cards for their synths as far back as the D-70. I think they were around $120 each, and had around 256K of new samples. With the advent of the XP-50, they upped the ante to SR-JV 8 megabyte boards that cost about $180. With the Fantom series, it became the SRX board that cost in the vicinity of $200 and could hold 32 megs. All were pretty easy to install.

Yamaha had similar cards for their synths since the SY77 days, I forget the price, but basically had one instrument like sax or drumkits. With the Motif, it became synth boards like the AN-150 which cost around $175 if I recall. The forward thinking EX synths had user installable SCSI and Flash ram expansions, though I forget what they cost, but weren't "impossibly expensive."

OASYS offered software expansion on CDs or DVDs for around $120 per instrument.

My M3 was provided with some 256 megs of orchestral samples and the original 4 meg piano for free, as well as some free vintage keys. The 256 meg memory board is a hassle to install and is a bit pricey at $120, but "impossible?" A good pizza party can cost more than that.

OASYS owners are bumming because they can't upgrade their Os to be a Kronos. Sad but true, computer hardware has increased in power and complexity over the six years since the OASYS was created. The team spend that time re-engineering the OASYS engine to work with the new hardware, as well as Seamless Sound Transition capability. The hardware is completely different. The engine is far too different. So if you own an OASYS and have to have the new power of a Kronos, you'll just have to get a Kronos.

But how is this any different from any other synth manufacturer? The XP engine of the late 90s is pretty similar to the Fantom engine. But I guarantee you that the hardware in the first Fantom is radically different from the XP, and I sincerely doubt if you could even get the Fantom engine to work with the old architecture, that would fit in the rom space provided.

How about the Motif? It's hardly changed much since the days of the S-90 in function, but I guarantee you that the engine has been redone way more than adding some effects and articulation functions, nor is the internal hardware very similar at all. Heck, Yamaha became so confident in going rompler only for the XF that it won't accept any expansions at all but flash ram, which has irritated those with expansion boards who wanted to migrate up. Which of course required you to, dare I say it, but a new MoXF. And those guys I might agree with you are approaching "impossible" in cost, but then I'm unaware of any other non-KORG workstation with so much sample rom on board. The flash expansions are pretty pricey, maybe "impossible," but Yamaha has sweetened the deal by making their expansion libraries... free? Cheap? I don't know because I'm just not interested in an XF right now.

Let me go to the most compatible music workstation to what you're discussing - and which I'm remotely familiar, the Lionstracs Grooves. These guys are basically shells which host music PCs with a Linux Ubuntu OS with a WINE shell for Windoze apps. You can have as massive a system you want, with 6-core AMD CPUs and 64gigs of ram, and SS drives. Yeah, this is nifty and all, but it's up to you to load the thing with what you want as far as synths and sample players, even DAWs. And I hate to say it, but I'm just not that into soft synths right now outside of the Arturia softies. And guess what? No ethernet, even though it's essentially a PC.

There's the nEko, but I don't think it's a bit different. And the same guys basically redid the nEko right with the StudioBlade workstation, but it seems to be in the foggy realms off the radar screen of the music market, with units made as soon as someone becomes aware of them. And evidently only synth action keyboards.

I have NO IDEA whatsoever what upgrading either one is like. Maybe you could find out, but I have better things to do.

So... what you want right now doesn't exist for anybody. Great ideas for the next gen of music workstations though, or if you should decide to make the next nEko on your own. Good luck with any of that though.

As far as I can see, we're going to have The Great Divide between PC based and Big Three + One (Kurzweil) hardware guys, with oddballs like Lionstracs and StudioBlade hoping for some attention in-between. But I can live with this, and so far it seems to be working okay for most people.

synthguy wrote:

shap wrote:When synthesis relies on custom hardware, it's impossibly expensive to upgrade or augment a synthesizer in the field (that is: after it ships). If an upgrade involves sending you (the user) a new card, and requiring you (with some % success insured by warranty costs) to install it, it's damned expensive. Conversely, if an upgrade requires a software install, the expense is much lower.

I'll address this again with specifics, because frankly, I'm baffled as to what you consider "impossibly expensive." [lots of examples of hardware upgrade cards follow]

I think it's probably time to let this thread die, but you clearly spent some time and thought here, and I respect that. Let me start by saying that I accept every one of your examples. I'm not personally familiar with all of those, but I had occasion to buy several of them myself. Your prices are consistent with what I recall.

So you have to ask why card slots seem to be going away. There seem to be two reasons. First, it turns out they didn't sell well, because most customers couldn't install them. Second, between the cost of physically manufacturing them in low quantity (even lower than synth quantities, since not everyone buys them), shipping them, dealing with warranty issues, and so forth, the margin on those boards stunk.

The cost I'm comparing here is the cost of manufacturing, distribution, and service.

The bill of materials on the box containing a $150 SRX card (and yes, I bought some of those) was in the neighborhood of $40-$50. The bill of materials cost in the $150 copy of Microsoft Office runs right around $3, the majority of which is the cost of the media and the anti-piracy measures (disclosure: I've gotten different numbers from different people, none higher than $7). In each case, deduct 40%-60% off the list prices for the distributor and re-seller profits, and you can start to see the problem here.

Given workstation quantity levels, you need to sell a hardware card to roughly 10% of the customers to get the board manufacturing costs down into any sort of marginally acceptable range. Which is why quite a number of planned and advertised add-on cards never got made, even over in Yamaha-land. And if you do manage to sell 5,000 add-on cards to your 35,000 buyers on a given workstation, you're not going to make that much money.

So that difference in margin is the difference between an entire ecosystem of software add-ons and a small number of hardware add-ons.

I really do want to let this thread come to an end, so with apologies, I'm going to stop here, except to say: it's all about economics, RAM capacity, and connectivity.

operaman, it does not obliterate YAMAHA. Let me break it down for you. I use both the motif xs and Kronos. Little do KORG users know anything about motifator. com. When listening to sounds... Roland, Korg, and YAMAHA all have really great Ac Pianos. Even though I have to admit, the new German Grands are probably a little bit better than YAMAHA stock pianos, it's frkn 4gigs, it better be good. I'm gonna be using this piano a lot. But when you purchase the pianos on motifator website, they come just as great, if not better. There's the real YAMAHA C7s, KAWAI, and Steinways etc.

All other categories like, EPs, Dist Guitars, synth voices, pads, drums, sfx, etc are all very similar and have awesome sampling results. You can't favor any keyboard based upon electronic sounds. There's no such thing as an electric instrument.... it's electric. All can make anything electric. And I also know that my Kronos has a little more features than my xs... but not by much. No one cares how you record your music, what kind of buttons you pressed, or how cool the arps and Karmas are. All that matters is how it sounds at the end of the day.

But when it comes to acoustic strings like violins, nylon guitars, steel guitars, oboes, saxes, flutes, trumpets... anything acoustic, remember that YAMAHA has made these real instruments for over 200 years. You can't argue with that. They sample their own instruments. Therefore, resulting in the most Ac sounds you'll ever get. Korg and Roland can't top the acoustic sound quality. That's why the motif lines are the most sought after keyboards and it will never change until Korg and Roland can learn how to do it right with their acoustics. Ask Jordan Rudess, he'll tell you the realism in motif keyboards.

> They sample their own instruments

So what? You imply that Yamaha makes the best acoustic instruments. All you point out is that Yamaha samples their own instruments. There are many other types of brands that sound equally if not much better than Yamaha. Are you saying that just because Roland or Korg are sampling instruments that they didn't manufacturer, then it's by definition not as good?

I believe that's what you are saying. If so, then I will let your statements stand on their own about how you think about music and tone. Wait a minute, what I am doing? You are the guy that thinks the acoustic guitars in the Motif sound real. Sorry.

ddavilyx wrote:operaman, it does not obliterate YAMAHA. Let me break it down for you. I use both the motif xs and Kronos. Little do KORG users know anything about motifator. com.

I do know about motifator.com and have used Yamaha products in the past. The Korg Kronos can simply import more samples if you need more realistic sounds. It is simply the most versatile studio instrument made, period. I have been using workstations since the M1, and from the context of a workstation it is awesome. For me, the order goes Korg Kronos, whatever Kurzweil will bring out, then Yamaha, and lastly Roland.

To me it is pathetic that Yamaha, the inventor of FM synthesis, has allowed Korg to kick their proverbial ass here. I have an original DX7 with the E! Chip and a bunch of programmed sounds from a certain famous Synthesist, as his tech was the guy who installed my chip and loaded his presets. I can now via sysex load ALL of these directly into MOD-7. I mean, come on, how cool is that? Where is Yamaha with new synthesis? Hell, the Alesis Fusion which I have kicks the crap out of anything Yamaha has EVER produced, because under the hood it is a real SYNTH. As far as that goes Yamaha is WAY behind. They have been rehashing the same engine since Motif which is a crying shame for a company that USED to be at the forefront of synthesis. Yamaha could make an AWESOME workstation given their underrated AN1x engine, FM, Physical Modeling, and realistic sampled acoustic instruments. So where is it? The XF7 is basically a super-sized XS. If I had an XS, I would not upgrade. No reason to.

I make my living as an opera singer, but I have also been working and programming synths since the mid-80's. This Kronos is the first workstation in a LONG time to really change the way I consider doing my music production. I cannot say that about Yamaha. The only thing I think of with Yamaha is perhaps I could pick up a cheap XS Rack if I ever want a preset player in rack form. I suppose that has merits, but I need more depth to my synth than that. And Kronos can do that and much, MUCH more.

aron wrote:You imply that Yamaha makes the best acoustic instruments... Are you saying that just because Roland or Korg are sampling instruments that they didn't manufacturer, then it's by definition not as good?

I think he was trying to suggest that a company with deep experience building acoustic instruments has an advantage because they can tap the expertise of the people who build the instruments. This might be true if you are doing physical modeling, for example.

For sampling, I think the more important need is to combine deep expertise in sampling, environmental acoustics, and how the target instrument is actually used in performance. Doug and Nick and their team over at EastWest clearly know as much or more about sampling than just about anybody, and I don't see them building trumpets over there.

On the other hand, Antonio Stradivari wasn't much of a performer, so maybe I'm wrong about what it takes to capture the essence of good sound. Seems like food for thought, at least.

Isn't it obvious why Yamaha is good at replicating acoustic sounds? It's the same reason why they also make acoustic instruments. It's because they care about the art of creating instrumental sound and make it a high priority in their products.

The other manufacturers care more about different things and have prioritized accordingly and that's a good thing. Would I want the Big 4 (let's not short-change Kurzweil as a plus 1) to all have the exact same strengths and weaknesses? Diversity in music production is good; it allows the end users to mix and match modules/workstations to give the best combo for each individual's taste and needs.