Korg KRONOS Workstation

[John Cooper]

Hi guys,

Some of you may know that my day job is at Korg Research & Development. I'm one of the developers on the KRONOS and OASYS synthesizer workstations.
Today, KRONOS is finally announced. I wrote about it in my blog here:
http://www.planetz.com/?p=917

Here's the official stuff:
http://www.korg.com/kronos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1o2Woa8PBk

To XITE/Scope PC/Mac power users such as yourselves, this may not be very exciting. But for standalone workstation products, this is quite a breakthrough.

Strange to think I've spent nearly a quarter of my life working on this technology!

-John

[dante]

Looks awesome. Like the 9 engine touch GUI.

[kensuguro]

wow! congrats for the release!!! I thought Oasys was legendary, and then this!

[valis]

Funny thing is, there's a used OASYS sitting at the local GC for the same price as the fully weighted version of the KRONOS...

[garyb]

[siriusbliss]

Great tech.

Will definitely be checking it out at NAMM!

Greg

[siriusbliss]

Are you at NAMM?

I want to say hi.

Greg

[John Cooper]

Getting on a plane right now. I won't have internet access down there, but I'll be around the Korg booth a lot.

If you see me, come say hi! Hope to see you there,
John

[garyb]

sehr schon.
my keyboard doesn't know umlauts...

[siriusbliss]

Hey John,

It was a pleasure meeting you (finally after all these years).

I'm sure Holger and Ralf appreciated the visit to the SC booth.

The Jordan Rudess Kronos demo was excellent.

Thanks again,

Greg

[Bifop]

Bravo John !
Seeing your guitar stuff, I thought that you weren't involved in synth development anymore.
I saw the Namm pics at Xited.org, nice gathering of Zers and synth Gurus it seemed !!

All the best for this new year to you and your family.

[John Cooper]

It was great to meet you guys at the show!
Here's a pic with Joel, Greg, Holger, Gary, Me and Ralf (unfortunately, John Bowen was away from the booth at that moment!):

[John Cooper]

The Jordan Rudess Kronos demo was excellent.

Here's a video I made of the demo (Greg was standing right next to me!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG7Ddzo7k80

He's quite an amazing player- it was awesome to see/hear him playing an instrument I helped make!
I wish the sound on the video could've been better- it's just the camcorder mic. But it gives you an idea of the sound. For more high-fidelity audio examples, see here: http://www.korg.com/kronos

-John

[John Cooper]

Bravo John !
Seeing your guitar stuff, I thought that you weren't involved in synth development anymore.

Yes, I still devote the majority of my time every day to synth development for Korg.
All the guitar stuff is what I do in my scarce free time.

-John

[siriusbliss]

The Jordan Rudess Kronos demo was excellent.

Here's a video I made of the demo (Greg was standing right next to me!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG7Ddzo7k80

He's quite an amazing player- it was awesome to see/hear him playing an instrument I helped make!
I wish the sound on the video could've been better- it's just the camcorder mic. But it gives you an idea of the sound. For more high-fidelity audio examples, see here: http://www.korg.com/kronos

-John

Yeah, Jordan has clones all over NAMM every year. He's everywhere.

I was sorry I had to leave to go to another meeting (double-booked).

Greg

p.s. maybe some day Jordan can demo some Scope synths, or Modular, or...

[Bifop]

Yes, I still devote the majority of my time every day to synth development for Korg.
All the guitar stuff is what I do in my scarce free time.
-John

Guitar, high-end synth developpment a family and kids...
Talking about schedule efficiency, you rock !

[sharc]

Congrats John, looks (and sounds) amazing

Always been a big fan of Korg workstations and it sure looks like you guys have thrown the kitchen sink at this one.

Little bit outside my price range ATM unfortunately, but maybe someday...

...In the meantime I think I'll be getting myself one of those little Monotron beasties - Great to see a Korg analogue back on the market - albeit in 'toy' form. Hoping to see that side of things developed further also. Was thinking a beefed up one of those stuffed inside the Legacy MS20 controller as a standalone 'poor mans' MS20 would be awesome.

Speaking of the Legacy collection, are there any plans to expand on that front with the inclusion of the new (and old) modelling types found here in the Kronos?

[dawman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0QE68_Dds&fmt=18

Someone said this was a Kronos workstation. Sounds like Geddy Lee kind of...
Sequencer and sounds outside of the box are the way to go....

[pwhitmaker]

I just bought a Korg Kronos 88 and Im very satisfied with this synth.
Fantastic keyboard, fantastic sounds!

And now when I saw this thread, that you John had been working with developing Kronos, I must take the opportunity to ask you.
Why isn't there any ASIO drivers for Korg Kronos?
There are no audiodrivers at all, only MIDI drivers.
In the brochure Korg writes: "Kronos can also be used as an audio I/O for your computer, sending and receiving two channels of audio via USB. In a music production system using your Kronos and a computer, there is no need to purchase any additional hardware, creating the simplest possible set-up."

But this is true only on a MAC computer.
On a PC with Cubase you cant use Kronos as the audiointerface in Cubase, because Cubase only accepts ASIO drivers.
Yes there is ASIO4ALL that do the job, with high latency, but when you buy a synth that costs over 4000 euros, it feels odd that the only drivers that works is the ones that a private person made in his bedroom year 2003.
Doesn't sound very professional do you think?

I mean, cheap Audiointerfaces that costs 100 euro got ASIOdrivers, why not Korgs flagship?
I'm really interested to know how you people on Korg was thinking about this?

My original plan was to use Kronos as the audiointerface in Cubase, but now I have connected my Kronos via optical SPDIF to my Pulsar2 card, and using the Scope ASIO drivers instead.
That is a solution that works but takes some routing.

[John Cooper]

I work on the embedded software in the KRONOS itself, so I can't really answer why there's no Korg ASIO driver, sorry.

The KRONOS itself acts as a standard class compliant audio USB device, so you get MIDI and stereo audio I/O over USB, using standard system drivers.

Things always seem to be easier on Mac On Windows, it may not be ideal, but the following works:

- on KRONOS, Global/Audio tab, set USB 1 and USB 2 to L/R. You can now play audio on Windows and hear it through your KRONOS headphones, etc.
- in Cubase device setup, select ASIO DirectX Full Duplex Driver. Then in the ASIO DirectX Driver setup, click on Control Panel, and activate KRONOS input and output. Then in VST Connections (F4), add busses for the KRONOS input/output. You can now play back from Cubase into KRONOS, and record from KRONOS into Cubase over USB

You'll most likely find that the way you're doing it with the the optical digital I/O gives the best latency.

Hope this helps.
John