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Kronos discontinued?


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Personally, the Nautilus doesn't appeal to me at all. Why pickup a Kronos-light when you can grab a Kronos at blow out prices and second hand models are easily found. The Kronos still has everything Korg has to offer in sound engines - they continue to sell lesser synths and soft synths based on the same tech.

True, if the blowout price of a brand new Kronos is very close to that of a brand new Nautilus.

 

IMO, the price of a used Kronos would have to be 30-40% lower than that of a brand new Nautilus for it to make sense.

 

Many users hardly use the full range of Kronos features, fewer users program sounds from scratch and most primarily use it to play presets.

 

If the Nautilus trims away some of the fat and sounds very similar, it will be attractive to folks who may have wanted the Kronos at a lower price. :cool:

PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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Personally, the Nautilus doesn't appeal to me at all. Why pickup a Kronos-light when you can grab a Kronos at blow out prices and second hand models are easily found. The Kronos still has everything Korg has to offer in sound engines - they continue to sell lesser synths and soft synths based on the same tech.

 

 

Many users hardly use the full range of Kronos features, fewer users program sounds from scratch and most primarily use it to play presets.

 

Il:

 

Its easy and reasonable to get beyond the Korg factory sounds/programs.

 

Many of the long time productive Kronos owners, enjoy the many high quality 3rd party sample libs.

 

The 3rd parties do a masterful job filling in the various niches/expanding the Kronos palette.

 

Thats a huge plus for Kronos.

 

Eventually some will produce/create for Nautilus but thats a wait and see.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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I always like to have the big three Japanese synth engines around. So I have an Integra and a MODx. I was going to replace my Triton ProX this year, but I just could not bring myself to buy a Nautilus for one reason. I bought the MODx instead of a Motif because I just wanted the sounds and the keyboard, but man, do i miss aftertouch. I didn't even realize how much I use it until it became unavailable. So for me, only some form of Kronos will do even though I will most likely never use any of the extra features. I think after a decade, it wouldn't hurt them to put out a rack version.

"For instance" is not proof.

 

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I think after a decade, it wouldn't hurt them to put out a rack version.

At least a rack/desktop Nautilus is more feasible than a Kronos would have been, since it's already designed to work easily without all those space-occupying knobs/buttons/sliders that would have made a module huge.

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Investing 4k in a top of the line KB in today's economy, the lack of paying gigs and projects, and making use of what you already have, are good reasons for standing PAT.

 

 

Mike T.

Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Mark 1 Suitcase 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Md III, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist Live Pro. Roland Boss Chorus Ensemble CE-1.

 

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I know for awhile supply chain problems caused back orders of certain keyboard players. Also a good majority of players are not gigging musicians so we are becoming a thing of the past.

"Danny, ci manchi a tutti. La E-Street Band non e' la stessa senza di te. Riposa in pace, fratello"

 

 

noblevibes.com

 

 

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Like with many high end products the gigging/working pros are not the big base of customers of those products. It fans, wannabes, those people with good day jobs that jam with friends on weekends. Midlife crisis guys trying to relive their dream that never worked out by staring at the ultimate rig. Industries couldn't survive if they had to depend on working pros, name artists buy their gear. Especially since pro touring musicians and name artists want deep discounts or zero cost gear delivered to venues for them. I know about that because as a roadie a lot of time I was the one calling music stores or big companies twisting there arms for deal because I'm the MF roadie for .
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My brother was a Concert promoter some years ago. He brought in big name acts and put on shows at some large venues for several years. The so called stars asked for an endless list of equipment, even a grand piano they only used on ONE song, Big PA, big money, and they showed up with their guitars, It was not a money maker. He called it a career.

Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Mark 1 Suitcase 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Md III, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist Live Pro. Roland Boss Chorus Ensemble CE-1.

 

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Like with many high end products the gigging/working pros are not the big base of customers of those products. It fans, wannabes, those people with good day jobs that jam with friends on weekends. Midlife crisis guys trying to relive their dream that never worked out by staring at the ultimate rig. I...

 

I never had a mid life crisis when I bought my first really good rig, nor did I buy it because I saw stars using it on stage. I bought it because I had a good day job and Keyboard Magazine told me to.

This post edited for speling.

My Sweetwater Gear Exchange Page

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We're pondering building a new deck. We have an ancient weathered cedar deck that is almost at the point of rot in the decking boards in some places. Called in a guy for a quote â he said "Why do you want to replace it? People are spending thousands to get that look these days."

 

I've spent thousands in search of the most perfectly imperfect beat-up old Hammond & Rhodes sounds, too.

____________________________________
Rod

Here for the gear.

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Many users hardly use the full range of Kronos features, fewer users program sounds from scratch and most primarily use it to play presets.

You often see this said of programmable keyboards. I remember seeing similar statements when the DX7 came out almost 40 years ago, and the SC Prophet 5 before that. Which begs the question: why develop and manufacture these complicated, feature-rich and expensive workstations in the first place? Especially today when youngsters want to drag loops into Garage Band or tap on a pad to start clips going - the paradigm has changed, and musical knowledge, along with the technical expertise required to operate the attendant machinery, is no longer needed by the majority of today's "musicians."

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I'd bet there are a people that aren't power users and mostly use presets but still like being able to search for "Kronos Cars Magic" and download something. There's ways you could benefit from having a very programmable synth that you don't program yourself.

 

A lot of those "presets" are pretty complicated in themselves: e.g. an clonewheel engine with all the usual controller mappings, or a synth sound with front-panel controls for cutoff, resonance, etc.

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They won"t, but if Korg did put their 9 engines in a small box that I could pair with any keyboard I prefer to play, I"d buy it in a heart beat. Granted it was appropriately priced to compete with a MacBook, interface and MainStage.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Many users hardly use the full range of Kronos features, fewer users program sounds from scratch and most primarily use it to play presets.

You often see this said of programmable keyboards. I remember seeing similar statements when the DX7 came out almost 40 years ago, ...."

 

I think the DX7 isn't a good example, and it persists for FM to this day. Very few humans have the ability to internalize FM, mostly because our brains don't think intuitively in terms of Fourier coefficients in the spectral representation of audio.

I doubt if 0.1% of musicians could create a predictable acoustic instrument or even a sonically pre-thought-out sound from scratch using FM. Even Chowning stumbled into it quite by accident experimenting with the modulation ratios.

Once you understand the math you have a fighting chance but even then it's not intuitive.

J a z z  P i a n o 8 8

--

Yamaha C7D

Montage8 | CP300 | CP4 | SK1-73 | OB6 | Seven

K8.2 | 3300 | CPSv.3

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A lot of those "presets" are pretty complicated in themselves: e.g. an clonewheel engine with all the usual controller mappings, or a synth sound with front-panel controls for cutoff, resonance, etc.

I've done an exercise where I call up a Kronos program I really like and then re-create it, one parameter at a time, into an adjacent blank program. It's an exacting/painstaking process, going back and forth between the two programs, but informative to hear what each parameter does as the sound takes shape. Resulted in a few "so that is what's making it do that" moments, for sure.

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

 

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Personally, the Nautilus doesn't appeal to me at all. Why pickup a Kronos-light when you can grab a Kronos at blow out prices and second hand models are easily found. The Kronos still has everything Korg has to offer in sound engines - they continue to sell lesser synths and soft synths based on the same tech. You can stick any size SSD you like in a Kronos and fill it with sample libraries till the cows come home. If they are working on a new flagship it's hard to imagine where it would be making a leap other than faster processor, more RAM, larger storage.

 

Where do you see blowout prices on a Kronos? I don"t. And there are plenty of digital synthesis methods that could be added to a Kronos successor. The FM engine could be enhanced. Additive synthesis/resynthesis. Seamless integration with iOS softsynths and VST synth programs. The synth world didn"t come to a standstill when the Kronos first came out.

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Many users hardly use the full range of Kronos features, fewer users program sounds from scratch and most primarily use it to play presets.

You often see this said of programmable keyboards. I remember seeing similar statements when the DX7 came out almost 40 years ago, ...."

 

I think the DX7 isn't a good example, and it persists for FM to this day. Very few humans have the ability to internalize FM, mostly because our brains don't think intuitively in terms of Fourier coefficients in the spectral representation of audio.

I doubt if 0.1% of musicians could create a predictable acoustic instrument or even a sonically pre-thought-out sound from scratch using FM. Even Chowning stumbled into it quite by accident experimenting with the modulation ratios.

Once you understand the math you have a fighting chance but even then it's not intuitive.

 

I had a DX-7 for many years and I found the secret to making analog sounds. I had a string patch that my diehard Oberheim friends couldn"t distinguish from a string patch on my Oberheim Xpander, which was based on the Matrix 12.

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Personally, the Nautilus doesn't appeal to me at all. Why pickup a Kronos-light when you can grab a Kronos at blow out prices and second hand models are easily found. The Kronos still has everything Korg has to offer in sound engines - they continue to sell lesser synths and soft synths based on the same tech. You can stick any size SSD you like in a Kronos and fill it with sample libraries till the cows come home. If they are working on a new flagship it's hard to imagine where it would be making a leap other than faster processor, more RAM, larger storage.

 

Where do you see blowout prices on a Kronos? I don"t. And there are plenty of digital synthesis methods that could be added to a Kronos successor. The FM engine could be enhanced. Additive synthesis/resynthesis. Seamless integration with iOS softsynths and VST synth programs. The synth world didn"t come to a standstill when the Kronos first came out.

 

i think Elm is referring to good prices of the original K1 on reverb/ebay. Even the short lived "X' model , used of course , can be had.

 

Buying used Kronos can be risky . Some owners confuse the filing system and hodge podge the data. Then there are the DIY types that experiment with internal components.

IOW, I think some one elses keyboard headache should be identified.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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Personally, the Nautilus doesn't appeal to me at all. Why pickup a Kronos-light when you can grab a Kronos at blow out prices and second hand models are easily found. The Kronos still has everything Korg has to offer in sound engines - they continue to sell lesser synths and soft synths based on the same tech.

 

True, if the blowout price of a brand new Kronos is very close to that of a brand new Nautilus.

 

:

 

the only " factory new blow out K2 ' thing was a 6 week 'event ' Nov/December of last year.

 

I think it was 20% off MAP.

 

i don't recommend anyone hold their breath for a repeat.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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Personally, the Nautilus doesn't appeal to me at all. Why pickup a Kronos-light when you can grab a Kronos at blow out prices and second hand models are easily found. The Kronos still has everything Korg has to offer in sound engines - they continue to sell lesser synths and soft synths based on the same tech.

 

True, if the blowout price of a brand new Kronos is very close to that of a brand new Nautilus.

 

:

 

the only " factory new blow out K2 ' thing was a 6 week 'event ' Nov/December of last year.

 

I think it was 20% off MAP.

 

i don't recommend anyone hold their breath for a repeat.

 

That"s what I was referring to, which at the time made me think they were possibly phasing out K2. But it"s seems more likely they were trying to make sales goals for 4th quarter. Also, some people just like the latest model, so I expect to see some K2s for sale when the Nautilus actually makes it to stores. This entire thread is just speculation, either way.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Many users hardly use the full range of Kronos features, fewer users program sounds from scratch and most primarily use it to play presets.

You often see this said of programmable keyboards. I remember seeing similar statements when the DX7 came out almost 40 years ago, ...."

 

I think the DX7 isn't a good example, and it persists for FM to this day. Very few humans have the ability to internalize FM, mostly because our brains don't think intuitively in terms of Fourier coefficients in the spectral representation of audio.

I doubt if 0.1% of musicians could create a predictable acoustic instrument or even a sonically pre-thought-out sound from scratch using FM. Even Chowning stumbled into it quite by accident experimenting with the modulation ratios.

Once you understand the math you have a fighting chance but even then it's not intuitive.

 

I had a DX-7 for many years and I found the secret to making analog sounds. I had a string patch that my diehard Oberheim friends couldn"t distinguish from a string patch on my Oberheim Xpander, which was based on the Matrix 12.

 

It does individual string instruments reasonably well because it captures the rosin/bow attack (one of the reasons Cello was a factory patch). But it wasn't good at the lush strings like the OB or SC subtractive ala Lyle Mays. I'd love to hear how you did yours if you could show the algorithm and settings or still have audio you could post.

J a z z  P i a n o 8 8

--

Yamaha C7D

Montage8 | CP300 | CP4 | SK1-73 | OB6 | Seven

K8.2 | 3300 | CPSv.3

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It does individual string instruments reasonably well because it captures the rosin/bow attack (one of the reasons Cello was a factory patch). But it wasn't good at the lush strings like the OB or SC subtractive ala Lyle Mays. I'd love to hear how you did yours if you could show the algorithm and settings or still have audio you could post.

 

I used algorithm #2. All operators were tuned to a 1 to 1 ratio.

Operator 2 had feedback turned up. So it was close to 2 sawtooth waves. Then I switched the two carriers (operators 1 and 3) to fixed frequency of zero (or 1). I had to tweak it a bit. Playing with it some more I came up with sound like the growling synth sound on Tom Sawyer. I may have used the pitch envelope for that.

 

It was switching the carriers to fixed frequency that did it.

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[quot

:

 

the only " factory new blow out K2 ' thing was a 6 week 'event ' Nov/December of last year.

 

I think it was 20% off MAP.

 

i don't recommend anyone hold their breath for a repeat.

 

l, so I expect to see some K2s for sale when the Nautilus actually makes it to stores. This entire thread is just speculation, either way.

 

There is some hard data about Kronos plans for 2021. I spoke to Korg USA and got solid answers. and a fair discussion. Same thing took place

with Thomann and our Kronos friend in France.

 

Anybody can call the country disti for themselves to get answers, assuming they ask the right questions.

 

I see it more opposite, as factory new channel inventory dwindles, high prices can solidify.

 

Its not difficult to measure factory new supply ' changes ' on reverb over the past 6 months.

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

My Soundcloud with many originals:

[70's Songwriter]

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I doubt if 0.1% of musicians could create a predictable acoustic instrument or even a sonically pre-thought-out sound from scratch using FM.

I could do a Flute. Sort of.

Oh, and I did do a DX27 with a layer into a Leslie to get a fair tonewheel organ sound once.

 

Seriously though, it has me wondering if a blowout PC3K6 might be a smarter investment than a PC4, as the FM engine would be my main sonic gain.

-Tom Williams

{First Name} {at} AirNetworking {dot} com

PC4-7, PX-5S, AX-Edge, PC361

 

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A lot of those "presets" are pretty complicated in themselves: e.g. an clonewheel engine with all the usual controller mappings, or a synth sound with front-panel controls for cutoff, resonance, etc.

I've done an exercise where I call up a Kronos program I really like and then re-create it, one parameter at a time, into an adjacent blank program. It's an exacting/painstaking process, going back and forth between the two programs, but informative to hear what each parameter does as the sound takes shape. Resulted in a few "so that is what's making it do that" moments, for sure.

 

I go thru this identical process with my MODX. As with you, it"s resulted in several ' ah ha' moments ( and I"m not talking about Take on Me :D )

David

Gig Rig:Casio Privia PX-5S | Yamaha MODX+ 6 | MacBook Pro 14" M1| Mainstage

 

 

 

 

 

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I"ve been using Kronos since they were released. My first is a two number serial. If Korg are planning a new keyboard, I suppose they are reading this. ;) Here are a few features the Kronos always needed;

 

- Add one more expression pedal jack. Yamaha, Roland, Kurzweil all have two.

 

- NO GLOBAL MIDI CHANNEL SEND. The Kronos always sends on the global channel. If you change global channel, the KARMA programs are all messed up.

 

- Don"t lock the expansions to the keyboard. I have two Kronos, and I"ve had to be very selective with what to invest in since I need them synced. I"d probably have bought 10 more titles if they were licensed to me and not 'locked' inside the Kronos. Allow users to load them in 2, preferably 3 machines (like computer software)

 

- add correct DX7 velocity scaling for sysex import. Every time I load DX sysex I have to tweak the velocity settings to match the DX.

 

- Give us a proper file management system and easier sampling. Both the multi sampling and one-shot samples could be more manageable.

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If indeed the hardware of the Korg Kronos is an Atom based Linux machine with audio and Midi interface, it is strange there's no Linux system image equivalent you can start on a PC, with some patches for other IO devices. The power of a verymodest Notebook screwed in a synth workstation enclosure can't be the major part of the $4k price tag, so that's apparently some expensive software we're talking about ?

 

T

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Like with many high end products the gigging/working pros are not the big base of customers of those products. It fans, wannabes, those people with good day jobs that jam with friends on weekends. Midlife crisis guys trying to relive their dream that never worked out by staring at the ultimate rig. Industries couldn't survive if they had to depend on working pros, name artists buy their gear. Especially since pro touring musicians and name artists want deep discounts or zero cost gear delivered to venues for them. I know about that because as a roadie a lot of time I was the one calling music stores or big companies twisting there arms for deal because I'm the MF roadie for .

 

 

Good point. I just think gigging musicians are left out of the equation sometimes.

"Danny, ci manchi a tutti. La E-Street Band non e' la stessa senza di te. Riposa in pace, fratello"

 

 

noblevibes.com

 

 

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If indeed the hardware of the Korg Kronos is an Atom based Linux machine with audio and Midi interface, it is strange there's no Linux system image equivalent you can start on a PC, with some patches for other IO devices. The power of a verymodest Notebook screwed in a synth workstation enclosure can't be the major part of the $4k price tag, so that's apparently some expensive software we're talking about ?

 

T

 

Yes, Korg values their IP at market - Kronos is priced to compete with their competitor"s workstations.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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