Leaked - new Korg controller with poly AT, MPE. MIDI 2.0 and audio interface

[jerrythek]

6 hours ago, Paul Woodward said:

This renewed interest in Poly AT is quite baffling. It was on (albeit massively expensive) synths in the 70's and disappeared. Even mono aftertouch has gone from all but the top end boards, Korg even tout it as a new 'feature' for their flagship workstation. You would think tech like this after 50 years would be standard on mid to top end boards. Will be great to have it as standard in more machines as long as it doesn't mean cheap nasty keybeds. 

Cough, cough, Ensoniq, cough, cough

 

[CyberGene]

27 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

Are we sure they're puts and not encoders?

On the pictures I see knobs with a marked line (not sure how you call it in English) which is usually used on pots. 

[jerrythek]

I noticed on his blog Paul asked: "Hope it’s all MIDI 1.x backward compatible, too."

 

By definition (all that I've read) MIDI 2.0 is. If it polls the port/network and doesn't get a "Yes, I'm MIDI 2.0" or some such response, it operates fine as 1.0.

 

Jerry

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

If this thing had 9 faders and maybe a few trigger pads, it would be on my list. Think a cross between this and the Keylab MKII (but faders on the left). Still, I like the setup overall and really like the audio interface capability (and the wheels). My general opinion on that is that I like a Korg-style joystick for pitch bends and solo lines, but prefer a mod wheel that stays put where I leave it.

[Ed A.]

2 hours ago, jerrythek said:

Cough, cough, Ensoniq, cough, cough

 

Yeah, but Ensoniq’s polyAT keyboards were the clackiest keyboards I’ve ever played. 

[ElmerJFudd]

If you’d like to read what the slutz think… lol, they can be much worse than KC about picking apart everything.  
 

https://gearspace.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-and-electronic-music-production/1414503-new-korg-keystage-midi-2-0-controllers-polyat.html

[jazzpiano88]

Looks like a nice controller.   However, don't you need a synth that responds to PAT?  

 

The only ones I know of worthiness is the Cherry Audio GX80 (and one other CS80 plug in who I've forgotten)?

 

Here's hoping the new Montage has PAT onboard from the inventors.

[Finale]

 

37 minutes ago, JazzPiano88 said:

However, don't you need a synth that responds to PAT?

 

Indeed, poly AT is useless on synths that can't respond to it. Imagine how smaller is the list of MIDI 2.0 compatible synths.

 

18 hours ago, Paul Woodward said:

This renewed interest in Poly AT is quite baffling. It was on (albeit massively expensive) synths in the 70's and disappeared.

 

The first synths with MIDI appeared around 1983 and the use of poly AT on keyboards reached its peak around 1990 - the best era to buy great keyboard controllers.

[AnotherScott]

59 minutes ago, JazzPiano88 said:

Looks like a nice controller.   However, don't you need a synth that responds to PAT?  

 

The only ones I know of worthiness is the Cherry Audio GX80 (and one other CS80 plug in who I've forgotten)?

 

Here's hoping the new Montage has PAT onboard from the inventors.

 

Lots of synths (soft and hard) respond to poly AT. In hardware, not Yamahas (AFAIK), but plenty from Korg, Roland, and Kurzweil, for example.

[jazzpiano88]

9 minutes ago, AnotherScott said:

 

Lots of synths (soft and hard) respond to poly AT. In hardware, not Yamahas (AFAIK), but plenty from Korg, Roland, and Kurzweil, for example.

 
Good to know.  Can you elaborate on which synths respond to it, have onboard, and which hard boards produce it?

i know hydrasnth is an example of onboard and controller for soft.  

[AnotherScott]

41 minutes ago, JazzPiano88 said:

 
Good to know.  Can you elaborate on which synths respond to it, have onboard, and which hard boards produce it?

 

 

In hardware (keyboards and sound modules), the manuals should include MIDI Implementation Charts, usually like the one below from the Fantom. Notice the aftertouch section. In this case, the X and O marks indicate that the keyboard Sends (transmits) and Receives (recognizes) Channel aftertouch (affecting all the notes on a channel simultaneously), and also can receive (but not send) Key aftertouch (each key individually, AKA polyphonic aftertouch).

 

(Aside... Here's one caveat in reading those charts: A keyboard may indicate that it can send channel AT, but that doesn't necessarily means its KEYS send AT. For example, sometimes a board will allow you to assign the aftertouch MIDI function to a pedal or knob, and the MIDI Implementation chart will still show that the keyboard is capable of sending Poly AT, since it indeed can send the appropriate MIDI command, even if it's not sending it from its keys. That's the case with the Fantom-0, which has the same chart as the Fantom, but its keys don't send AT.)

 

 

 

 

 

[jerrythek]

8 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

If you’d like to read what the slutz think… lol, they can be much worse than KC about picking apart everything.  
 

https://gearspace.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-and-electronic-music-production/1414503-new-korg-keystage-midi-2-0-controllers-polyat.html

Interesting. It seems Korg brought one to the last NAMM (in April), and had it at the MIDI/MMA booth, and no one reported about it (that I know of).

 

Jerry

[ElmerJFudd]

20 minutes ago, jerrythek said:

Interesting. It seems Korg brought one to the last NAMM (in April), and had it at the MIDI/MMA booth, and no one reported about it (that I know of).

 

Jerry

Ya it’s tiny.  I’m excited about what Midi 2 means for Windows lack of macOS’s core midi.  It’s been 15 years since Gibson killed OMS and now if the DAW devs and plug-in devs and hardware makers support Midi 2 what the OS lacks is less important.  

[CyberGene]

Polyphonic aftertouch can be sent either classically or through MPE. The lattet supports multiple per note expressions, think Roli. 
 

As to support, the Novation Peak supports it right out the box. I had one and can confirm. 

[Paul Woodward]

5 hours ago, K K said:

The first synths with MIDI appeared around 1983 and the use of poly AT on keyboards reached its peak around 1990 - the best era to buy great keyboard controllers.

Not sure of the relevance of MIDI to my point about Poly AT. By massively expensive I was referring to the Yamaha Cs80, which had the feature back in 1977.

I understand it didn't exactly 'disappear' from all boards, but with all the advances in technology, you would imagine such a feature might be standard in pro boards almost 50 years later. 

[CyberGene]

Why poly AT is not a mainstream thing on many boards and controllers is actually easy to explain. Measuring velocity has been streamlined long ago and is trivial: you only use simple switches, two under each key, pressed in succession. You can easily group and multiplex them through diodes and a cheap multiplexer chip, and that’s it. You scan the entire keyboard in groups (wire-OR through the diodes) and measure time between activations of switches. Voila. However with poly AT you need continuous values measured from each key. That means either multiplexing ADC-s (and diodes can’t be used anymore) which is a non-trivial task. Or design a complex and specialized controller logic around each key group which is expensive. 

[Paul Woodward]

But if it had remained a feature, or expected on new boards, they would have no doubt developed technologies to make it more accessible and affordable. Look at how rare an LCD screen was at one time, or a touch screen. 

Just seems to be a feature that could have been standard, was lost and now seems in vogue again. I don't understand why mono aftertouch isn't standard in pro boards. The flagship Nautilus didn't have it and now it's a 'new' feature on the updated model... 

[CyberGene]

18 minutes ago, Paul Woodward said:

But if it had remained a feature, or expected on new boards, they would have no doubt developed technologies to make it more accessible and affordable.

Well, it’s right about time. Poly AT is mostly usable on sounds that respond well to various controls and modulations. Hence, analog. But in those times it was prohibitively expensive to implement. And then came romplers where sounds are static or programmed to evolve but there’s not much you can do to the sounds dynamically, at least in a polyphonic sense. Pitch and mod sufficed. And now that the analog revival is in its peak, combined with modern technology, we will have more and more poly AT implementations.

[UnderGroundGr]

On 9/29/2023 at 5:42 AM, ElmerJFudd said:

I like a joystick for playing Pitfall on the Atari 2600.  It’s a miracle that thing didn’t give me early onset arthritis at 10 years of age. 
 

 

i think for music you might be able to pull off a quarter bend with it. Stiff as all hell. 

 

I have one of this and I play 8bit games with my Sinclair spectrum plus...😉

[Legatoboy]

That's gonna work great for CS80 software...... with its Poly AT.... 

[ElmerJFudd]

2 hours ago, Legatoboy said:

That's gonna work great for CS80 software...... with its Poly AT.... 

I have to check… is the GX-80 or CS-80 V already midi 2 compatible or responsive to MPE?

[Radagast]

On 9/29/2023 at 2:52 AM, Paul Woodward said:

This renewed interest in Poly AT is quite baffling. 

No one who used Yamaha CS-80 cared about Poly AT either, right?

[jerrythek]

Back in my Ensoniq days I used to point out to people that poly-AT also helped in simpler applications like programming a split with a lead in the RH and a pad in the LH. You could apply modulation to the lead without it affecting the pad. Yes, perhaps your instrument/plug-in allows you to filter controllers for each zone of a split, but not having to even worry about that extra programming helps.

 

Rolling your right hand slightly when playing a two-handed voicing so you can apply modulation to the top of the chord is a technique that is easily learned as well.

[StickMan393]

23 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

If this thing had 9 faders and maybe a few trigger pads, it would be on my list. Think a cross between this and the Keylab MKII (but faders on the left). Still, I like the setup overall and really like the audio interface capability (and the wheels). My general opinion on that is that I like a Korg-style joystick for pitch bends and solo lines, but prefer a mod wheel that stays put where I leave it.

 

Nord nailed the controller config, in my opinion. I wish they release an affordable 88 key controller with Poly-AT.

[Reezekeys]

I remember the story - or was it an old wive's tale - that a synth manufacturer (Sequential?) saw that 98% of their product that came back for repair still had only factory patches. Can we really assume that cool features like poly at will cause the masses to rise to the occasion and start programming all kinds of creative uses for it? Anyone here play in a cover band and during a gig say "damn, I wish I had poly AT for 'xyz' song!"

 

Only wanting to be realistic here - I think the manufacturers looked at the added BOM costs for implementing poly at, looked at the market, and said.... "nah." Now, with midi 2.0 and what appears to be a cheaper way to do p.at, I would say... go for it! I would be happy to have the light bulb turn on and get into using some of these awesome features that appear to be on the horizon.

[zephonic]

42 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

 Anyone here play in a cover band and during a gig say "damn, I wish I had poly AT for 'xyz' song!"

 

Primary use for aftertouch was modulation on synth solos, something I stumbled on by accident on my old Roland D-70. In the Top40 cover band context, I used aftertouch mostly for adding vibrato to horn parts.

 

I've been without it for seven years now, though, and the world did not stop. But I do miss it, and even now I still press deeper on certain notes when I want to have that modulation. Old habits die hard, I guess.

 

I have only ever had channel aftertouch, though. No idea how different poly AT will be.

[Reezekeys]

Sorry for the quick diversion: for anyone using Bidule or willing to spend a little time setting it up (just time, not money; the current demo, both MacOS and Windows, runs unrestricted until January 5 2024), I programmed a setup (a Bidule "group") that converts channel aftertouch to poly:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/36ycz47gwxiuvcndsgzkb/channel-to-poly-AT-group.zip?rlkey=e0aeyf95ud01kb0c2luv1oe2o&dl=0

 

https://www.plogue.com/downloads.html

 

Who needs a fancy-schmancy midi 2.0 keyboard anyway? 🙂 

[Paul Woodward]

29 minutes ago, zephonic said:

 

Primary use for aftertouch was modulation on synth solos, something I stumbled on by accident on my old Roland D-70. In the Top40 cover band context, I used aftertouch mostly for adding vibrato to horn parts.

 

I've been without it for seven years now, though, and the world did not stop. But I do miss it, and even now I still press deeper on certain notes when I want to have that modulation. Old habits die hard, I guess.

 

I have only ever had channel aftertouch, though. No idea how different poly AT will be.

I had a CME X-Key which had poly aftertouch. Admittedly, it might have been the flat shallow keys, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly. I am more of a rock piano player so that sort of note by note nuance when playing wasn't really needed. I do like trying out new gear for myself though.

[Reezekeys]

I think you kinda nailed it Paul. I started as a piano player and that's been my focus. Pressing down on a key after striking it has never been a part of my vocabulary. When I got into synths it was old-guy stuff; strings, pads, organ, clav, etc. Nothing that required or even suggested the need for aftertouch. I've used channel aftertouch very sparingly over the years, only when I was playing a 2-handed part where I couldn't use my left hand to manipulate the wheels or pitch bend. Of course this is in no way to negate the usefulness of channel or poly at - I'm sure there are many worthwhile uses for it, just not for this luddite!

[Paul Woodward]

2 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

I think you kinda nailed it Paul. I started as a piano player and that's been my focus. Pressing down on a key after striking it has never been a part of my vocabulary. When I got into synths it was old-guy stuff; strings, pads, organ, clav, etc. Nothing that required or even suggested the need for aftertouch. I've used channel aftertouch very sparingly over the years, only when I was playing a 2-handed part where I couldn't use my left hand to manipulate the wheels or pitch bend. Of course this is in no way to negate the usefulness of channel or poly at - I'm sure there are many worthwhile uses for it, just not for this luddite!

We think alike @Reezekeys although I did see the benefit of aftertouch in very soft emotive solos, especially wind instruments. It took a lot of concentration to do that with poly aftertouch and I found myself pressing down all the keys anyway. I bet I still have a go on one 😉