Korg product specialist Rich Formidoni explains the concept behind the filters on the new KingKorg keyboard synth and demonstrates their sound.
If you’ve used the KingKorg, leave a comment with your thoughts on it!
Korg product specialist Rich Formidoni explains the concept behind the filters on the new KingKorg keyboard synth and demonstrates their sound.
If you’ve used the KingKorg, leave a comment with your thoughts on it!
I can build whatever vintage-type sounds I need with what I have now, but I’ve had chances to play some of the classics and Korg has it right. The buzz is there and so is the cream. This should be available as a table top module and the M3’s superior keyboard should be available as a controller for instruments whose keyboards are sometimes not as impressive as the synth proper. Those would fill two lacks in the field, IMO. Rich also gives good demo.
I’m a big fan of Korg. I played around with this synth at a local music store. Honestly for its price bracket it sounds pretty good. When I bought my N364 in mid-nineties it cost about the same. I would have killed for something like this back then.
The buzz and cream is there.
But the knobs, step sequencer and parallel filter aren’t. That’s why I didn’t buy this other wise perfect instrument for me.
The KingKorg seems to be a modern take on early analog polysynths and those features wouldn’t have been found on many keyboards from that era.
They obviously could add any feature they wanted, but doing a step sequencer well would require at least another 16 knobs, which would add to the cost.
Sequencer knobs could be multi function knobs though, and would also help to make its synth side more appealing. A little more expensive, but a whole lot sexier and fancier to use.
Radias’s modulation sequencer was so fabulous, that I would have paid 200€ more for KingKorg if it had it and still considered it affordable; now I consider it too expensive for me.
The problem with that is that you want a step sequencer, the next guy wants dual filters, the next guy wants chord functions, the next guy wants multi-timbral operation, next you have to put a d-beam on there……
They could add all those features, but the interface would get complex really fast, because all the buttons would have to have multiple functions. This is why people haven’t been that excited about a lot of the big company synths.
The KingKorg just tries to be a synth and it does that really well.
I don’t think I asked too much from a digital synth.
This JUST feels a down grade in too many ways considering its price increase compared to predecessor. Just a pinch less feeling of going back in features and I think it would be
Besides, significant part of KingKorgs “analog” sound is PR rhetoric. A decade old Alesis Ion easily matches KK’s sound quality and has tons of character (there are “VS” videos in Youtube and I thought that the Ion actually beats KingKorg soundwise) even while it was cheaper AND has most of the features I was asking. Even the so expensive digital dual filters in much more complicated synth architecture, which also has practically non existent stepping in filters and pretty accurate modelling all over the place at £679 in 2003.
When I first played this at NAMM I was really impressed with how smooth the filters are. There is no stepping at all. I think that what Korg did here was to make an instrument for a working musician who needs great synth sounds. This also has some really usable electric pianos, clavs and really good Tron sounds. This thing just sounds excellent.
I’ve played with it in my local store and wasn’t very happy with what I’ve heard. To me, filter-aside (wich are great!), it doesn’t sound fat enough and the drive thing is a very good way to cover this. Try using an overdrive pedal with a digital synth and you get the same sound. Nothing really great……
Did you do any tweaking?
A lot of the character of analog synths comes from tiny inconsistencies in the waveshapes and the tuning of the oscillators. Digital oscillators can be 100% consistent, which doesn’t sound as ‘lively’ as analog oscillators.
The King Korg has options that let you dial in the amount of ‘analog-ness’ that you want. If you want to hear some huge sounds, detune the oscillators a bit and increase the ‘analog’ setting. If you bump the analog setting up high, you get the sort of slightly out-of-tune sound that’s all over early synthesizer recordings.
Not fat enough? Do we always have to say that? Should Moog be the only company that makes synths? I swear on a forum some where someone is complaining that the sub phatty isn’t fat enough. That shouldn’t be your only complaint about a synth.