Superbooth 2018: Here’s a quick intro to the Korg Prologue Developer Kit, and what it means for both developers and end users.
The Korg Prologue synthesizer features has a relatively traditional three-voice architecture, until you look at the third voice, which can be programmed by third parties and end users, opening the door for the synth to evolve over time.
Pricing and Availability
The Korg Prologue 8 & 16 voice models are priced at $1,499.99 and $1,999.99, respectively. See the Korg site for more info. Details on the SDK are available at the Korg site.
As I understand the development kit will only be available in a very limited production and distributed among a limited elite of individuals.
It will not be made available more widely to people, educational institutes e.g. virtually anyone who has the technical knowledge, interest and are willing to pay for and use the kit. I might still be interested when they make available the specifications, the API and the kit itself.
That would be disapointing if we would not be able to make our own addons.
Yeah, that was the whole appeal. Open architecture with closed SDK isn’t useful to me. I don’t care about buying other people’s stuff, I want to make my own. If it’s really going to be closed, I don’t see why they are even bothering to make these promo videos or use the pronoun “you” in “allows you to” and “you can build”.
These were available as a handout at Superbooth, when you went to Korg’s introduction to the SDK. 60 have been made of this run for Superbooth, and I’d guess there are probably some still available. It was pretty exciting to learn more about the exact architecture of this synth and I look forward to start messing around with code for it.
No no no. The SDK will be freely available on GitHub. Its software. However you will need to be able to program in C+ or C++ and there will be no support.
The board was made available for developers to test the SDK without buying a Prologue.
to be honest as a musician i dont need to be able to program the 3rd oscillator myself, as long as i can INSTALL it myself, and all the 3rd party companies can write the code and sell the “3rd oscillator packs” to me for $9.95 or whatever im happy…the internet will quickly review what kind of result that the companies come up with and sort out the wheat from the chaff. Im excited to hear the possibilities.
i do hope the promise of this does happen soon for Korg tho, its one of the key reasons for buying the Prologue for me. I hope its not one of those “coming soon” promises that never eventuates or happens too late when the product is already deleted. Ive got enough products that have buttons that were meant to do something but the company just dropped the ball (can anyone say DS Tempest??), left it too late and abandoned the firmware. Customers remember when they are burnt from future promises that turn out to be vapourware
The Prologue does have 2 or 4 soundboards from the Minilogue. Does this mean that this SDK should also work for the Minilogue?
Nope, the SDK is for modifying the digital oscillator in the prologue, the miniligue is all analogue.
Aha, thanks for this info!
The minilogue seems to have a different chipset though. I’d be surprised if it works with the SDK out of the box, but who knows, maybe someone can make it happen.
Dev-Loperz 😛
i have the Minilogue and have sat down at a Prologue for an extended play, ive given it a good spin and the raw oscillators do sound slightly different to me. i couldnt tell you if it was better or worse just a feeling that its not exactly the same circuit… Would not be surprised at all if they are different chips…would make sense
It’s a developer kit so it would make sense it’s only available in limited numbers. I’m sure the numbers of prologue owners who would be capable of using the kit to develop something useful would only be a fraction of total prologue users anyway, but it does create the possibility of cards of a non-developer nature being released in the future.