Hi

As we near the New Year, and the Winter NAMM 2013 show is close by.

I wonder if we will see something very exciting from :

YAMAHA, ROLAND, KORG, and KURZWEIL ?

What are your expectations as far as these manufacturers are concerned ? Will any of them offer something Awesome, and Revolutionary enough to take HW-Synths to the next level ?

or ... Are we going to see the same old recycling routine, with either downgraded, cheaper versions of existing products, or a few added bells and whistles to their existing products = Nothing too exciting to look forward to.

Your Thoughts, Expectations, Are you feeling Optimistic or ... ?

Cheers, and an Early Happy New Year to All KVR Members,

Muziksculp

Yamaha and Roland have never been exciting for me in the past 10 years (with the exception of V-Synth). Korg, I dunno, they're still milking the Kronos and I presume nothing BIG is coming from them. Kurzweil, probably next NAMM, not this one.

Korg will have something to compete with the Minibrute. The other guys? Forget it!

Bluetooth MIDIfied Wavedrum with support for user samples via SSD.

Steinberg is under Yamaha and Cubase 7 is very exciting. I don't see how any hardware synth can compete with today's Softsynth pallete.

It's the immediacy. And embedded systems are still generally more stable in live conditions, so that's why you will more often see hardware synths rather than laptops live. Although the tides are somewhat changing, but very slowly, and IMHO I don't think they will turn in the foreseeable time. Musicians who play out in bands love hardware. At least, that was my experience.

Now, I wouldn't mind gigging with a laptop, utilizing some of my softsynths, but I would absolutely want to control them from a proper hardware workstation and using the sounds that the workstation has as well, like the Kurzweil PC3K8 I have.

I wouldn't call the Oasys and Kronos proper hardware, since they both run somewhat standard PC components and Linux. They're a mutant, and some of their software are actually ports of Korg's Legacy series plugins. I don't know that Linux counts for "embedded" OS. Hardware like that is slow to load and noisy. I prefer silent (fan-less, harddrive-less) stuff with dedicated software and hardware developed for each other.

Then again, that trend has been changing for a long time. My Akai S6000 is custom hardware and OS but had a fan and hard drive. And admittedly, my Roland V-Synth XT and Korg M3M are slow to start due to moving sample content from storage to RAM, even though they're custom OS and (noiseless) hardware.

But when I turn on my Alesis QS8, it's just ON. BAM! No loading. Right where it was when it was turned off. Sigh. Technology is moving backwards...

Since not much really happens at the Summer NAMM show, I'm guessing that the upcoming Winter NAMM 2013 Show will be when some of these companies will announce, and show their new products.

It won't be long before we either get excited, or disappointed again

Kurzweil VST's and a Roland d-50 VST! (I'm joking )

I wouldn't expect much to be honest

They are not complete ports, versions on OASYS and Kronos do NOT sound exactly the same as their VST counterparts. There's more detail into them.

I would hope they'd be more advanced. But then I also would like to see the improvements ported back to the Legacy series since I already own a license for most of that and cannot afford Kronos, nor justify it with the fact that it's just a computer with plugs and, in some user cases, just as likely to fail as a complicated PC (see Korg Kronos forum).

Yeah, Kronos has been more unreliable than OASYS ever was. If you chech the OASYS forum, you will be hard pressed to find an instance where it failed at a live gig as much as Kronos users have posted. This shows genuine lack of QC and care from Korg's side, and it makes me a happy Kurzweil user, because my PC3K8 has never failed, not once. It's also ready to go in 20 seconds, which can't be said for Kronos.

More like 15 Seconds Evil (At least, the Pc3x is)

PC3K8 here, has non-volatile flash memory so I guess that takes a few sec extra to check up and go.

Didn't you have a PC3x at some point? I could have sworn you did?