KVR Audio

quincy · Post by **quincy** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 1:52 pm

Hey,

I have been contemplating buying a hardware synth/groovebox to complement the enormous selection of software i have, and the Korg electribe series seem cheap and look easy to use and fun.

Anyone got any experience with these? I know some of them can act as FX units when fed audio too, so i could use for a variety of things including making loops/sounds and as an FX box for my CD mixing decks.

Any commenst gratefully received.

Quincy

Robert Randolph · Post by **Robert Randolph** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 1:57 pm

They are neat boxes! Not the best sound on earth, but very very fun to play with. always wanted one for myself but never did it....

neat little things they are, Id recommend getting one.

deastman · Post by **deastman** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 2:06 pm

I have the ER1 drum machine. Sounded pretty good when I bought it. Then Attack came out, followed by numerous other software drum synths... now it seems slightly less useful.

It sounds pretty decent, other than weak sounding snares. But for weird synth percussion its great.

My favorite trick is to record it into Sound Forge while tweaking all the knobs for a while, then chop up different sections of the recording to make loops.

dougsyo · Post by **dougsyo** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 2:22 pm

quincy wrote:I have been contemplating buying a hardware synth/groovebox to complement the enormous selection of software i have, and the Korg electribe series seem cheap and look easy to use and fun.

Anyone got any experience with these? I know some of them can act as FX units when fed audio too, so i could use for a variety of things including making loops/sounds and as an FX box for my CD mixing decks.

If I remember right, there are no (or limited) modulations (envelopes & lfos) on the EA, EM, and EMX. I think you can use the internal sequencer automation for some semblance of it, but it's not the same. A good write-up on the strengths and weaknesses of the original EA is at http://www.tweakheadz.com/electribe_page.html and the EMX here: http://www.harmony-central.com/Synth/Da ... MX-01.html

Doug

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 2:31 pm

EA1 - Super fat oscillators but crap filters. Run it through a couple of plug ins and it will sound awesome.

Have you considered RM1x?

Consumer Whore · Post by **Consumer Whore** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 2:47 pm

I got the ER-1 last year and was initially disappointed...

1- Pads are not velocity sensitive, but the box itself response to velocity from external midi sources. The sequencer is ok for sketching ideas.
2- 4 pcm samples for hats n claps. Would have been better if these were extra tone generators.
3- Uses NRPNs instead of CCs - may be an issue?
4- Those tiny, flimsy knobs feel like they'll snap-off any second.

Having said that, I recently hooked it up to my Command Station and it provides a killer kick. Snare sounds are very synthetic - it's not a very flexible sound source. But when they're good they're impressive. The high-freq blips and beeps are good too.

I run mine through a guitar compression pedal .

Might buy a distortion pedal for it too.

Would I buy it again? Prolly not now that I have the E-mu.

WhiteNoise · Post by **WhiteNoise** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 2:56 pm

I have the electribe ER-1, EA-1 and ES-1. They are very fun to play with live.. Like Robert said, not the best sound quality, but the sequencer and the tweakable delay module (included in all of them) are great fun. The ER-1 can't seem to do very 'hard' sounding drums (I think because of wimpy envelopes), but it's good for electroish stuff.. The ES-1 can load any sample and save multiple pattern/sample sets on a memory card. The ea-1 is a very basic synth - not particularly fat, goes nice with the er-1. If you were gonna get one, I'd check out the ER-1 first.

tee boy · Post by **tee boy** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:28 am

White Noise,
You seriously reckon the EA1 isnt fat? Im amazed, i thought this thing was phat with a capital F (or P!). It is very basic, with shoddy envelopes and crap filters admittedly, but the osc's are beef. Biggest deal breaker has to be the NRPN issue - I still dont know how to control the filter via midi! For the money though these boxes arent bad at all.

Deranger604 · Post by **Deranger604** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:43 am

I have an EA-1 laying around somewhere here that I picked up some years ago. It is indeed fun to play with, and nice to take on the road with you if you aren't privledged enough to own a 'nice' laptop. Nice to build basic sequences...

Korg did openly admit that they had to cut corners to met the 'low' price on each of these boxes. Take the into consideration.

MarkM · Post by **MarkM** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:54 am

Can the EM or ER send out mulitple tracks on differing MIDI channel numbers and trigger external synth Modules? And can you record the midi tracks on a software sequencer like Sonar?

WhiteNoise · Post by **WhiteNoise** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:59 am

I've never used it for midi, but I know you can record it's output. It can control other modules, but I think it only outputs on one channel (have to check the manual). You can pick these babies up very cheap. I got the ea-1 for like 100$ on ebay which as far as synths go is dead cheap.

-Dave

Deranger604 · Post by **Deranger604** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 2:07 am

As long as a synth/module has midi out it can trigger other synths/hosts. And, it does send out multiple midi channels, the EA-1 atleast.

jzero · Post by **jzero** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 2:20 am

The Yamaha AN200 can play more than the Korg's 2 synth voices at once. I think it might be five voices...

synthetica · Post by **synthetica** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 3:46 am

My vote would have to go to the ESX-1, although more expensive than the others it is a killer machine, especially since you can load all your own samples, and loops and slice them up and such. I've had the ER1 and the EM1 in the past and you quickly tire of the builtin sample sounds, but with the ESX-1 you can replace all the sounds with your own making it very versatile.

WhiteNoise · Post by **WhiteNoise** » Tue Aug 17, 2004 3:59 am

tee boy - Well, mostly I think it's the filters that are weak. Oscillators are very basic and clean sounding - nothing really bad about them. When I think 'fat' I think 'thick'. There's no PWM or anything to thicken them up and I tend to like thicker sounds.

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