New Korg app .... 'Odyssei' ... also 'Lexington' Gadget add-on

[Numanoid]

Does it sound as good as it looks ?

[goldenanalog]

Does it sound as good as it looks ?

I haven't spent that much time with it yet, Numanoid, so take this snap, one-sentence opinion of ODYSSEi with a grain of salt:

I've briefly put it up against a few of the heavy hitters like iSEM, Sunrizer, & Addictive Pro - it comes away from that as easily one of the best sounding software synthesizers done to date for the iPad - sweet and strong - but I also think that using a stylus would be helpful to accurately edit/create sounds - this is an app that begs for some level of zoom functionality (which it doesn't have, unless I'm missing something)

[Cinebient]

It sounds great. All synths have a different character and this one is a special!
I like it much more than the VST emulation from GForce called Oddity 2.
It doesn't have the balls (and sound quality) of the Moog app for me but you can do some great modulations.
The extended features like polyphony, unison and some nice FX on top are great too.

[Jace-BeOS]

This is what they should do with the rest of their apps: universal iOS app and Gadget functionality. All it needs is AU3 support.

[goldenanalog]

I think that they're well on their way to ruling the iPad world - ODYSSEi may possibly be the best sounding poly of its type available - Cinebient stated that he liked it much more then GForce's vsti Oddity 2 - high-praise indeed, considering that O2 is the defacto standard for a digital emulation of the ARP Odyssey.

But ODYSSEI can also be an 8-note poly on an Air 1 w/a 60℅ CPU load.

Wow. Just: Wow.

Korg may simply not want to waste their time retooling say: their ms-20 & poly6 to import into Gadget - that code may already be embedded in some of their gadgets anyhow (with a base + iap count of over a dozen) - and what imports now into Gadget:

- Module w/all of the iap - which I really like (Yonac's Galileo certainly is the superlative Hammond emu, but Korg's Premier add-on ain't bad at all)

- and iM1 - with all the the M1/T1 libraries & resonant filters to boot

- sums up to quite a bit in total; especially when you throw in the very recent addition of a poly ARP Odyssey -

Importing Midi into Gadget is coming on-line now - and audio recording is on the horizon.

[Cinebient]

Anybody know how to export patch banks without that f..... i-tunes thing?
I hope there is an option. Otherwise i would even ask for a refund here....i can´t believe there is no simple option today in iOS synths to export banks to drop-box, audio share etc.
Sure i just didn´t find it because i use it in my iPhone and it´s a bit small everything.
It must be me, or?

[9headshydra]

and audio recording is on the horizon.

any official link to this ?

[des]

Did I read the system requirements correctly that it is NOT compatible with an iPad 4? Thats what it looks like to me. Would be nice if it would work...

[aMUSEd]

- Module w/all of the iap - which I really like (Yonac's Galileo certainly is the superlative Hammond emu, but Korg's Premier add-on ain't bad at all)

It's interesting that iPad is starting to rival desktop quality now or even exceed it - now we have this new Oddysey, the 2 Moog synths, Mitosynth and Galileo (which sounds better than most VST organs to me and only the Logic organ is as good) which come into this bracket, and some plugins like Sunrizer show also how good things can start on iOS then come to desktop.

[Cinebient]

- Module w/all of the iap - which I really like (Yonac's Galileo certainly is the superlative Hammond emu, but Korg's Premier add-on ain't bad at all)

It's interesting that iPad is starting to rival desktop quality now or even exceed it - now we have this new Oddysey, the 2 Moog synths, Mitosynth and Galileo (which sounds better than most VST organs to me and only the Logic organ is as good) which come into this bracket, and some plugins like Sunrizer show also how good things can start on iOS then come to desktop.

I have to agree. Sure there are still some awesome synths in the desktop world which you will not get anytime soon on iOS but when i imagine what me might get in 2-3 years form now i think about to trade in a few of my desktop tools to buy me a big iPad
I hope some day Logic comes to the big iPad Pro, or at least Sculpture. It runs on damn old hardware which the iPad Pro runs circles around.
What iOS lacks is still a very good reverb and other very high quality FX like Replika XT etc.
But i could imagine that also many developers who don´t want to make iOS apps have to consider this market in the future before they are too late to the party.
I think the only things you can´t do (yet) on iOS are large soundtrack compositions.
But once RAM and CPU rise up it could happen too in some form.
There are a lot of Kontakt instruments where i think it would be so better to perform on a huge multi-touch screen. And windows is still far away.
I think Apple was right to not combine that...even when i always hoped for a multi-touch OSX tablet.
I also think that macOS will be slowly die and in some years when iOS evolved enough for developers to run the full X-code to develop their apps.
I still couldn´t make such productions i make on my notebook yet on an iPad but it´s often so much more fun to play with those beautiful GUI´s on iOS. And here is iOS since the beginning of retina displays far far ahead too.
Uhhhh....another long post slightly off topic

[Numanoid]

I have to agree. Sure there are still some awesome synths in the desktop world which you will not get anytime soon on iOS but when i imagine what me might get in 2-3 years form now i think about to trade in a few of my desktop tools to buy me a big iPad

If connecting a midi-keyboard to the iPad, how easy is it to midi learn the controls on for example the Oddysei ?

Hopefully as simple as touch a lever in GUI, and twist a knob on the midi keyboard and that is it ?

[Cinebient]

I have to agree. Sure there are still some awesome synths in the desktop world which you will not get anytime soon on iOS but when i imagine what me might get in 2-3 years form now i think about to trade in a few of my desktop tools to buy me a big iPad

If connecting a midi-keyboard to the iPad, how easy is it to midi learn the controls on for example the Oddysei ?

Hopefully as simple as touch a lever in GUI, and twist a knob on the midi keyboard and that is it ?

It depends of course on the app but for those which supports midi learn it is easy as that, yes. I didn´t tryed it with the Odyssei yet but i think Korg has a fixed midi cc and in general it seems very unfriendly to export patches too. But it´s no general problem in iOS.
But there are also things which just exist because of the limitations of iOS and makes it a big plus often like that most apps are standalone versions in full screen and often offer even more functionality as their desktop counterparts like midi out, own recorder with overdub etc., phrase recorder, microtuning in the app itself etc.
Desktop plug-ins are much more limited in this to what your DAW offers or not.

[goldenanalog]

and audio recording is on the horizon.

any official link to this ?

No - and I know that these sorts of statements can cause trouble - my apologies if it does -

This info came from another forum a while ago - I read it I believe right around the same time that Gadget was released. Korg apparently has the long-term goal of building a complete recording ecosystem - very much like Reason - on the iPad - that includes midi and audio I/o. The midi part of that statement is concrete: they are working on that now - but it's coming in piecemeal from what I've read. I haven't tried it yet, but i guess that you can't even do a full SMF file import into Gadget.

Their primary focus seems to be adding Gadgets to Gadget that they can charge for, which makes perfect sense from a revenue point of view. This also allows them to build partnerships/relationships - which under ideal circumstances, can be beneficial to all of us, in spite of the (sometimes legitimate) worries (growing pains?) surrounding culture shock, & 'sharing' ip -

As an example of just how convoluted the communication pipeline can be between Korg's world, and their end user's (us) - heres an interesting development @ Korg:

http://microkast.podbean.com/e/korg-microkast-004/

I didn't know anything about this until recently.

[Jace-BeOS]

and audio recording is on the horizon.

any official link to this ?

No - and I know that these sorts of statements can cause trouble - my apologies if it does -

This info came from another forum a while ago - I read it I believe right around the same time that Gadget was released. Korg apparently has the long-term goal of building a complete recording ecosystem - very much like Reason - on the iPad - that includes midi and audio I/o. The midi part of that statement is concrete: they are working on that now - but it's coming in piecemeal from what I've read. I haven't tried it yet, but i guess that you can't even do a full SMF file import into Gadget.

Their primary focus seems to be adding Gadgets to Gadget that they can charge for, which makes perfect sense from a revenue point of view. This also allows them to build partnerships/relationships - which under ideal circumstances, can be beneficial to all of us, in spite of the (sometimes legitimate) worries (growing pains?) surrounding culture shock, & 'sharing' ip -

As an example of just how convoluted the communication pipeline can be between Korg's world, and their end user's (us) - heres an interesting development @ Korg:

http://microkast.podbean.com/e/korg-microkast-004/

I didn't know anything about this until recently.

Thanks for that link. It's great that Wavestation is coming to iOS. It's a shame that they're NOT releasing it with Gadget integration straight off like they did with Odyssei. The only thing Odyssei misses is a desktop DAW plugin (edit: and Audio Unit 3 support on iOS).

Speaking of DAW plugins... With all these iOS versions, they really should be able to update the GUIs for the desktop plugins, because of all the graphics elements made for retina displays.

Korg do seem to have a rather fractured landscape with this stuff, as I said in another thread elsewhere. The stuff is great, but the development seems to be contracted out to other software developers and the integration between platforms is really spotty. I thought Odyssei and Lexington was going to set a new standard for releases, but iWavestation shows that's not the case. Sigh.

[goldenanalog]

I thought Odyssei and Lexington was going to set a new standard for releases, but iWavestation shows that's not the case. Sigh.

You're very welcome for the link, Jace-BeOS! OK, just a theory: maybe Korg learned that porting over a vsti (iM1) was just too resource-intensive - with iM1 being the experiment - so we might not ever see a iPolysix or a iMS-20 (Please prove me wrong, Korg!)

In other words: The Gadgets may all be being built from the ground up.

Here's another thought:

The Wavestation is all about evolving sounds. It does lengthy animated sonically-dominant pads well - sometimes entirely based on a single held key - Korg may simply not see it as a first choice instrument in their multi layered recording environment.

Having said that: it was pointed out in the podcast that it's being released with quite a few sounds - that's what the iM1 looks like, right? And some of iM1's stuff is iap - you have to pay extra for it. I dunno - since it's easy to see Korg guilty of taking a while to get things done (who knows when audio I/o will be in there? I'm confident that it will, but when?) I could see iwavestation first being released as a stand-alone app (w/iap) - and then being made available to the Gadget market sometime in the future - with those of us who bought it as an app (I'll buy it as soon as it's available) getting the Gadget functionality for free.