Korg updates its Legacy Collection with a new Arp Odyssey emulation

[Stefken]

Just judging from the videos above, the iMS-20 sounds closer to the real thing, but it is just one patch, so not much to go on.
Off course there is more to the sound of a synth than just the oscillator waveforms...

Anyways, hoping that a decent MS-20 emu comes around.
Diva is for me personally not an option. I think the sound is dated and never convinced me in the first place.

[braj]

Well, I think the only way I'll know for sure how good the plugin is if I buy a real MS20 right now. Would someone care to donate me their credit information? I also take Paypal.

[sin night]

I agree that, from the video, the iMS-20 seems quite close to the MS-20 Mini (the resonance of the lowpass filter is pretty high, which is a good test for softsynths - the simpler emulations usually don't sound good with high resonance).

The MS-20 plugin, on the other hand, doesn't sound as the real thing. I own both a MS-20 Mini and the plugin: beside the fact that the second is clean (while the first is noisy), the plugin sounds softer, smoother, less aggressive than the hardware. It's a nice plugin, but... I hope Korg would improve the emulation on the plugin version, the iMS-20 seems better (based on the video).
I wouldn't sell my MS-20 Mini, anyway (unless for a full-scale reissue, which sounds better).

[PAK]

Just judging from the videos above, the iMS-20 sounds closer to the real thing, but it is just one patch, so not much to go on.

Yes, but also more than you might think..

Listen to the end of the sound where it starts to fade out on the hardware/iPad comparison. Notice what the iPad versions decay harmonics do when it reaches 1:14 in the video.. it's almost a bit like the sound is looping and the sound tails off quicker.

Now listen to the hardware at the one minute mark. There's a repetitive element in there, but listen to how the decay harmonics continue to get more muffled and are going to take longer to tail off? In fact he actually interupts its fade out to play something else.

Now, it could be settings related(!) but this also "just happens" to be a trademark area where you can frequently tell a difference. The decay harmonics are more simplified and often fade out sooner on the digital attempt.

A/B tests are usually pretty meaningless at the best of times, because they tend to stumble around rather than going straight to specific areas of difference like this. So it's nice to actually see one where (intentional or not) it's kinda testing for this

[Stefken]

Now, it could be settings related(!) but this also "just happens" to be a trademark area where you can frequently tell a difference. The decay harmonics are more simplified and often fade out sooner on the digital attempt.

A/B tests are usually pretty meaningless at the best of times, because they tend to stumble around rather than going straight to specific areas of difference like this. So it's nice to actually see one where (intentional or not) it's kinda testing for this

It could in fact be settings related. Again, hard to judge from 1 example.

I can live with some small differences but for me it is vital that the emulation reflects the character of the synth. As sin night (who has both) pointed out, the MS-20 plugin has a different character that is softer and less aggressive. For me also, less detailed and a lot 'simpler' than the hardware synth.

[chk071]

Most A/B's by companies are made to let the synths sound as close as possible. There are really few which actually take similar settings, and check IF they are as close as possible. Or extreme sounds, like NI showed in this comparison:

https://soundcloud.com/nativeinstrument ... comparison

TBH, i have seldom (or let's rather say, never) heard anything like that from any other company. Most just play simple 1 or 2 oscillator sounds with 40 % resonance, which even would make Synth1 sound close, and that's it then.

[EvilDragon]

Yeah, you gotta give props to NI for having balls to do an A/B with such extreme examples...

[Harry_HH]

Just a small report, which continues the reports of CPU-hog nature of Odyssey. especially of some presets.

I just installed the Legacy upgrade Odyssey (BTW, the authorization does not function in the normal way with the Win 10/Firefox, anyway, I noticed that even the Korg has noticed that, because there´s a note in their help that "shut down Windows if the authorization doesn´t reply, I had to try 5 times before it worked).

Anyway, I´ve tested about 30 presets and most of the edit settings. The lowest CPU hit is 20-30 %, the highest 112 % (!), average maybe 50 %. About one third of the tested presets are more or less useless. Its obvious, that Korg has to re-write some parts of the program.

But Odyessey sounds basicly very good, interesting piece, e.g. the feature of setting the Arp modulation parameters.

My desktop is i7 7700K CPU 4,2 GHz, 4 core, 16 RAM, Win 10, Live 9.7. Laptop I have not tested.

[Cinebient]

Yeah, you gotta give props to NI for having balls to do an A/B with such extreme examples...

That is true. Most A/B demos use very simple sounds which doesn´t really take it far enough.
But maybe because the main market is more interested in those bread and butter sounds, i don´t know.
Also a lot of these great emulations doen´t show in the presets what power they can unleash.

[Cinebient]

Just a small report, which continues the reports of CPU-hog nature of Odyssey. especially of some presets.

I just installed the Legacy upgrade Odyssey (BTW, the authorization does not function in the normal way with the Win 10/Firefox, anyway, I noticed that even the Korg has noticed that, because there´s a note in their help that "shut down Windows if the authorization doesn´t reply, I had to try 5 times before it worked).

Anyway, I´ve tested about 30 presets and most of the edit settings. The lowest CPU hit is 20-30 %, the highest 112 % (!), average maybe 50 %. About one third of the tested presets are more or less useless. Its obvious, that Korg has to re-write some parts of the program.

But Odyessey sounds basicly very good, interesting piece, e.g. the feature of setting the Arp modulation parameters.

My desktop is i7 7700K CPU 4,2 GHz, 4 core, 16 RAM, Win 10, Live 9.7. Laptop I have not tested.

Lol, seems very mixed reports here. I was close to buy this and now i think about it again.
A 4 Ghz i7 machine and it can´t even handle all default presets.
That is more than unoptimzed, that would be alpha version.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Any ms-20 lovers should definitely get The Drop. Feed it some nice sounding 2 Osc sound source with a ring mod. I happen to like the ms-20 trilian sound sources into it.

The main problem I think with the Kong ms-20 emulation is weak sounding oscillators. The filters are quite good but there’s no girth to the oscs.

[EvilDragon]

Anyway, I´ve tested about 30 presets and most of the edit settings. The lowest CPU hit is 20-30 %, the highest 112 % (!), average maybe 50 %. About one third of the tested presets are more or less useless. Its obvious, that Korg has to re-write some parts of the program.

My desktop is i7 7700K CPU 4,2 GHz, 4 core, 16 RAM, Win 10, Live 9.7. Laptop I have not tested.

Live.

[Cinebient]

Sorry to ask again but i didn´t find an answer here and Korg won´t help me out with a demo yet.
Anyone used this on a macbook pro and Logic Pro X?
I mean 70 dollar is not bad for a fine working synths which sounds so good but expensive for a demo.
I wonder a bit since there are almost tons of videos when such synths are released. Still nothing to see about the plug-in version of Odyssey.

[Harry_HH]

Anyway, I´ve tested about 30 presets and most of the edit settings. The lowest CPU hit is 20-30 %, the highest 112 % (!), average maybe 50 %. About one third of the tested presets are more or less useless. Its obvious, that Korg has to re-write some parts of the program.

My desktop is i7 7700K CPU 4,2 GHz, 4 core, 16 RAM, Win 10, Live 9.7. Laptop I have not tested.

Live.

Funny if Live is the guilty one. I have about 350 plugins, incl. 35+ synths., none of these have any problem with the Live. CPU per installation is usally 2-8 %, in some rare case over 10 %. E.g. Access Virus Powercore 2 instance, usually less than 10 % total. What is so non-compatibility between the Odyssey and Live?
Do you think they can/will fix that in the Korg?

[EvilDragon]

Not sure. My CPU (viewed from Task Manager) never goes over 10% no matter which preset I load...

What I can see is that only one core is being taxed. So perhaps they could figure out a way to spread the load on multiple cores... Won't work for duophonic mode, but for poly/unison, it should be possible. Just a matter of having the will to do it.


On the other hand, at least with one core being taxed you know that with multiple instances, other cores will be taxed, so it will scale well up until the number of logical cores that you have...