Korg multi/poly

[BONES]

Oh, in reply to the Modal point...no they didn't do digital well. They went bust, so by definition did it wrong. Either was too cheap or couldn't sell enough units, doesn't matter. Korg must be doing something right as they continue releasing really interesting stuff at competitive prices and I applaud that even though this one isn't for me.

To be fair, Korg had a 40 year headstart and they did spend 6 years under Yamaha ownership, having always had a strong business relationship with them. Yamaha even gave them the engineering team from Sequential Circuits to help them along. And Modal are apparently still around, now owned by some Hong Kong based company.

no way I put those digital sounds into a mix and try to enhance them to deserve the space

Then you're a very poor mixer/producer who clearly feels the need to use crutches like Analog Heat in an effort to make up for his inadequacies.

When you hear sounds that by themselves just amaze you, like I played this game Unmechanical and one track example

there is no going back from that. Listen to those bouncing sounds a little bit into that track(about 01:55). All that silk and fluff feel is just enchanting by itself.

Seriously? I turned it up as loud as I could but, honestly, it didn't sound any better than half-a-dozen freeware softsynths I could name. It actually sounds kinda lame.

So decided to get rid of all synths but REV2 and really expand my imagination more since such a toolbox.
- 4 oscillators, 8 LFOs
- double VCF and VCA and Aux envelopes
- 8 gated sequencers
- about 40 modulation options

See, more crutches. This is just a list of features, they make no guarantees about sound quality. And a REV 2 of what? Every ARP synth went through a REV 2 model but none of them had the features you've listed.

It's so weird reading peoples opinions on sounds that are as simplistic and as vanilla as possible.. then somehow trying to convince themselves that it's all "due to being analog".

That just shows that you don't know what to listen for because the simplest synth ever made can sound amazing. Do you know what was the best sounding synth I had in my analogue days? It wasn't my MonoPoly or any of my Roland synths, it was this -



The bottom of the synth was made from cardboard and it ran on a 9 volt battery but there was something so good about it's oscillator. It sounded amazing.

[Old Norse]

And a REV 2 of what?

This, presumably.

Screenshot 2024-10-26 at 14-05-01 Sequential Prophet REV2-16 – Thomann Norway.jpg

[lfm]

no way I put those digital sounds into a mix and try to enhance them to deserve the space

Then you're a very poor mixer/producer who clearly feels the need to use crutches like Analog Heat in an effort to make up for his inadequacies.

No, to make up for the poor cold boring digital sound of the synths.
- more of an analog touch from start on the track

You can throw loads of chorus and a cathedral of reverb on anything and make somehow nice. But they will hard to destinguish from each other after that.

But you can go for decent analog from start and no crutches needed.
- just record it and set volume and pan

So decided to get rid of all synths but REV2 and really expand my imagination more since such a toolbox.
- 4 oscillators, 8 LFOs
- double VCF and VCA and Aux envelopes
- 8 gated sequencers
- about 40 modulation options

See, more crutches. This is just a list of features, they make no guarantees about sound quality. And a REV 2 of what?

Yes, they are features, and that is all we can ask for in a toolbox.
- some don't like the Curtis filters but I don't mind it
- but some does not like Moog filters either, other swear by them

Each for his own.

REV2 is Sequential revision of Prophet 8. Released 2019 I believe.
- so listed as I use it, two layers with features summed
- so with a 16 voice REV2 desktop in my case, that is what you have access to and can be creative how to use it.
- and I don't even feel I need effects to get a good result

Don't know how many times I tried to fix up a not so good acoustic guitar in a daw. And feel that way about anything I record.
- and read a comment by an experienced mixing engineer
- if what you record sound good, nothing to fix later

I quite enjoying exploring a synth and what it can do, without a particular track in front of me. A journey by itself. But very often inspire to a new piece if music even.

From previous conversations I believe you don't enjoy finding new synth sounds very much, more of hands on guy while mixing, kind of. And quite bored with that part as I recall you stated.

[BONES]

No, to make up for the poor cold boring digital sound of the synths.

OK, so your inadequacies are in the patching department. Either way, if you can't make a digital synth sound properly analogue or an analogue synth sound completely digital, you're still not very good at this. Because I can guarantee you that I could play you 10 sounds from 10 different synths and you wouldn't have a clue which were digital, which were analogue and which were hybrids. (I have all three types in hardware.) It's 2024 FFS, these distinctions are meaningless today. I can make far thicker, huger and more insteresting timbres with my softsynths that was ever possible with hardware, analogue or digital. If you can't, that's not because of the equipment, it's all down to the user.

You can throw loads of chorus and a cathedral of reverb on anything and make somehow nice. But they will hard to destinguish from each other after that.

You mean like Vangelis did to thicken up his analogue synths on the Blade Runner score, for example?

But you can go for decent analog from start and no crutches needed.

That, right there, is your crutch.

just record it and set volume and pan

That's pretty much how I work, except for the "recording" part, that's unnecessary when working ITB.

So decided to get rid of all synths but REV2 and really expand my imagination more since such a toolbox.
- 4 oscillators, 8 LFOs
- double VCF and VCA and Aux envelopes
- 8 gated sequencers
- about 40 modulation options

See, more crutches. This is just a list of features, they make no guarantees about sound quality. And a REV 2 of what?

Yes, they are features, and that is all we can ask for in a toolbox.
- some don't like the Curtis filters but I don't mind it
- but some does not like Moog filters either, other swear by them

That's right, some (many) people have ears of cloth but even Bob Moog acknowledged the serious compromises in his ladder filter design. I'd rate the Curtis filter in a Prophet V as anodyne - not good, not bad and with minimal "character". It does the job but it's not something I would lust after. I find most classic analogues to be similar - it's not the individual components/features that make them what they are, it's the phenomenon of the result being somehow greater than the sum of the parts. Nowhere is that more evident than in the ARP Odyssey. There is nothing special about its oscillators or its filter or any other part of it, really, yet somehow the output transcends all of that and can be magical in the right hands. The Prophet is a bit similar. The Model D I get - it has absolutely huge oscillators so as long as you lay off the resonance, you can get some monstrously huge sounds out of it. But imagine how much better than synth would be if it had Tom Oberheim's SEM filter instead of the ladder filter it got stuck with. Actually, you don't have to imagine because we have Diva, which sounds at least as good as any actual analogue synth. And after 12 years or so, there are other softsynths out there now that sound even better.

From previous conversations I believe you don't enjoy finding new synth sounds very much, more of hands on guy while mixing, kind of. And quite bored with that part as I recall you stated.

It's not that I don't enjoy it, it's that I don't rate it as a specialisation. It's just not that hard that you'd see any merit in it as a standalone job, except that there are plenty of people who can't be arsed to actually learn how their tools work and are happy to pay someone else to do that work for them. But I don't see much point in just creating patches, I create patches to do a job and for that there is no need at all to start from scratch, so most of the time I don't. When you think about it, it's a form of collaboration and collaborations always turn out better than solo efforts.

Anyway, back on topic (sort of), Korg is no stranger to editor/librarian software. My Korg microX had a standalone/VST editor, way back in 2007. It allowed way better integration with my PC than any hardware I had owned previously.

[muki]

REV2 is Sequential revision of Prophet 8. Released 2019 I believe.

rather 2017 i suppose:

https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2017 ... nthesizer/





.

[lfm]

That's right, some (many) people have ears of cloth but even Bob Moog acknowledged the serious compromises in his ladder filter design. I'd rate the Curtis filter in a Prophet V as anodyne - not good, not bad and with minimal "character". It does the job but it's not something I would lust after.

What is underrated is the curves of envelopes, that determine how a filter is opened or closed.
- makes a big difference

I liked that about DeepMind for one, having that as a separate thing you modified in envelopes.

In REV2 you do that nicely through mod matrix.
- source as LpEnv
- destination LpAtk, LpDec or similar.

So setting amount positive or negative you go towards exponential or logarithmic.

So you can emphasize a comb or what to call it, in the sound.
- you have both 2- and 4-pole available as well

You're experienced so you know this of course, just mention anyway, talking about filters.
- it's at the cross over frequency it all happends
- so helps to control the curve as well if the envelope sweeping the filter

You do this for a living as I understand, I do it for enjoyment alone. Main thing is progress and getting better and closer to professional mixes. That's why I prefer getting a nice a sound from start on track, rather than spending a lot of time trying to fix something.

Had a great time with exploring Opsix, and as my ears calibrated to that sound I went over to REV2 and just felt
- I am not going to move this Opsix stuff into a mix
- something is missing

A bit like when having too long a session mixing, when you come back to it later
- what was I thinking, this sounds crap
- did not refresh ears often enough with reference material

As VST synths go, Waves Element is great sounding synth.
- but as I do, removing all effects while working on a sound, it's rather plain in the core sound

A lot of people praise Virus(not sure model) as a hardware synth, so maybe they did better than most digital synths. Digitally it's all math. Softube built a company around doing "good math" getting analog sound. If processing power is high enough it can be done for sure.

It's one thing with Vangelis soundscapes or having to barry a sound in reverb and/or chorus, phaser etc because of poor tone quality from start. Which was not the case with him of course.

I still have Jon And Vangelis "Short stories" on vinyl. Great album.

[BONES]

What is underrated is the curves of envelopes, that determine how a filter is opened or closed.
- makes a big difference

Sometimes. Certainly for punchy basslines. The thing is, though, that it's mostly analogue synths that have fixed envelope curves, so it's only really a limitation in that world.

- it's at the cross over frequency it all happends
- so helps to control the curve as well if the envelope sweeping the filter

Which, of course, is where ladder filters fall over.

You do this for a living as I understand, I do it for enjoyment alone.

No, it's just a hobby for me. I have a career outside music.

Main thing is progress and getting better and closer to professional mixes. That's why I prefer getting a nice a sound from start on track, rather than spending a lot of time trying to fix something.

Same here. I use very few effects, including EQ, on anything. I rely on getting the sounds right from the instruments, which keeps mixes simple and easy to work on.

Had a great time with exploring Opsix, and as my ears calibrated to that sound I went over to REV2 and just felt
- I am not going to move this Opsix stuff into a mix
- something is missing

That's how hardware synths tend to sound in my mixes. They generally need way more work than softsynths, which is why I stopped using them. Mostly they are good "for what they are", i.e. if I compare them to a synth with the same features, they can hold their own most of the time. But the thing is that there are softsynths with features that leave hardware for dead. My usual example is ArcSyn, which allows me to layer 384 sawtooth waves on a single note. No hardware can compete with that.

A bit like when having too long a session mixing, when you come back to it later
- what was I thinking, this sounds crap
- did not refresh ears often enough with reference material

I can't say that's a problem I've ever had or a thing I've ever done (using reference material). I do my own thing because I know exactly what I want to achieve and it has nothing to do with anything else. The last thing we want is to sound like 50 other bands in the genre.

Digitally it's all math.

It's ALL "all math". The engineers who make analogue synths are just as reliant on maths as software developers. It's just different maths.

I still have Jon And Vangelis "Short stories" on vinyl. Great album.

I don't like that kind of stuff at all. The stuff we do relies on hugeness. We need to be able to blow guitar riffs into the weeds and digital does that much better than analogue, whether it's the massive unison of my Ultranova or hundreds of stacked waveforms in a softsynth.

[zerocrossing]

When you hear sounds that by themselves just amaze you, like I played this game Unmechanical and one track example

there is no going back from that. Listen to those bouncing sounds a little bit into that track(about 01:55). All that silk and fluff feel is just enchanting by itself.

It's so weird reading peoples opinions on sounds that are as simplistic and as vanilla as possible.. then somehow trying to convince themselves that it's all "due to being analog".

Those are some absolutely bog standard super simple sounds going into a filtered delay.

Has absolutely nothing to do with what can and can not be done with pretty much any basic decent synth, be it digital or analogue.

I’ve had/have many analog synths, and I can attest that in 2024 there are plenty of software synths that hang with my hardware analogs with no problem.

Korg’s ARP 2600 plugin
Everything from GForce
Everything from Softube
Reaktor
Repro
Legend, Legend HZ
Many of the newer Arturia plugins
Etc.

I’ve owned a Prophet ‘08 and a REV2. Fine synths, but not without some pretty obvious weak points. It’s not that hard to get them to sound thin, if you’re not careful. I decided that I didn’t really need that flavor of DSI/Sequential, as I also have a Prophet 12, which shares their filter and does a lot more. Stupid they didn’t make the 12 more like the Evolver and use the chip’s oscillators, but oh well.

I generally can find less than great sounds on all synths. It’s the nature of reality. It bugs me that my ATC-X’s VCA doesn’t close all the way, but I’m so used to it now that I don’t notice it because I program around it. It sounds fantastic, otherwise. I’m told its envelopes are slow, but maybe I’m slow, because they seem fine to me. My Nina is one of my favorite sounding synths of all times, but using the digital oscillator as a mod source sounds like garbage. I love the sounds I can get from my Uno Synth Pro X, but the raw oscillator waves sound really odd.

Anyway, that’s my point. Nothing is perfect, and either you can exploit what it is to your own advantage, or not. To me, digital is so good these days, even at mimicking analog, that I don’t even really consider the underlying technology and just judge each instrument for what it is.

[mjolnir]

as usual, Korg's filters seem to sound pretty good to my ears.
I just wish Korg would tend to be friendly in terms of USB Class Compliancy.

[danatkorg]

as usual, Korg's filters seem to sound pretty good to my ears.
I just wish Korg would tend to be friendly in terms of USB Class Compliancy.

wavestate, modwave, opsix, and multi/poly all have USB class-compliant MIDI.

[mjolnir]

as usual, Korg's filters seem to sound pretty good to my ears.
I just wish Korg would tend to be friendly in terms of USB Class Compliancy.

wavestate, modwave, opsix, and multi/poly all have USB class-compliant MIDI.

ah thanks. that's good news. i didn't realise that.
for a while ago there were online reports of people having trouble with korg's usb midi keyboards.
but maybe i got my facts mixed up sorry.

[lfm]

as usual, Korg's filters seem to sound pretty good to my ears.
I just wish Korg would tend to be friendly in terms of USB Class Compliancy.

wavestate, modwave, opsix, and multi/poly all have USB class-compliant MIDI.

ah thanks. that's good news. i didn't realise that.
for a while ago there were online reports of people having trouble with korg's usb midi keyboards.
but maybe i got my facts mixed up sorry.

...with modification...

The midi ports are class compliant over usb, nothing else.
- midi in and out to hook up a sequencer

But if wanting to update firmware, or the librarian you need their specific drivers and protocols.
- quite a procedure but works if following instructions
- as I recall no sysex either, so for backup of data must use protocols

I had plenty oddities starting with KingKorg and midi ports too.
- but doing the new protocol driver for Wavestate and Opsix has been fine
- some issues with Prologue and librarian though, if I chose midi ports it did not work, but if just let librarian go automatic it worked fine

[mjolnir]

as usual, Korg's filters seem to sound pretty good to my ears.
I just wish Korg would tend to be friendly in terms of USB Class Compliancy.

wavestate, modwave, opsix, and multi/poly all have USB class-compliant MIDI.

ah thanks. that's good news. i didn't realise that.
for a while ago there were online reports of people having trouble with korg's usb midi keyboards.
but maybe i got my facts mixed up sorry.

...with modification...

The midi ports are class compliant over usb, nothing else.
- midi in and out to hook up a sequencer

But if wanting to update firmware, or the librarian you need their specific drivers and protocols.
- quite a procedure but works if following instructions
- as I recall no sysex either, so for backup of data must use protocols

I had plenty oddities starting with KingKorg and midi ports too.
- but doing the new protocol driver for Wavestate and Opsix has been fine
- some issues with Prologue and librarian though, if I chose midi ports it did not work, but if just let librarian go automatic it worked fine

thanks for explaining.

[danatkorg]

as usual, Korg's filters seem to sound pretty good to my ears.
I just wish Korg would tend to be friendly in terms of USB Class Compliancy.

wavestate, modwave, opsix, and multi/poly all have USB class-compliant MIDI.

ah thanks. that's good news. i didn't realise that.
for a while ago there were online reports of people having trouble with korg's usb midi keyboards.
but maybe i got my facts mixed up sorry.

...with modification...

The midi ports are class compliant over usb, nothing else.
- midi in and out to hook up a sequencer

But if wanting to update firmware, or the librarian you need their specific drivers and protocols.
- quite a procedure but works if following instructions

wavestate, modwave, and multi/poly use only standard drivers on both macOS and Windows; no custom drivers. The updaters and Editor/Librarian use networking over USB, via the NCM drivers built into both macOS and Windows. On Windows, the installer also includes Bonjour. Early on, installation on Windows required a dozen steps or so, but not anymore. Here are the Windows installation instructions in their entirety:

Windows
To install the software on Windows 10 or later (earlier versions are not supported):
1. On the multi/poly, make sure that the USB Network parameter is set to NCM.
For more information, see “USB Network must be set to NCM” on page 4.
2. Double click “Korg multi/poly Editor/Librarian [version number] Installer.exe.”
The installer will start.
3. Follow the on screen instructions to complete the installation.
The installation will run, including the Editor/Librarian application, Apple Inc.’s Bonjour, and NCM networking support (using standard Windows drivers).
4. Connect your multi/poly to the computer via USB.
In some cases, the multi/polys may not be immediately recognized after installation. If this occurs, simply restart your computer.

[danatkorg]

To be fair, Korg had a 40 year headstart and they did spend 6 years under Yamaha ownership,

This is a side point, but from what I understand through working at Korg for 30+ years, that's not quite correct. Yamaha made a business loan to Korg, which was then paid back. Korg also used Yamaha keybeds for a time.