MS-20

I love the sound of the Korg MS-20 and I think the sound of the virtual instrument is pretty much spot on! It has the grittyness and quirks of an old analog synth.

Sadly the UI is absolutely horrid! The knobs can't be controlled using mouse rastering. You cant't double click knobs to return them to default values. The text is more or less unreadable even if the UI is scaled to it's max! The preset browser is an absolute nightmare to look at. And you have to go through numerous menus to initialize a default patch.

This might sound like a rant, and it kinda is. I mean the things I mention have no impact on the sound at all, but it really detracts from the user experience when I think about grabbing it for sound design. The immediate thought I get is; "Oh no, now I have to break out my telescope again to read the patch bay".

I would not recommend this synth unless you are absolutely fluent in navigating the patchbay on the original.

Very good MS 20 replica. This synth can make lot of different sounds and it's fun to work with because it have cables.

it fits into any electronic music genre. Usually used for basses but it is capable of distorted leads if you play with cables. I don't use it for basses, leads are much better. It's famous filters are often emulated in synths but original in this VST sound much better.

It's must have synth because it's sound is distinct.

I bought MS20 because I was looking for a simple, cheap plug-in. Something with a lot of character to broaden my sonic palette. I found it!

User Interface
Korg's MS20 is looking great. It's much like the original, so it's pretty easy to get around. Features that weren't on the original are inplemented tastefully, I think. Readability could have been better, especially in the patchpanel, but the biggest drawback of the UI is the fact you have to scroll around the interface.

Sound
I don't know how close it sounds to the original, but I have to say I really like it. It has a very distinct, gritty character. It sounds "real".

Features
I do not like the "one synth fits all" idea. To many developers cramp too much functionality in a single plug-in, IMHO. I like to pick a simple plug-in that fits the character I want and then create a patch from scratch. The MS20 is great for this.

Documentation
The documentation is good. But I could not find a demo online, and I had some trouble with the registration.

Presets
There are enough to demonstrate what this thing can do. But I like, and it's easy, to create my own.


Customer Support
I did not contact customer support. There is e-mail support and an online FAQ. I hope I won't need it.

Value For Money
I picked this up for $50, -. I think that is good value for money. I'd prefer developers to create more simple, cheap synths that sounds as good as this.

Stability
I did not experience any crashes. I used it mainly as a VST in Ableton Live 8.

The MS20... how to write a review on this beast....

Well, for starters lets concentrate on the things it doesn't do. Arpeggiator, built in effects, it only has two oscillators, the envelopes are fairly limited and the *on-screen* gui is a pain to work with because korg seemed to think that we would all enjoy scrolling around a window instead of seeing all the controls in the same view...

oh well.

However. What it does do in its most basic form, is bridge the gap between musical instrument and software. The fact that the MS20IC is a stricly one knob per control affair means that you have total hands on interactivity - something I don't think any other VSTi does. A lot of people have gone through it with spectrum analysers and so forth and done the "well its okay but there's this peak at 22.134Khz that the original does.." - which clearly indicates that these people need to get out more. I've never played the 'real' thing, but as far as i'm concerned this might as well be it. Hell it's the closest I'll get to an MS20 without risking ebay...

GUI, despite the annoyances from the screen version, has to get full marks for the MS20IC.

So how does it sound? Great - really good for basslines, odd weird effects and the filters are superb for running external noises through. I was playing around and before I could say 'homework' I was playing that riff from Da Funk... easily done. The band-pass trick with the High/Low filters is unusual and nice to play with, and the thing distorts to a resonant squeal with ease.

Features are dependent on what you're looking for. It's not Z3ta+ or Absynth, that's for sure, but if you want analogue leads, basslines and effects, look no further. Drop in a few effects from your chosen host for more silliness...

Korg do ship the original MS20 manual with it - can't get better than poorly translated chinese for authenticity - and the patching guide is a good introduction to using the patchbay. It does call for experimentation: which is probably the best way to get the most out of this synth.

Decent number of presets, but again the best thing to do is initialise the instrument from the controller and just play with it - the number of hours spent wondering "what happens if I plug a patch lead from there to there?" are far more fruitful than copying presets.

Customer support is good provided you look on the forums. I had a weird issue when I first got it, wherby the controller wasn't picked up as a midi device. Turned out that I had 10 midi devices installed since my old Edirol UA20 had been installed twice, and neither had been uninstalled since changing to my Firepod: Korg even provided a utility to ditch redundant midi devices so thumbs up to them.

VFM - this is the killer and will probably annoy a lot. I bought this in the UK from Absolute Music online for the grand total of 150GBP for the whole of the legacy collection including the MS20ic. That works out at 50GBP for the MS20+MS20ic - this thing is an absolute (npi) bargain!!

Stability is good so far. I'm about to move to a new DAW so we'll see how things go...