Winter NAMM 2013 releases
 

New stuff from all around NAMM 2013.

Dave Smith Inst. - Prophet 12 (this looks killer!!):-






Moog Sub Phatty:-




King Korg (virtual analogue):-
http://www.korg.com/kingkorg



King Korg pics: Top ~ Front panel


Korg MS-20 mini (new re-issue, full analog):-
http://www.korg.com/ms20mini





[MS-20 Specifications in English]


Wavedrum Global:-
http://www.korg.com/wavedrumglobal




Elektron Analog 4:-

(albeit a couple of weeks ago)


Alesis Vortex controller (80's baby!):-




Yamaha Mobile Music Sequencer (for iPad):-



Heard nothing about Access-Music yet. Not sure if we can expect anything. There are no splash teasers on their website.

Ableton Live Push:-

Holy titty mo'foking cunty bollox bastard mother of God, more on the new Prophet!...

2:50+



12 x voices of 5 x oscillators per voice (4 + 1 sub).

And priced the same or less than a TI2 KB. ($3K).

For me, as Ableton user, Push seems absolutely revolutionary as instrument and new workflow approach to musical ideas. Fantastic!

The DSI Prophet 12 makes me drool like what bacon and donuts are to Homer Simpson!!! Really a great price point for what you are getting and I can attest to DSI build-quality and customer service to be supreme! Drooooool!

Would love to have a Prophet 12, but at the moment I'm actually more excited about the KingKorg. The filters sound really nice to my ears in the demo vids and also the audio demos Korg has already put up. Maybe I need to hear some more demos of the Prophet 12... I hate to admit it but sometimes the person playing makes a big difference to me, and once I hear a range of sounds I like it's hard to resist. More important to me than hearing about the tech specs. Maybe I need to hear someone else demo the Prophet 12? The KingKorg for only $1300 though! Damn..

I honestly do not hear ANY difference between KINGKORG and my Radias and it seems to be a Radias with better keyboard and some new filter emulations. You can get an used Radias Rack and use any keyboard with veloc/aftertouch and pretty much for an used price of $700. max. I have only kept my currently only Korg, the Radias, because it really is an understatedly deep synth with many possibilities and in fact the Korg product page states it's built upon next stage of Radias--FYI, so may want to look into that because companies like to often re-wrap and sell same (take Triton Engine for example) by inventing a new name and this case instead of MMT it's XMT--same by any other name. Nor am I attempting to pop your GAS for something that appeals to you but having Radias already and seeing a repackaged 97% Radias, to perhaps save you some cash. Matter in fact, there's times I have got "similar" sounds as the Virus, but stress the *similar* here. What's advantagious about the Radias is it has 3 seperate modulation sequencers, 2-32 step sequencers, and many Arps as well and is a great tool and augmentation to our Virus with the difference though, as much as I have tried (maybe not hard enough yet) to make Radias sound as "dark and dirty" as our Virii can, have not been able to do so but Radias excells in other areas and also has very same PCM drums, etc as KINGKORG. something might consider as an affordable alternative IMHO.

It could just be that I never paid enough attention to the Radias... although I like what I hear w/regard to filters, so maybe the new filters are what's grabbing my ear? dunno, but thanks for the input.

You could run say the Radias' output into the Virus for extreme filtering.

Yes, Radias cannot sound dark, it's far too bright, surgically clean and digital sounding.

Personally I'm not fully taken with the Radias sound and programming engine. The Radias has one, very good, fully featured oscillator, but the second oscillator is crippled, it can't even do PWM. Furthermore, activating a sub-osc lowers overall voice count by a third (or thereabouts). I end up having to duplicate timbres if I want to have PWM or other oscillator types for both oscillators, purely because Osc 2 is incapable of doing so. This is a bummer when you have to keep on duplicating parameters on both timbres so they match, and polyphony is halved due to twice as many timbres being used. The Oasys/Kronos AL-1 (which the Radias engine is derived from) had two fully featured oscillators, even the Z1 did back in 1995 (even including physical modelling!), so why not the Radias?

If the King has at least two oscillators that are fully featured, then that would be great. If all three oscillators are fully featured, it'd be killer.

KK has 127 types of oscillators (many are PCM or DWGS), but 64 are 'analogue' & noise waveforms, which can only be good. Sounds like the analogue waves go far beyond the standard four Saw/Pulse/Sin/Tri waveforms plus noise. I'm extremely intrigued as to what the rest of those particular waveforms are.

The main bonus with the King over the Radias is the filters. Having a complement of filter types available is a huge boon. That acid filter simulation that Richard Formidoni demo'd on the King in the video (posted above) sounded spot on, and the Moog filter sounded pretty good too.

The King has no aftertouch, though, which is unforgivable for a synth that price. The same happened with the Radias KB....

However it does have the XY joystick, although normally I'd use these for Pitch and Mod duties while using aftertouch (and ribbon) for further expression. I come from the Korg Trinity days with XY joystick, XZ ribbon, two switches, velocity AND aftertouch!

The 6-in, 6-out modulation matrix sounds the same as the Radias, which pales in comparison to something like the Virus, or even the Z1. The King's two LFOs and two EGs are measly. The Radias has two LFOs and three EGs. The Oasys/Kronos has four LFOs and four EGs. Even in 1995, harking from the Z1 days, we had four LFOs, five EGs, and routings galore!

Rich Formidoni (Korg product manager and demo guy) stated the King has no MIDI zipper artefects on the knobs (when turning them slowly), obviously some sort of smoothing interpolation, like the Virus has always had, which is fantastic. The Radias doesn't have this.

Where the Radias triumphs is the the mod-sequencing & drum elements - obviously the King lacks all that, but it's not trying to be the Radias, it's aimed at a different type of use.

Admittedly, though, the whole front panel on the King appears a bit of an elementary doofus. Osc, Filter, Amp should've been on the left, and the effects controls on the right. As it is, your left arm will be crossing over your right hand all the while when you reach for the filter and oscillator knobs.

Yes, agree with all you stated. TIMO, do you have O.S. 2.0 loaded on Radias? The free Radias Editor is one of the best implimentations of an editor that alows one to get even deeper in the matrix and programming that is deeper that all those knobs do not allow. It's a free download and Korg also updated the midi and usb driver prior to Winter 2012.
Yes, Radias has its inherent limitations and really wished the modulation and step sequencer would work on external synths but that's what I recently got the first version of Elektron Monomachine SFX60+ MK1, as it will do all that having internal as well as extensive external sequencing. It's just such a different approach, will need to dedicate alot of time solely on wrapping my head around it. If the Elektron Analog 4 is given polyphony (which the engineers are planning and working on plus many more features), I may well consider it one day when it is a more mature instrument. Sonic Lab did a 25 minute intensive interview with Elektron Swedes and the A4 if you are wanting to check it out.
Robert

I'd like to see aftertouch on any synth, but when I compare the price point with what I'd get in a Virus Snow for about the same amount, the KK still keeps my interest.

That's why is really pragmatic to even acquire a good older keyboard that has aftertouch or even rare polyphonic aftertouch that you may not use the synth per se but utilize it as a much better midi controller than what's quite unforgivable in the vast array of midi controllers on the market today. One such example that could be got via ebay often quite cheap and is actually still a rather innovative board for synth design is Kawai K1 or K2, K3, K4...when Kawai was making synths (which their quite advanced Additive Synthesis K5000S/K5000W/K5000rack was last synth then focused to this day on high quality acoustic piano and digital offerings), they were really quite innovators and their key-action was bar-none. You may even already have a synth you may not use that's delegated to closet for now or one in set-up that's not used much that you can use to get the most out of an otherwise cool synth that I too find unforgivable to place a crappy set of keys on it. The Alesis ION is such a synth! SUCH a deep synth and reason I keep it but to place almost toylike keys on such a sunth is like designing a clarinet with a crappy mouthpiece!! On the Alesis Ion, understandably, it is very GREAT an emulating other classic synths with it's huge array of filters and deep mod matrix, but the ION is one of those synths that does not have a reputation for "it's own ION sound"...but is again another stereotype because it too has external stereo input to run other's through it to take advantage of those wonderful filters and had always wished Alesis had released a rack version of ION for that inexcusable set of very synthy keys, YET in it's NRPN rather than MIDI standard, it CAN respond to aftertouch--it's an example of engineers rather than musicians designing a synth.
The excuse many synth makers have made is "aftertouch never quite caught-on..blah blah", well, aftertouch is AWESOME to send variety of mod matrix routings to as our great Virii can attest to as well as very same keyboard used on DSI MEK....love that type of Fatar keybed to death! However, Access DID use a totally different Fatar keyboard for the Indigo and Polar shorter board Virii...why, do not know!
Rant over but being a lover of aftertouch, it is salt to my wound!

It's all about what YOU like in the end~! Like I said, was not intending on trying pop your 'GAS' for KK, just thought you should know what is very similar in this still-dire economy to make your denero go furthest!

I don't mean to ignore your comments about buying used gear, they are all well-taken, but this thread is about new NAMM-announced gear so I'm trying to keep that on track.

Just watched Sweetwater's YouTube from NAMM and an excellent demo of the Korg MS20 using external signals here> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUrCO...oYx4WQ&index=8
very exciting times indeed! Yes, back on track! Sweetwater also has a great demo on KingKorg as well just scroll through other videos they have posted from NAMM. I love Sweetwater because they are an hour North of where my parents live and I grew-up in next State over from where I reside. In the USA, save from NOVA Music, Sweetwater has best customer service as well while not feeling like you are being pecked for a commission as they keep the prices competetive. Their TC Helion Voice Live 2 Demo is out of this world and that woman's voice is simply dreamy!

Seen in various videos:

double saw/square, unison saw (this is just what i have spotted)

oberheim, TB, P5, MS20 and 'Korg' (Radias?) filter types.

Yes, it seems they have more fully featured osc types as Radias alone. What I love about Radias that hope they passed-onto KK is ability to use a rather advanced formant motion filter to record several 7.5 second samples of voice or ANY external recording, et al and THEN use it as an osc type and all the virtual patches. When looking at Radias features, as I mentioned to TIMO, it's important to see the massive update O.S.v2.0 brought to it and an editor with up to date drivers that's barnone than I have seen from other synths rather than from a third party...and free, of course. This NAMM, Korg definitely showed innovation AND safely would say coupled with DSI Prophet 12, kinda overshaddowed Moog's "budget sub-phatty".
I can confirm that the DSI Prophet 12 is not only 5 Osc per voice, but ONE of those is full spectrum of Wavetables and other goodies from the Evolver series and some NEW atmos-parameters for sound. He does use DCO's, totally analog osc's that are simply digitally stablized but many tools to create total chaos. My Sweetwater rep gave me quite the low-down but am only interested in preordering the Korg MS20....am SO AMPED!!!

The Prophet 12 is DSP-based for the oscillators. Not DCO.

My Sweetwater Rep confirmed only the Wavetables are DSP, Dave Smith is using the same Curtis Chips (DCO) for analog osc's stabilization, as he has used for all analog osc's in DSI incarnation. My contact at DSI that I do not toss his name around for good reason also has relayed same to me when assisting me with the two monoevolverkeyboards and the polychain set-up on each with desktop evolvers. There's nothing wrong with DCO as the difference between a VCO and DCO is simply the stability of osc to stay in-tune or however you may want to detuen it is not affected by cold temps, etc. The Wavetables need the DSP. DSI took the best from their PolyEvolver and Prophet 08 with alot of newer sound sculpting tools and knob per function with very little menu diving.
However, I have no intention of arguing one way or another as all it does is cause unwanted divide when as musicians and Cultural Creatives, should go to the source if you want to see the answer in your email box.

We'll see. Some sources say they are totally DSP...

Or as Dave Smith himself says, the front end is 'digital' because they wanted to be able to do things that analog can't do.

Well, rather than relying on "some ether sources", send an email to DSI and hear the truth from their great customer service. Drives me batty when people do not state where they get their sources and tend to believe anything posted by more than likely sour grapes posters. There's a mental-state of some posters on various pro-forums that will actually intentially throw out misinformation in a socialpathic way. Even Dave Smith himself sates in one of his demos they are DCO's just as he has used in past but LIKE the Evolver, of which the "best of the Evolver series technology" he stated is incorp. in Prophet 12 and that is on the Wavetables, output hack, four delays can be places in sugnal path of each osc, et al. Speculative factOIDS without sources have no merit esp. when continuing in repeating such rumourmill without checking for facts. The term "DSP" can be used rather loosely as you can find some DSP chips within even new Moogs...transistor's by another name. Check the source and even call/email Sweetwater in USA. Knowledge sets one free, but slaves one when based on total uncertainly in repeating "what one has simply HEARD without qualifying that repeated uncertainty and is not productive at all.

HENCE THE TERM APPLICABLE..."ANALOG/DIGITAL HYBRID"...it's not that difficult to wrap one's head around. I own two DSI monoEvolver keyboards and each voice has two DCO analog osc's and 2 Wavetable DSP Osc's...of whci is part of Prophet 12 archetecture.

DSI Forum seems to be down so I can't link to Pym's replies about it. Pym is Chris Hector, a DSI employee.

Ok, on the DSI Forum, Pym describes the oscillators as the following:

No "two analog two digital oscillators"

No "two analog two digital oscillators"....was an analogy to the Evolver structure.
Why then is Dave Smith himself stating TRUE ANALOG? NEVER in any NAMM videos did he use "ANALOG-MODELING" (VA by another name)???? Are you then trying to say the 5th osc/sub osc would be the ONLY analog osc? Sorry, do not buy it. MY rep at Sweetwater is going to post to my email when he gets time to clear-up this misinformation because Dave Smith has never been known to mince words and call something "real analog" or "analog synth" and it not be true, even as with the Evolver series where most in fact is analog but a good 30% is indeed also digital or more.

OR--if Dave Smith is using the word "analog rather loosely", are you saying the new Prophet 12 would be more like the Waldorf Q+ where you had DSP modeled osc's of various type (and to this day the Q is hard to really call a "VA"), and LIKE the Q+, having REAL ANALOG LPF, HPF, VCA? Digital EG's and Digital 4 LFO's?

you must be watching a different Dave Smith than the one in the video above, where he says "...It has a digital front end..." and "... we went with digital because there were things we wanted to do that you just couldn't do with analog..."

I do happen to occupy myself within an alternate dimension of time and space from result of a rather nasty series of military experiements...however, there's aspects to the DSI Prophet 12 that ARE analog and it's not 'wishful thinking' nor any aversion to digital--hell, I have two DSI monoEvolverKeyboards with Desktop Evolvers polychained and am on this forum for a reason for love of the virus KB/KC.
"Language is a virus from outerspace...", and somehow think you are stumbling over it because in all tense, we both are correct, as it indeed is a hybrid, even if the analog portion(s) are within the filters/vca. Nice thing about NAMM is it brings about critical thinking and communication that perhaps may not have taken place otherwise. My ego nor id have any requirement to be 100% correct but think agreeing to disagree until full specs are actually posted on DSI website (they are not), we may just have to both wait and until then, move-on and twiddle knobs and make music or at least digital and/or analog screams into space.

I never said the filters weren't analog.

I'm pretty sure the specs Pym posted on the DSI Forums are accurate. Since he works there and all...

no real need to come across as such an obnoxius __s!

You two make a good team. :p

Apparently, a good team of oxen!:p What's 'blue' to him would most probably be 'turquiose' to me! In the end, all points to continued vitality of DSI, a small company that continues to innovate and sometimes aggravate!:confused: :D

Easy, guys. :) It hasn't even been released yet.

Found these (by Pym) on GearSlutz:

no need to keep trying to tell me I'm wrong after I've shown references.

Thank you, TIMO! Yes, it appears I am mistaken on analog osc's and am man enough to admit that. There's definitely a hybrid here because I clearly read analog LPF/HPF/VCA, et al.
This year's NAMM has certainly excited ALOT of we synth-geeks! When one takes statistics into count, this little 'discusion' is but a microcosm in the most excitement over a new synth release in quite a while. I DO hope other companies are acknowledging that as technology evolves and innovates, we as musicians kind of like to do the same as Cultural Creatives. (a hollow few knocks on Waldorf Castle's Dungeon Door:rolleyes: !!!) DSI is going to sell a ton of these! They are not expected to be shipping according to Sweetwater here in USA, June, 2013. (that would be June 2015 in Waldorfian Time-Frame:rolleyes: )!!!
Thanks again, Timo!

No worries...you are doing a GREAT job of showing your *refrences* to sizable ego and id! Are we 12?

I don't know, are you? I've been 12 a few times over now.

Seriously, I'd love a Prophet 12, its just even further out of my price range than a Ti2 Keys is :( I have nothing against hybrid synths, I own two already (ESQm and K3m) and a VS is one of those 'someday' synths for me anyway. Too bad the P12 doesn't have a joystick (despite Yamaha owning Sequential's vector synthesis IP, that patent would have expired about eight years ago) (and yeah, I say the same thing about the Evolver)

It makes a lot of sense to use digital oscillators on this one, as it brings more precision and versatility into the mix.

But overall, I think the Korg MS 20 is much more then a classic, since it now has midi in, and usb connection for triggering notes. It also has, like the original, the possibility of using audio - like a guitar or other synth to control it. And just thinking of what I could do with it gives me chills. Much more so, then having some digital oscillators feed into some analogue filters and fx, I think. Which one can also do with say, the Virus going into the MS 20... Or even a software synth like Zebra with my own designed wavetables, easilly. Because of that, I think this thing really calls for creativity, while also providing all the retro sound and feel you can dream off.

If there's a wish list for recreations of classics, I'd go with the Roland SH 101!

And btw, having 12 voices using digital oscillators isn't that much impressive, really. One thing about it, though, and all the DSI's keyboards, is that it looks like it's built like a tank! Must be great for live performance!

and the MS-20 Mini, I can afford :D