Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Korg also makes their digital and analog ecosystem fairly open at the lower end; analog devices are designed to be easily hackable and they facilitate sideloading of DSP applications; code that runs on this device can also be loaded onto several of their consumer models: https://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/nts_1/

This has a lot to do with why they've been eating Roland's lunch for the last several years, while that latter company keeps trying to convince buyers that completely locked down circuit simulation of classic devices at fancy prices is what the people want.

At the cheaper end of the scale, companies like Sonicware are exploiting commodity-priced microcontrollers for their 12-bit synthesis and processing capabilities. While their own offerings are not open-source, abundant resources exist for anyone interested in processing audio on crunchy chips and you can get into it for about $20 in hardware costs (years of your life not refundable; synthesizers are nerd crack).

Roland is doing just fine selling digital emulations of their classic gear. But they aren't exactly amazing innovative instruments. I look at Roland today as the Gen-X Harley-Davidson: Selling nostalgia gear to aging dudes hitting their mid-life crisis.

Korg has some missteps (the Electribe 2 could be so much better), but seems to still want to make unique, interesting instruments. I'm disappointed in the build quality of the wavestate/modwave/opsix, but their other gear is top notch.

What’s an innovative instrument and does that matter when making music? There’s quite a fetishization of gear happening nowadays, making and buying gear for gear’s sake.

By now one can see that subtractive is king, because it’s easy to understand, sounds great and one can hear it everywhere. And subtractive’s pretty much done, manufacturers are just tinkering with filters, modulation and effects at this point. Popular VSTs nowadays are mixing several types of engines (Pigments) or expanding the set of oscillator waves (Serum). In HW we see more of the same or subtractives.

Subtractive will never get old and Roland classics like the Juno, Jupiter or SH-101 just sound good. The Roland drum machines sound good. I never owned any classics and don’t revere that “Roland sound”, but at the end of the day they sound good, so they’re good - and more importantly they’re enough.

All the innovation happening in sound synthesis seems like over engineering and developing things for the sake of novelty.

An innovative instrument is one that's trying to sound like 2022 and not 1982.

I love the hardware Roland sound. Especially the Juno 60 which is one of the sweetest sounding synths ever made. The Jupiters and Junos are musical in a way that other synths never quite matched.

But the Roland Cloud and Zencore versions are close, but... eh. And Roland Cloud Manager is an absolute clusterfuck of a product. It seems like Roland are all about the money now, and they don't even like their customers all that much.

Meanwhile... I bought ModWave Native yesterday and it's the most fun I've had with a synth for a long time. It sounds nothing like a 1982 throwback. The wonderfully bonkers gravity-well based KAOSS modulation makes the sounds organic and unpredictable, far away from any traditional ADSR/LFO combination.

I don't think it's gratuitous or over engineered at all. It's in a nice spot where there's some interesting added complexity on top of a recognisable wavetable engine.

It also works much better as a VST than as hardware because there's more polyphony, it's easier to edit, and it doesn't take up any space.

There’s nothing inherent to the Juno 60 (to take something with the simplest architecture) that makes it sound like the 80s vs 2022. For electronic music it’s the drum beats, melodies, arrangement, the modulation, filter use and effects that have changed with the times.

Wavetable’s popular right now, so credit due to Korg for putting that out in HW format. On the other hand there’s also Waldorf which built their company over decades around this type of synthesis both in HW and plug-in format. ;-) The thing with wavetable is that it works much better as a VST. One look at the front panel of the modwave lets me know that fiddling with the dozens of buttons and knobs would not be fun for me.

Anyway, there’s hardly anything revolutionary happening in synths. My theory’s that Roland recognized that and are focusing on workflow, availability, interoperability, etc.

Personally I don’t get it why there’s so many new synths being built…

> I look at Roland today as the Gen-X Harley-Davidson: Selling nostalgia gear to aging dudes hitting their mid-life crisis.

So true, and it huuurts. :D

However, one very valid selling point for gear (old or new) is that it is still, by far, a better user/musical experience than software emulation, even with multiple innovative controllers. Either because a screen lack multiple physical points of control, or because software/plugins rights managements are _always_ getting in the way.

Of course, only if you do something with it and it doesn't pile up in a too small room.

Oh, yes, I am definitely on the hardware synthesizer UX train.

Korg is really amazing; they're also doing faithful classic analog synth reproductions like the ARP instruments and their own MS-20 line: https://www.korg.com/us/products/synthesizers/

Open source or open synths is a pretty arbitrary category that few are rushing to compete in because most musicians don’t care how hackable their instrument is.

According to their financials, Roland are doing fine: profit’s down for 2022, but this seems partly related to a very profitable 2021. Can’t find any financials for Korg on their website, oddly enough, but when it comes to synths at least they seem to be competing only in the mid (Minilogue vs e.g. Boutiques) and low (volca vs new Aira trio) range. Korg doesn’t have any flagships any more and have few products in the DJ/production category. They’re apparently also 1/10th of Roland’s size…

Korg is and always has been a labor of love that honors the craftsmanship of individual engineers.

https://www.soundonsound.com/music-business/history-korg-par...

https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/korg-hiroaki-ni...

Roland was founded by a hacker who was rejected from the Japanese university system, but has a little more of a top-down culture. Yamaha is the oldest Japanese music company, having started selling pianos in the 1880s, but focuses more on the pro audio & education markets nowadays. Also the only musical product company with a subsidiary that does everything from racing motorcycles to industrial robotics.

I like Korg, have a couple of their products and think they’re okay. I just never had the impression that they’re “winning” against Roland or even that they’re direct competitors.

The former are focusing on analog machines with some wave/fm detours. The Drumlogue didn’t seem that great from the demo, but the other logues are solid.

The latter make digital emulations of their classics, sell them in VST/cloud format and also in flagship, boutique and now small Aira formats. It seems to be working for them.

The rule of thumb in game making is you can /either/ make and awesome game /or/ an awesome game engine... Unless you're John Carmack.

Likewise, in music you can either make cool music or make cool instruments.

That's so cool! Thanks for sharing that!

Do you know how they're making the synth sounds on the pi? Like are they going full pure-data/MaxMSP/SuperCollider with it or are they still using discrete sound chips?

Mostly in C; check out the Logue-SDK repo: https://github.com/korginc

You might also like this (though I don't know if it's using the R-Pi or is user-moddable): https://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/nts_2_pt/

They may still use discrete circuitry on their high end workstations, but I'm not sure. Korg embraced all-DSP synthesis early while their Japanese competitors (Roland, Yamaha, Akai) maxed out on sample playback and high polyphony. They have always had a narrow focus on synthesis, with minor incursions into the guitar utility/space, whereas Roland has a massive product catalog of electronic instruments (but a highly proprietary ethos) and Yamaha hasn't done anything in years (a pity, as they made great hardware sequencers. Akai is a special case as they basically own the market for hip-hop and its derivatives but are also unable to break out of it. I believe their gear runs on Linux, but like the other two their hardware/software stack is heavily locked down.

Akai has really been disappointing since they were purchased by inMusic brands. They have released a bunch of half baked products with serious bugs. (Looking at you, Akai Force).

Regarding Yamaha and synthesizers I just wanted to mention that I consistently hear rave reviews of the Reface CS. I am more into vintage electric piano sounds than synths and currently own a Reface CP and the sounds on that are legit.

Roland say that their ACB machines are DSP-based: https://www.rolandus.com/blog/2014/02/14/analog-circuit-beha.... That would include the System 8 and Boutiques. I imagine that the ZenCore stuff runs on some SoC, since it’s all software.

The Korgs I like are analog although that’s typically all controlled digitally. Is their purely digital stuff all that successful?

They're using the Pi for the synth sounds, but it's not pure-data/MaxMSP/SuperCollider. They're likely just writing their own DSP and synthesis libraries for it. If you're interested check out https://www.electro-smith.com/daisy/daisy — this uses a lower powered Cortex processor, but you can see how the something like this could work: https://electro-smith.github.io/DaisySP/index.html

They are cannibalizing on 303-808-909. If they only stop with that green leds.

So there are going all those STM32F4...

Small businesses can't access them - they are sold out everywhere and waiting lists are years long, while giant companies like Korg can afford to buy bulk and then flood the market with cheap devices.

This is not cool.

How many devices do you think Korg is putting out?

That is probably their commercial secret, but given that for their price it makes sense for smaller businesses making niche products to buy them up and desolder the required components and they are easily available on Amazon, I'd guess the volume is large.

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