Korg KRONOS Workstation Revealed

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Kronos KRONOS Workstation

At long last, the KRONOS workstation is being unveiled at this year’s NAMM show.  This is the successor to the acclaimed OASYS, which was released back in 2005 . As some of you may know, I work at Korg Research & Development.  I’ve spent nearly 10 years (that’s a quarter of my life!) working on the technology that lives inside this beast!

KRONOS nine synthesis enginesThe big “nine” in the teaser announcement hinted at the number of synthesis engines in the KRONOS. In addition to the seven outstanding engines from the OASYS (HD-1 high definition PCM, AL-1 analog modeling, CX-3 organ modeling, STR-1 plucked string physical modeling, PolysixEX analog modeling, MS-20EX analog modeling, and MOD-7 waveshaping VPM), there are two exciting new synthesis engines:

  • SGX-1 grand piano- carefully reproduces every nuance of a grand piano, with over 9 gigabytes of sample data (Japanese and German grands)
 KRONOS SGX-1 grand piano
  • EP-1 electric piano- faithfully recreates six different vintage Rhodes and Wurli EPs, along with a whole rack of vintage effects and full speaker cabinet simulation
 KRONOS EP-1 electric piano

KRONOS continues the OASYS tradition of super high fidelity audio and ultra-low-aliasing oscillators.   The rich feature set in KRONOS is an evolution from the OASYS.  Here are a few of the standout new features:

  • Virtual Memory Technology (VMT) – allows the HD-1 and SGX-1 models to access gigabytes and gigabytes of included sample data from the SSD.    Excellent for massive long drum samples, etc
  • Total sample library over 12 gigabytes- including huge new rock and jazz ambient drum kits, vintage keys, and sound effects banks.   With VMT, all these samples are available all the time, simultaneously, with no long load times.
  • Seamless Sound Transition- lets you sustain voices across combi, program and mode changes, preserving the entire previous sound with all effects.
  • Load an entire rack of 16 effects with little effect on voice polyphony
  • Set List- allows you to organize your combis, programs and songs into a unified set list.  Combined with SST makes for truly seamless performances
  • Drum Track- a library of great sounding grooves at your fingertips, great to play along with
  • Over 1GB onboard RAM- for loading samples or sampling your own sounds
  • Audio/MIDI connectivity over USB
  • Lightweight and portable
  • Many many other features and improvements
  • Very competitively priced
  • Standard Disclaimer: All specifications subject to change! 🙂

It’s excellent to finally be able to share what we, the team at Korg, have been working on for all these years.  There’s a lot of new technology in this synth – we’ve poured our blood, sweat and tears into it.  It will be really exciting to see what the musicians of the world will create with it!

Korg KRONOS

Here’s the official product introduction video, with performance demos by Lyle Mays, Jordan Rudess, Tom Coster, Adam Blackstone, Jae Deal, and our very own Rich Formidoni.

And here is the hour-long NAMM release demo, including performances by Jack Hotop, Eldar, David Haynes, Jordan Rudess:

For complete information, visit the Korg KRONOS website.