[sdiy] Korg Kronos/Oasys story

[Rainer Buchty]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2011, Tim Parkhurst wrote:

> (buy that M1 now, sell it for $6k in 2020)

I severely doubt that an M1 will be worth *anything* by them...

Back in 1990 I was about to buy my second synth (after getting myself an 
SQ80 in 1988, and, no, it's not a boat anchor -- digital oscillators and 
aliasing aside, that thing rocks synthesis-wise; and with a second CPU 
it would've even had *fast* envelopes... Plus, I truly wish, any other 
of my machines would have such an intuitive user interface, here Ensoniq 
really did it right.) -- and just didn't understand what was so great 
about the M1.

Crappy filter. And for making it sound "fat", you had to layer two oscs, 
so what good is it to have 16 of them when any good sound requires two 
of them anyway. Yeah, right, the dreaded sampled piano.

I wanted a *synth*esizer, not a sampler, thank you.

I went for an SY77 instead.

Today, I would still like to get my hands on a D50 (or a D550, for that 
matter). Or an ARP2600 for its sheer flexibility, but for the moment the 
Bristol emulation (*) must do.

But I wouldn't see any sense in getting an M1.

And this is -- cultic/religious aspects aside -- probably what makes 
certain machines distinct and others boat anchors: having a distinct 
sound.

Rainer


(*) http://bristol.sourceforge.net/arp2600.html