King Korg vs. Nord A1 For Ambient, Chill.

I can get the KK for $1050 A1 Rack for $1350. A1 is 4 part Multi-Timbral.

owned a KK.....hated the interface.....amazing sounding synth though

A1 also has 4 outs and a knobbier interface - think of it as four separate engines under the hood.

You can't go wrong with either - they are both state of the art VA machines. I personally prefer the A1 no-menu approach to doing things (it is super fast to dial in sounds), and I think it sounds better too (in fact it's hard to make it sound bad). It would be an ambient monster.

The KK has its fans too, but the UI really turned me off.

For ambienty stuff i would go with the korg. The Nord has a stronger presence, soundwise (who would have guessed for a synth called the nord lead ).
Meanwhile the korg sounds a bit more 'airy' to me.

But i would recommend something sample-based for ambient more than a VA if you didn't make this a kingkorg vs nord lead.

I've only looked at the reviews/demo's of this, but it looks like it totally solves the KK interface issues while adding a cool new feature to it.

Nord Lead 4

the A1 has a very complete FX section

So does KK, really.

Doesn't the korg have extensive effects as well?

@ EvilDragon : Yeah, tought so.

What would you recommend?

does it have Chorus and Ensemble?

Nothing particular, there is just so much out there that makes ambient.
Any rompler with synhty sounds would probably be more usefull for ambient than something with a VA sound path. Sample based oscillators get you much more spacey tones that analogs and VA's just cannot create. But then its up to taste.

And there are a lot of in-between synths like virus that will put more interesting oscillators in a subtractive synth path.

And dont forget the reverb, probably the single most important part of any ambient music.

I know your question was directed @ the KK, but it reminded me to mention how good the Ensemble effect is on the A1. It oozes "Ye Olde String Machine" sonics and it can add a nice dusty vibe to the A1 sound overall if used in moderation.

It does have a chorus. Not ensemble, though.

I have both of them and on sound alone,it's very dificult to compare them as with which is better, i can't really do it as they sound different. That said, Korg know how to put a "sheen" on their synths and the KK has this, however the A1 can sound quite Analogue, even to the point of doing similar strings to my Prophet 08. In terms of making sounds, the A1 is a lot easier and more flexible...the amount of patches i've made with just the patch generator is incredible and for the KK you really need Patch Morpher to get the best out of it. The A1 is small, a lot smaller than the KK, but of course that's 49 vs 61 keys, but i would say the build quality is much higher on the A1, the Korg is plastic injection molding and it "creaks" when you move it...one drop and i think it would shatter.

One of the big things though is support, the A1 has a great librarian and there are hundreds of Artist patches, the KK on the other hand has never been supported by Korg, not an update to the firmware/os and some half assed librarian. For me, knowing what i do now, it would be the A1 as my choice.

I have both and completely agree with these comments. I would choose the A1 over the KK.

What issues would a firmware update fix in KK?

I like the King Korg, as it's one of the few 5-octave boards and it's targeted at band musicians.

However I found editing, especially with layer / splits on, VERY fiddly, constantly switching between menue pages and shift-button-functions and knobs. As there is no editor, I can only imagine programming it if you have all your sounds prepared on another device and rebuild them on the KK. Creative programming is a pain.

The synth engine however is quite potent. The effects are plenty but can't do reverb and delay at the same time. Tube drive is a gimmick and doesn't do anything good beside a small boost at low level. I'd prefer a filter drive simulation.
Feature wise, the KK is great, I feel like it can do more with one of the three oscillators than the entire A1 osc section. More filters, full adsr, more lfo options and many more modulation targets, voc, better arpeggiator. But all that good stuff is not visible, it's deep in the manual and the menues.

The price of the KK is about to drop significantly. Below 800€ now. That could make it quite a bargain.

A cheap KK would be very tempting indeed.
I used to have an A1 and while the sound was great I was very quickly frustrated with the limitations. I think if I was to buy another Nord it would be the Nord Lead 2/2X for the lovely crunchy sounds.

KingKORG. I am used to the menu setup, as it's nearly identical to the paging on the MS2000 (the workflow is extremely similar), so this isn't a complaint for me. I've owned a previous iteration of the Nord Lead, and didn't like it nearly as much, sound-wise.

I've had a KK for a year or more and it has worked very well for me. Using an iPad with Patch Morpher is a huge plus and I integrated an iPad into my setup a few months ago to control my KK and Integra 7 as well as to use softsynths like the iM1. I like the tube and find it useful to add a bit of drive on occasion. The KK sounds great, is fairly knobby, and is quite versatile.

I'll vote for the A1. I don't own the King Korg but I've spent a lot of time with it. I was considering the same two synths. They both sound very good, the A1 is more fun to program. It's a different approach. And the build quality of the King Korg made me nervous. That's a good price on the A1 rack, I've seen new King Korgs go for cheaper.

I want an A1 but curious enough about the FutureSonus Parva to wait

I ended up going with the Access Virus Ti Snow + Omnisphere 2 lol! Just got delivered at work. Can't wait to get home and nerd out!

Guitar center had an awesome deal on the Novation Launchkey 49 midi controller yesterday I picked it up new for $87.99. It's supposed to integrate perfectly with Ableton but I brought it home and my Ableton version (8.2.2) doesn't support the controller.

So now I have to upgrade my ableton (32bit) to a newer version. I also just got a new computer with 8 gigs of ram, and I know that the 32 bit version doesn't support more than 4 gigs. But half of my VST plugins are 32bit! Am I really missing out on not being able to use the full 8 gigs of ram?

Certainly the A1! It's a high end instrument in every aspect. King Korg has a great sound but it doesn't have the right interface or a good build quality.

Yes, because some Omnisphere multis can be quite huge.

It's nigh time to move on to 64-bit, man.


(BTW, I'd say you made a great choice with Snow and Omni 2! )

So you went on a shopping spree??

For SYNTHESIZING sounds and then sequencing them you only need a 32bit system.
Actually you could get by with only a pentium 4 from 2004 or so. All 32 bit systems are limited to around 4gig total memory (shared between ram/gpu/all onboard chips). with 64 this limit is much much higher. For synthesizing sounds you need cpu power, instructions per cycle, floating point crapola. memory doesn't matter. this is realtime juice.

Lots of ram is needed when working with large sample libraries and such things. you want those edm solo flute samples and 3 different saxophones right. **** that shit.

also lots of good electronic music was done like 10 years ago with truly mediocre computers. It still sounds good.

and with hardware only like analog synths yopu dont need jack shit to make music. just a sequencer. or a few.

@ mekanik - Omnisphere actually uses samples quite a lot. And Omni 2 in particular takes about 900 MB of RAM on its own, without a single sample loaded! 64-bit system is pretty much a must.


I think it's a bit daft to have 8 GB of RAM but not using half of it...

The keybed is very much low end though.

I will be honest with you, i'm not a keyboard player. Based on that, the keyboard responds absolutely fine for my kind of programming / performance.