Chrisk-K wrote:
About 1,300 Kronoses have been sold so far world-wide. Hot cakes sell much more than that.
Considering the fact, that the Kronos hits the market just a few weeks ago (actually less than a month) and that it's still not widely available, I would say that 1300 sold items so far is a great number for a hardware workstation these days where at least the production part of making music is mainly focused on software solutions.
Chrisk-K wrote:I'm not interested in the Kronos anymore because (1) the cooling fan is LOUD and (2) the user interface is just awful.
I can't and wont argue on the cooling fan because that's a personal decision whether you can accept it and it's loudness, but saying that the user interface is just awful is simply wrong. You may argue that for example the font size is to small for you, your eyes or simply your taste, but the display is not the only thing which is considered as a user interface.
From my experience with Korg, I would say that they are one of few companies who really care to make a consistent user interface that is well laid out and consistent over the years and different models. As a long time user, you don't have to adapt and relearn things up from the ground.
Just take look at the surface on the Kronos:
It is clearly divided into three parts. The controllers which are used live are left from the display, anything that belongs to the editing part is put on the right of the display. It's a clear and consistent set that Korg actually uses at least for 15 years. You select different modes, patches, perfromances, system modes, sequencer on the right. You control things from the left. I consider all this as user interface.
Take a look at a Fantom G as a still actual model:
The modes are selected from buttons on the left (live, single, studio, favorite), but items are further selected on the right side where you input the numbers from the pads, which you have to activate as a numerical block before, or by dial. It may be not a big deal, but it shows how seriously a company cares about a well thought out surface. Further, there are dedicated buttons for editing a patch, song, sample and even the effects, but there is no dedicated button to edit the live mode. And above all, a patch doesn't exist as a mode. It's called single mode. It's confusing at least at the beginning and for a new user who is not very familiar with Roland workstations.
Korg uses the program/combination terms since the M1. Roland operates with new terms on almost every new workstation or keyboard. Just take a look what Liveset means on a Fantom G and what it is on the JP80. Korg uses the numerical block and dedicated buttons for banks since the M1, while Roland changes every little that dead easy system how we select sounds. There was the 8 x 8 scheme for selecting sounds as we know it from the D50 or later on the U20, D70 and the JV models. Than they changed to a 0-9 numerical block on the XP line where you had to hit and hold a shift key and another button to select banks, and finally they removed the numerical block on three Fantom models, forcing you to hunt your patches with the data wheel or spend/waste your time to put your necessary / often used patches into some favorite banks. Again with some suboptimal solutions like on the Fantom X where you select the banks in the favorite mode by repeatedly pressing the up/down buttons to step thru 20 banks! The Fantom G shows clearly how counter-intuitive some selecting methods are. They put two dedicated buttons for accessing sounds on an ARX card which are an option and you don't get them at all if you don't buy it. But to switch between preset and user patches, you have to move the cursor on the display back and forward to be able to select between user and preset patches/livesets. It requires a couple of button presses to change between patches that are there out of factory, but you have dedicated buttons to select something that is a paid option. If you don't buy any arx card, those two buttons will never be used.
And even with that big display Roland failed to present you some important informations in a way that halfway make sense. For example, there is a separate window for the sliders and their actual position on the screen, but the numerical values and the parameter which are controlled by the sliders are presented in a separate window. Instead of putting everything into one window, showing the slider and beneath the parameter name and the numerical value. The current solution is a two way process: you have to look on one window to see the slider and it's number and position, than you look on the second window, identify the respective slider number and look at what parameter it is connected to and what the value is. On stage where things changes fast and you have to care about lot of things, this is quite annoying.
Setting keyzones in the live set mode of the Fantom G is done by pressing the shift key and hitting a key on the keyboard. Fast and convenient. But to set keyzones inside of a patch for one of the 4 tones you have there, this same feature suddenly doesn't work! On a korg keyboard, those method works in all modes on all levels. When you use the pads on the Fantom G for entering numerical values, the "Hold" pad acts as an Enter button and the "Roll" pad as a Cancel button. But they are not labeled as such. Without looking into the manual you would never know which one of those two pads has which function. When you use the mouse and want to name a patch or a live set, you have the option to select symbols from a virtual keyboard. Yet strangely, that keyboard only shows letters and numbers. Other symbols like !"~`></+* and so on, can't be selected on that virtual keyboard at all. You again have to reach for the data dial and dial thru the letters and numbers until the desired symbol appears.
I'm sorry for the long post, not that it matters (I'm not going to buy the Kronos, I'll keep my Fantom G) and I absolutely don't have a problem with it if you still think that it's awful, but I think that more things have to be taken into account while talking about a userinterface. The display is just a part of it. Sometimes a very small one.
Roland will no doubt showcase the Jupiter-80 again though. More demos will give people a better idea of its sonic capabilities. One bummer is the Organ section where the Drawbars are digital and you can only adjust one at a time from what I understand. With physical Drawbars you could adjust all of them at once if you wanted to. Unfortunately there are no physical Drawbars on the Jupiter-80. :( But since it's considered a "Synth" I suppose it could be expected that there aren't any.