Quick heads-up: Korg have released an update to their KORG Kollection (previously “Legacy Collection”. Version 5 now contains 3 new instruments:
ARP 2600: speaks for itself - a legendary semi-modular synth-monster.
EP-1: the electric piano section of Korg’s Kronos / Nautilus workstations - contains 7 different variants of Rhodes and Wurlitzer, plus a couple of pretty useful effects.
Vox Super Continental: a model of the two-manual version of the Continental
Korg are currently running a summer sale, so if you want to pick up one of these models for a bit less, this is the time. And if you own Korg Collection 3 or 4, the upgrade price is pretty decent.
I’m not much of a Conti player - needed it some time ago to cover some Animals songs, but haven’t found much use for it lately. But the other two made it worth the upgrade for me personally. The EP-1 is a pretty decent bread-and-butter ePiano machine. Nice to have multiple flavors in one plugin, instead of needing separate instances e.g. Wurlybird, VReeds, VTines, etc. And it’s pretty playable, with nice dynamic response.
One thing I like: the EP-1 covers the whole 88 key range - unlike a lot of Rhodes / Wurly plugins that echo the original restrictions of 73 / 64 keys and are stubbornly silent outside that range.
Quick update: found a bug in the EP-1. The FX3 slot doesn’t restore its effect type settings correctly when loading the plugin state and keeps returning to “Overb”, no matter what you set this effect to when saving the song / rack / snapshot.
Korg support has acknowledged the bug - they’ll be providing an update shortly (“in the next few days”) to fix the issue. In the meantime, don’t use FX slot 3 unless you want it to be “Overb”
I have to say that the Korg support team response was one of the fastest and most constructive I’ve had with major vendors so far:
acknowledgement of the bug less than 2 hours after I reported it
feedback that dev team is working on a fix less than 4 hours after that
clear messaging on expected time to fix
I’ve definitely seen much, much worse - kudos to the Korg team!
I upgraded mainly for the APR2600 (yes, another emulation of it I know, but as Korg now have the rights to manufacture it…), as I already have EP-1 in my Kronos.
But (as I posted on Yamaha Musicians) I am pleased to see another Kronos engine make it in VST form (along with Poly6 and MS-20), as I am hoping they will do the remaining 6 Kronos engines at some point. Despite having its roots in the original OASYS, AL-1 still remains a beast of a virtual analog.
I have no plans to replace my Kronos, but one day it might break…, and Korg now have no equivalent (the Nautilus is dumbed down in my view - far fewer controllers and no KARMA)
Does anyone have any thoughts on the Korg ARP2600 as compared to the Cherry audio or Arturia versions? I have the later two already and wonder about this new version. I know there is a demo, but I trust the ears and experience of this board a lot.
What limited time I have with it, I like the sound of it, but I have not done any comparisons. This weekend is mean to be rubbish weather wise. If it is, I might have a go programming my Steve Hillage patches currently in the Arturia 2600 in the Korg.
Personally so far I have found different emulations of the same synth can have different characters, like genuine hardware units, as the modelling each company have done will be based on there reference model and all the differences calibration and component de-rating will have.
I downloaded the Arp 2600 demo and am beyond disappointed. I am getting time loads over 200%. So much glitching that even the init patch is unusable, and that’s with playing single notes. I have a pretty powerful laptop too. I am surpirsed because my other Korg plugins like the M1 and Wavetable have a super low footprint.
