micro-korg or vintage pro

[sam]

I've got a little money to spend, and I don't know how..

do you think micro korg is a good synth???? I've had a watch in the net and it seemed to me quite good in comparaison with the price it coast..
and that vocoder!!!!! it seem awesome..

also the e-mu vintage pro rack seemed a good choice to me...

please tell me every advice you can give me about the micro korg and the e-mu vintage pro..... every pro and cons...

THANK YOU !!!!!!!

SAM

[Spacehog]

I have the keyboard equivalent of the Vintage Pro, the Vintage Keys, and it's great. Fantastic collection of sounds, great electric pianos, some really nice polysynth sounds, great bass sound that's called a Taurus even tho it sounds nothing like one, and some really cool mellotron samples. The rack has the advantage of digital out, 128 voice polyphony (not 64) and extra analogue outs. It's indispensible for the kind of music I play and write.

Not tried the MicroKorg myself, it's got very limited polyphony, tiny tiny keys, but a great vocoder and by all accounts sounds pretty awesome. And it'll run off batteries, which may be useful.

Martin

[Omega Monkey]

The microKorg is kinda cool, but for as much as you would spend on one of those, you could raid eBay and get something really cool. Also the mini keys really suck and you cant really play serious stuff on them very well.

I dont know what you are looking for, but do some searches on eBay for Roland, Korg, Yamaha, Sequential Circuits, Oberheim, Moog, etc... and see what kind of stuff is in your price range. Then you can go somewhere like www.vintagesynth.com www.harmonycentral.com or www.sonicstate.com and look up specs and reviews on those.

Of course, in the $400 or so range you are kind of limited (although you can still get some nifty stuff in that range), my advice would be save up another 200-400 bucks then you could get something really nice like a OB-8 maybe or a CS-50

[sam]

the micro korg has got 4 voices poliphony... is it very limitating for playing??? is it possible to create monophonic lead with it????

I think the tiny keys are not a problem because i can play it on my rs-5 via midi...
does it have organ sounds???? are they good?? mellotron???

thanks !!!

SAM

[augerinn]

Sam, those are two different boards. The Micro-Korg is a virtual analog. Dance/Trance/Techno people like it. It's NOT designed to reproduce other instruments, but more for "phat" bass, sweeps, sound effects, etc.

If you're looking for Rhodes, Hammond, Wurli, etc, get the vintage boards.

[Awake]

I'm interested to know if anyone has any thoughts to add that have arisen in the last couple of years - I was just taking a look at the MicroKorg in guitar center, and it seems pretty cool for what it does. I realize it's pretty limited, but it seems really cool for adding sort of electronic beeps and bloops to a track. I'm not much interested in the whole dance music / hip hop thing, and I don't care about portability, but I do like analog synth sounds and sort of retro electronica sounds, and it seems like it could be an interesting way to spice up some prog tracks. The vocoder seems pretty neat, too.

[jeebustrain]

my personal opinion is that if you're going for that kind of sound, you're better off getting a real VA. The EMU is samples of vintage instruments, not real ones. The MicroKorg is a real Virtual Analog. The polyphony is lower, but you're going to be able to create something from scratch a lot easier. I've played with the Vintage Keys board a bit, and everything seems like you're just tweaking presets (unless that's what you're looking for). As far as the polyphony goes, back when analog was all you got, 4 voice polyphony was pretty good (especially since instruments like the Minimoog were mono).

That being said, if you are looking at the MicroKorg, I think it would be well worth your dollars to step up to an MS2000. It's got full size keys, ultra-programmability, and it's pretty easy to get around. And if you're looking for just presets to tweak, it's got a lot of those, too. It's the same sound engine as the MicroKorg, but it's a night and day improvement. No matter what cool little sounds come from the Micro, it still seems like just a toy to me with the tiny keys.

[Awake]

It's the same sound engine as the MicroKorg, but it's a night and day improvement. No matter what cool little sounds come from the Micro, it still seems like just a toy to me with the tiny keys.I know what you mean about it looking like a toy - I was actually looking at the Oasys (not to buy, just to irritate guitar center, mainly), and they had this thing mounted above it that looked like a toy - "my first keyboard"! I remember many years ago, being twelve years old, going into music class at school for the first time and each desk had this little keyboard with micro keys, and they all looked like this MicroKorg. So (at gtr ctr), out of curiosity, I pressed the bottom key on this thing that looked like a toy, and this monstrous analog sound came out of the speaker. So it looks like a toy, but it sure sounds kinda cool, and as another commenter pointed out, if the keys are just ridiculous, I could always play it by MIDI from the K2K.

I've been listening to a lost of Depeche Mode, Daft Punk and Jarre recently, and so I'm quite intrigued by the idea of using these analog sounds. I'm also aware that a lot of the songs in a project I was involved with back in England had a lot to do with using sounds like these, and while I'm not inclined to try and mimic that, I do like a lot of the sounds that were used on those recordings.

[ReaPeR]

If you have about $400 and save another $200 you can buy an Dave Smith Instrument Evolver (the desktop version) http://www.davesmithinstruments.com/evolver/design.html
The bad thing is that it's monophonic... but if you want to use only things like bleep, bass, lead, FX and strange Atmos it surely can blast the Microkorg... it has a REAL analog filter!!! You can use it for processing external signal in stereo too (even if it can play only 1 note it's stereo).

[Bastardo Demono]

get an alesis micron! just an all around more powerful synthesis engine than micro, which is kind of a toy..

[ReaPeR]

get an alesis micron! just an all around more powerful synthesis engine than micro, which is kind of a toy..

Good idea! (the evolver it's almost a modular... so it's a bit complicate for be the first synth)

[ChrisMcCoy]

I'm interested to know if anyone has any thoughts to add that have arisen in the last couple of years - I was just taking a look at the MicroKorg in guitar center, and it seems pretty cool for what it does. I realize it's pretty limited, but it seems really cool for adding sort of electronic beeps and bloops to a track. I'm not much interested in the whole dance music / hip hop thing, and I don't care about portability, but I do like analog synth sounds and sort of retro electronica sounds, and it seems like it could be an interesting way to spice up some prog tracks. The vocoder seems pretty neat, too.

I picked up one of these: http://www.novationmusic.com/product.asp?id=17&Type=1

I've yet to try the vocoder, but it's a nice little analog add on for my rack.
I got a great deal on it too. Paid something like 250.00 You may want to check it out. Guitar Center was selling them for a while. Not sure if they still do.

C.