I know it's hard times, and a lot of folks don't have much money. That's why I would recommend the Korg Kross 2.
It's cheap to pick up. And if you buy 2nd hand, they go for maybe $400.
You don't need a 5 thousand dollar keyboard. I actually find the Kross 2 more fun to use then my Roland that cost more money.
So this is the amazing thing about the Kross.
After you made your beat on the keyboard sequencer. You can export the midi file, and load it up in your DAW. Then you can use the Kross 2 editor, from inside your DAW to finish off what you are doing.
This is a really great setup. I don't even think I bother tracking out my beats like this. I can just mix inside the editor. The Kross 2 has 7 effects processors.
The sounds are great as well. Some people are saying this board sounds better then the Rolands and the Yamaha's because it has newer waveforms and samples. I was dubious at first, because I really didn't like the old Triton sounds at all.
But this board sounds amazing! Most importantly, it's really good fun to use.
No keyboard is. Somethings it does really well, and somethings it does just badly.
The things it does well, are if you just want to fire it up, and start churning out beats, really fast. This will help you.
Where it starts to get stuck, is when you come to try to mix down your beats on the board.
On the matrix, they didn't set it up, so you have access to level and pan. This is really dumb. The FA-06 has level and pan on the matrix. It's very quick to adjust that.
On the Kross, you have to go into the menu's to change that.
The real problem however is the effects. Everything they have done to implement the effects is awful. The effects themselves sound great.
They give you an awesome mastering limiter. The problem is, they don't give you a master FX's slot. So you have to run your limiter as an insert. The problem then is, supposing you want to add reverb to that sound?
Well you can't. Unless you apply reverb to the entire limiter. Most of the insert effects, are things like amp sim, eq and compressors. No delay, chorus or reverb.
You have 2 sends. And one can be a time based effect. Either delay or reverb. The other send you can run a chorus on. It's clunky and award system.
It's flexible, as you can chain them, but I would have swapped all the effects, for just being able to run a reverb and delay at the same time.
However, the biggest gripe by far, is that it's very awkward and convoluted to edit the drums volume. You have to go into a completely separate mode, in the global menu. And it's a lot of faffing around. They should have let you adjust the volume on the step sequencer. Maybe I am not seeing something, and I need to spend more time looking around.
The worse thing is. And this is not really Korg's fault. There are no asio drivers for it on windows. If you use a 15 year old mac, like me. You plug in USB and instantly get class compliant low latency drivers.
However Microsoft, on their band new windows 11, still can't be bothered to write some low latency drivers. So if your using windows, you will need an external soundcard as well.
It's still good. It's still 100 X more powerful then an ASR10. A lot of modern gear, has weird ommisions, because the designers probably expect people to use a computer for a lot of stuff.
Also the main way people use workstations, is with the mpc, and they sample the entire preset, with all the effects. It's only a small niche of people, who want to do everything on the one keyboard.
This is a beat I made entirely using the Korg Kross 2. https://buybeats.com/beat/MTIyMg==
It uses the "That kick bass" preset, and also "Trap Drumkit" preset. Also the hit is "Trap hitz". the rest of the sounds I made myself, using the editor. I sequenced the beat on the board itself, but later exported the midi to cakewalk, and sequenced it on that, using cakewalks matrix view.
So the thing is, the Kross 2 came out in 2017. And that means, they probably finished designing and building it, way before then. Probably 2015. And some of the presets were more the likely made before that.
So the Trap Drumkit and the Kick bass, sound from the time they were made. There good for keyboard drums. But listening to them now, I see they sound dated.
I probably just made them sound dated actually. I might have another go, at making a trap beat, but now I think I have a better idea of where the modern sound is.
Keyboard drums in the right hands, sound the best! For me at least, I want to use drumkits, other people don't use. I don't want to use the same handful of drums everyone and their dog is using.
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4I know it's hard times, and a lot of folks don't have much money. That's why I would recommend the Korg Kross 2.
It's cheap to pick up. And if you buy 2nd hand, they go for maybe $400.
You don't need a 5 thousand dollar keyboard. I actually find the Kross 2 more fun to use then my Roland that cost more money.
So this is the amazing thing about the Kross.
After you made your beat on the keyboard sequencer. You can export the midi file, and load it up in your DAW. Then you can use the Kross 2 editor, from inside your DAW to finish off what you are doing.
This is a really great setup. I don't even think I bother tracking out my beats like this. I can just mix inside the editor. The Kross 2 has 7 effects processors.
The sounds are great as well. Some people are saying this board sounds better then the Rolands and the Yamaha's because it has newer waveforms and samples. I was dubious at first, because I really didn't like the old Triton sounds at all.
But this board sounds amazing! Most importantly, it's really good fun to use.
Well, the Kross 2 is not all roses it would seem.
No keyboard is. Somethings it does really well, and somethings it does just badly.
The things it does well, are if you just want to fire it up, and start churning out beats, really fast. This will help you.
Where it starts to get stuck, is when you come to try to mix down your beats on the board.
On the matrix, they didn't set it up, so you have access to level and pan. This is really dumb. The FA-06 has level and pan on the matrix. It's very quick to adjust that.
On the Kross, you have to go into the menu's to change that.
The real problem however is the effects. Everything they have done to implement the effects is awful. The effects themselves sound great.
They give you an awesome mastering limiter. The problem is, they don't give you a master FX's slot. So you have to run your limiter as an insert. The problem then is, supposing you want to add reverb to that sound?
Well you can't. Unless you apply reverb to the entire limiter. Most of the insert effects, are things like amp sim, eq and compressors. No delay, chorus or reverb.
You have 2 sends. And one can be a time based effect. Either delay or reverb. The other send you can run a chorus on. It's clunky and award system.
It's flexible, as you can chain them, but I would have swapped all the effects, for just being able to run a reverb and delay at the same time.
However, the biggest gripe by far, is that it's very awkward and convoluted to edit the drums volume. You have to go into a completely separate mode, in the global menu. And it's a lot of faffing around. They should have let you adjust the volume on the step sequencer. Maybe I am not seeing something, and I need to spend more time looking around.
The worse thing is. And this is not really Korg's fault. There are no asio drivers for it on windows. If you use a 15 year old mac, like me. You plug in USB and instantly get class compliant low latency drivers.
However Microsoft, on their band new windows 11, still can't be bothered to write some low latency drivers. So if your using windows, you will need an external soundcard as well.
It's still good. It's still 100 X more powerful then an ASR10. A lot of modern gear, has weird ommisions, because the designers probably expect people to use a computer for a lot of stuff.
Also the main way people use workstations, is with the mpc, and they sample the entire preset, with all the effects. It's only a small niche of people, who want to do everything on the one keyboard.
This is a beat I made entirely using the Korg Kross 2. https://buybeats.com/beat/MTIyMg==
It uses the "That kick bass" preset, and also "Trap Drumkit" preset. Also the hit is "Trap hitz". the rest of the sounds I made myself, using the editor. I sequenced the beat on the board itself, but later exported the midi to cakewalk, and sequenced it on that, using cakewalks matrix view.
So the thing is, the Kross 2 came out in 2017. And that means, they probably finished designing and building it, way before then. Probably 2015. And some of the presets were more the likely made before that.
So the Trap Drumkit and the Kick bass, sound from the time they were made. There good for keyboard drums. But listening to them now, I see they sound dated.
I probably just made them sound dated actually. I might have another go, at making a trap beat, but now I think I have a better idea of where the modern sound is.
Keyboard drums in the right hands, sound the best! For me at least, I want to use drumkits, other people don't use. I don't want to use the same handful of drums everyone and their dog is using.
Awesome dude. I tend to like my gear too much to just settle with a mouse and controller