Kaossilator Pro Review New ways to shape your sound by TweakHeadz Lab Korg Kaossilator Pro Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer

Announcing the KAOSSILATOR PRO - a supercharged version of the palm-sized KAOSSILATOR, reborn as a powerful track-making tool and loaded with live performance power.

What it is and Does

The Kaossilator is here at the lab, arrived Friday from zZounds, absolutely perfect new stock, already updated to OS1.2. I just finished a rough draft of a techno-ish piece using only the Kaossilator pro in logic and it went well. I've read all the documentation, formatted an SD card for storage, made up a bunch of loops as I went through the library of 200 patches.

Most of the patches appear to use Korg's virtual analog engine, though they never explicitly mention it in the docs. There are some PCM samples, like drums, brass and guitar hitz, that are documented as such. (See the program list in the manual). While, there is no mention of the sound generating engine anywhere, it sounds like a Virtual analog engine to me. There are leads, chords, pads, just dripping with character, and controlling them with a finger is a delight. You can set any program to any of 31 scales and many are truly exotic sounding. You can also turn off the scaling and you can be in the land of microtonality. You can have the touch screen control between 1 and 4 octaves or "all" which seems to be 7 octaves. At max range you can roll up or down an octave by rolling your finger. You can tap a melody, glide, zig zag or make quick jabs and quick smears for an animated lead.

You can also put the Kaossilator pro in "external" mode. This lets you play external instruments like a midi controller. it did great with my V-synth and with my Motif and with all the soft synths I tried. Anything that is a one voice solo synth works well. The Kaossilator does not send polyphony. Controlling drum kits is quite interesting. Korg's internal kits typically have 4 samples so making a pattern is not difficult with a little practice.

You can tweak exactly what controllers the Kaossilator will send in external mode. Make sure you download the free editor at one of the links below. So you can tailor the X-Y pad to your favorite synth. You can save and load settings from this editor, or to/from SD ram.

You can also record through a microphone/line inputs through the Kaossilator's onboard vocoders and effects patches. Yep you tweak the finger as you speak through the mic. While this vocoder is not going to rival the one on my Vsynth, its got its positive attributes. Yes you can record the vocoder in loop mode.

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Korg Radias-R Virtual Analog Synthesizer Rack

Based on Korg's cutting-edge MMT engine, this 24-voice synthesizer offers a variety of synthesis algorithms together with multiple effects, new comb filter and wave shaping features, modulation sequencing, as well as new formant-motion vocoding.

Tweak: Price was $999.00
Now 699.00

Adam A7 Powered Nearfield Monitor

NEW Price: 74.56 less than Tuesday's price!

Learn about monitors

Lower Price! Focusrite ISA One Microphone Preamp

Roland MV8800 Production Studio

TWEAK: When I saw the price I had to look again. How much? $1,099. Read what our members say. Watch videos and get more specs from Roland This is for a NEW unit.

You can add a computer monitor and a mouse to give you a DAW like experience. The MV8800, like the MPC5000, is a sampler, multi track recorder, mixer and effects processor in one unit. Using the pads as triggers is great for making beats and doing all kinds of sample based music. If you have always wanted an MV--don't wait.

Apple Logic Studio Music Production Software (Macintosh)

Logic goes 64 bit.

Apple just released Logic 9.1 via the software update process which is now can be run as a 64 bit application from inside Snow Leopard (Mac OSX 10.6). You can choose to run in 32 bit mode if you want, for compatibility with older soft synths and plugins. However, you can also run 32 bit plugins in 64 bit mode thanks to Logic's 32 bit Audio Unit Bridge, which launches automatically when you load songs using 32 bit plugins. This also allows you to start a song in 32 bit mode and once you have defined al the synths you want to use, then switch to 64 bit mode to take advantage of the faster processing. As a long term logic user I will only say--this is the best Logic yet!

Review of the Tenori-ON

http://tweakheadz.com/reviews/tenori-on_review.htm

I don't get exited too often about a new synth these days. I've got plenty to play with now. Yet I keep looking for the next thing that is going to help me break, shatter, transmorgify the sound barriers. I think I have some new plans, now with my new Tenori-ON, the Orange version. I just went through the research process, so I know the questions you may have that you can't find answers to. I'm going to tell you all the answers.

Microphones!

Do you need a Dynamic? Condenser? Ribbon?
For Vocals, Guitar Amps, Drums?
Learn the Answers
We have huge body of knowledge on Microphones here!
Read Tweak's Introduction to Studio Microphones. Check out theAMAZING forums on Mics. Check out Tweak's entertaining reviews of classic Mics! We have the Answers to every Mic question a new home studio enthusiast will have.

Each of these mIcs has a Sonic Signature. A studio professional can predict how each will sound on different sources. This is the basis for musing that an sm81 is good on acoustic guitars, an sm57 can do amps, the re20 can do a nice HH vocal. Then you try it and realize how much the choice of microphone affects the final recording.