KORG announced today that they’re working on a drum machine that’s part analog, part hybrid – but crucially, that also supports the ‘logue architecture so you can load your own oscillators. It’ll be a mod-able drum machine.
Now KORG are obviously keeping us a little in the dark on this, literally – we get just a view of this baby from the front, but it’s high-res if you want to zoom in on this product rendering and see what you can see. (It looks like we do get a nice chassis and… well some encoders and x0x step buttons on the bottom, as one would expect.)
Oh, and … this appears to be circulating. Cough. Tons of I/O. Also, I like that YES … NO appears to be a range. (Okay, I’m sure that’s not what that implies.) This is not an official KORG photo so we will be looking for final production imagery when available – and it may look different than this. It is still enough to interest ‘logue SDK developers though, I bet.
But we get both digital and analog voices, and full support for the ‘logue SDK multi-engine plugin oscillators. I notice what they don’t say is that you can use the ‘logue SDK for effects, which would sure be nice. Then again, even if they don’t deliver that, you could always add an NTS-1.
Not mentioned in the specs, but in the video:
Digital effects.
Individual assignable outputs. (Excellent.)
There’s a video, and then you can see a bit more – plus some familiar faces from the KORG engineering team in Japan, including Etienne who was instrumental in driving the SDK. Yoshihito-san has done great things with that team as analog synth boss Tats has moved on to… well my street corner, actually (now leading KORG Germany here in Kreuzberg).
The top panel is actually more impressive in the video than in the render. And you see we get a nice OLED display with sample controls.
Etienne does note that there’s a “rich effects section.” I do hope that is also ‘logue-compatible.
Oh and this is important too – there’s an update to the ‘logue SDK. I’ll try to get in on that as well as to find out when the NDA is lifted for other developers.
A big issue for me is that I believe drum machines should have not only custom sample loading, but an easy interface. (Cough. Roland.) So it’s encouraging to see that they also are promising a dedicated librarian tool for this hardware.
Obviously this is one to follow. And it means the ‘logue world is now a nice little ecosystem – synth, drum machine, oscillators, effects.
Artemiy from Sinevibes tells CDM thtat they’ll have “some very special stuff” for launch.
No launch date or pricing yet.
If it can come before my vaccination stab, it’ll give me a way to stay occupied.
https://korg-us.com/future-product-preview/
And PS, here’s Artemiy talking about why he loves this model: