KORG’s fun easy-assemble kits now see an updated NTS-1 mkII and even more fun, a new NTS-3 kaoss pad kit.
The NTS-3 is actually a pretty serious kaoss pad (now all lowercase), complete with X/Y pad (and, this being an NTS, tiny encoders). You can combine up to four effects, 200 programs (100 presets and 100 user patches), there’s both sync in and out, plus USB-C. And the onboard effects – even before we get to the SDK – there’s a lot onboard:
- 5 filters
- 6 modulation
- 4 delay
- 5 reverb
- Looper, grainshifter, vinyl break
- Mastering
- Oscillator
All of that runs on 500 mA power, including via USB-C cable.
The NTS-1 was already fun and surprisingly powerful; now the new NTS-1 mkII and NTS-3 share the more powerful ‘logue SDK with the drumlogue. Note that you do have different parameters, so there’s some extra work for developers packaging up your work. (It also looks like the NTS-3 SDK isn’t available as I write this, but I’ll ask the handsome and talented KORG dev team on that!)
The “kit” part is pretty simple, of course – this is IKEA-meets-music.
New on the mkII NTS-1:
- New keyboard
- Built-in sequencer
- Expanded MIDI (MIDI out, finally! and most parameters now work with MIDI CC)
- USB-C bus power (like the kaoss)
This all just looks terrifically fun. loopop has a detailed hands-on with the NTS-1 mkII, which also covers a lot that applies to the kaoss pad. But… that tiny little X/Y pad… I mean, the kaoss is just an instabuy for me.
More details:
NTS-3 kaoss pad kit effects
NTS-1 digital kit mkII programmable synthesizer
Hope to dive into the SDK more soon! Stay tuned!