Korg Triton

Manuals are extremely difficult to understand. Step by step guide should
be included for each kind of operation.

Instrument seems well designed. Effects are good. The sequencer is fine.

No problems here, except medicore acoustic piano sounds

As a former Roland user, I'd probably go with Roland again.

Although I have only tested a Triton I think my comments will be helpful. I'm a fair jazz pianist and I was looking to find better conventional sounds than my Korg M1 so I took my M1 to a pianist friend's home where he has a Triton and tried the M1 against the Triton. I was amazed. After how many years is it that the M1 was introduced the sounds are in many cases better than the Triton. We both agreed, the other pianist and myself. We set both keyboards up with identical speakers and tweaked the sounds so they corresponded. The Triton piano is not better, and that's the core sound of most gigging synths. Vibes and guitars are worse, Hammond B3 is a little better. I do know about sounds, particularly piano because I've got a newish Grotrian Steinweg real piano in my home sitting right next to my M1. What have Korg been doing all those years? Perhaps they know their marketing and they sell the Triton for it's facilities. I'm amazed.

I'll try the Kurzweil.

I will submit another review in a few months when I have gotten into the guts of the instrument. I just picked up the Triton a few days ago. The presets are typically Korg- huge (like since the M1- I said in my T3 review that the 1st time I played an M1, I though I was going to have a sexual experience with a keyboard! SORRY- I AM NORMAL!) The dual arpeggiators do alot to create interesting textures particularly in combination mode with sounds that are like mini soundracks in themselves! The manuals are above average- nearly as good as my Wavestation manuals but not quite! Korg should get the same author to write ALL their future manuals- So should every other manufacturer for that matter! His name is DAN PHILLIPS. I have used Korg equipment extensively over the last 12 years (I have a special effection for Korg gear as I learn't alot on a Poly 61) so I had no trouble getting around the Triton. The new sampling section is one area which I need to consult the manual for however. The huge touchview screen is almost like a mini computer monitor to me- it feels alot better than my old (sold) Trinity's display.

62 note polyphonic (much better than 32 notes on the Trinity and TR Rack) 68 with the MOSS board (I have this installed). This is very decent and at least it is always 62 notes in single mode (unlike the Yamaha EX5 which changes polyphony dramatically depending on the synthesis being used). I wish the MOSS board had more polyphony but 6 voices is adequate. The keyboard has a nice unweighted feel- nice for quick passages and organ parts- not good for piano- no unweighted keyboard is!!!! It has the best effects system of any synthesizer ever designed- 5 insertion effects, 2 master effects and 1 3 band master EQ. Some say that the Trinity is better here because you can have up to 8 'size 1' effects but in fact the Tritons system is more flexible and easier to use- the 5 insert effect are stereo in stereo out and the sound can be panned anyway when going through the insert effect (unlike the Trinity). The master effects contain 89 effects as opposed to the trinity's 14 effects and the EQ is 3 band as opposed to the Trinity's 2 band EQ. It has every kind of effect imaginable- all high quality- I ran a mic through the Triton's input and the reverb's are much more transparent than I anticipated- I will use this board as another dedicated effects unit!!!! The vocoder will be great and the effects are also MIDI syncable (GREAT!). The Triton can be expanded with 2 PCM expansion boards- ONLY 2!!!!! WHY KORG?????? At least they are user installable and I have the Piano/Keyboards board- I am very fussy with my piano/organ sounds coming from that background and teaching those instruments so I was pleasantly surprised at the patches on this board- These are the first sampled pianos that I would consider using on a serious recording- until now I would preferred to properly mic up a real grand! This is saying something- again this is a very subjective issue! I tried out the orchestral board which is also available, but I didn't think that it sounded any better than what was already in the Triton. I spoke to a Korg rep who said that they will shortly be releasing some Dance/Loop boards- I WILL GET THESE!!!! You can get the 6 voice MOSS board which I have- it is simply(????) the guts of the magnificant Korg Z1 synthe (which I also own). One glaring limitation here is that if you use more than one sound from the MOSS board multi-timbrally, they all go through the same effects!!!!!! THIS IS BULLSHIT KORG- WHY???? This makes the MOSS board much less usefull in a multi-timbral context than it should be. I have the SCSI option which enables you to hook up an external hard drive (I will get a 250MB zip drive when I can afford it). It comes with 16MB of sampling RAM which is expandable up to 64MB- One big limitation here is that you cannot use all 64MB at once- it is broken down into 4 16MB blocks- this is also stupid!!!!
The onboard floppy disk drive loads quite fast. It has a 61 note velocity/mono aftertouch sensitive keyboard, ribbon controller, 4 controller knobs, 3 knobs to control the dual arpeggiators (yes it has two Z1 type polyphonic arpeggiators- can't wait to get into these!), Korg joystick for pitchbend and modulation (X/Y axis) and THANK HEAVEN'S 6 assignable outputs!!!!! Finally, Korg have taken a page from the Roland JV1080/2080 and given us some flexibility in the outputs department. The Triton is 16 part multi-timbral, is able to control up to eight internal or external zones from a combination and supports all the major midi controller numbers using it's real time controllers. It is fully general MIDI compatible (I HATE GENERAL MIDI AND NEVER USE IT!) and reads SMF files 0 and 1 directly from disk (handy for gigging and getting songs of the internet). I used the sequencer in my old Korg T3 to death before I got my Atari and Notator. This took me off hardware sequencers- I didn't use the Trinity's even though it was well laid out (LOGIC IS JUST A BIT BETTER FOR ME!) However, I have decided that I will make an effert to get into the Tr

FUCKING GREAT SOUNDS! That is all I can say as my opening statement. I would use this as my only sound source with no problems. As a matter of fact, I could get buy with just a Triton (and mayby a JV2080) at a pinch if I had to sell all my other gear (WHICH I WILL NOT!!) I don't think too much of the stock acoustic piano although it is better than the other 'stock' offerings in my other bits of gear. That is why I also have the piano expansion board- these sounds are great as far as sampled pianos go! The electric pianos are all fantastic, as are the guitars (both acoustic and electric). The electric basses are also very playable (although the ones on my Roland bass&drums boards are better). The synthe basses rock (or dance!). The strings (both solo and ensemble) are the best that I have heard from a synthe (better than my Roland orchestral expansion board!) Solo trumpet and sax sounds are great for a sample based instrument although I am not a mad fan of the ensembel brass patches (no sample based instrument excells here!) The drums are superb (both electronic and real) This and my TR rack contain the widest variety of drum sounds of any synthe that I have played (although I love the drum sounds in my Roland bass&drum board also!) Bell and percussion sounds are top notch and there is much potential in creating some trully huge choir sounds- I have already started to do some editing. I can honestly say that the Triton (and Trinity and TR Rack) instruments do not sound weak in any particular area- they have a great well rounded sound to them. I like the fact that you can velocity switch up to 4 samples in a program. The filters sound good also (althoug the ones in the Trinity offered extra flexibility by offering more types- not only low and high pass). The LFO's are MIDI syncable, as are the effects (unlike the Trinity). Combination mode contains sound HUGE sounds and as with other Korg instruments since the M1, this area has heaps of scope for building up massive splits and layers with the added flexibility of more polyphony and great effects routing possibilities. NOW IF ONLY THEY COULD MAKE IT 128 note polyphonic? (DOESN"T EVERYONE!!!!). The MOSS sounds are everything you could expect from the Korg Z1 (see my review under it's section) FUCKING FANTASTIC!!!! They shit all over the overpriced analogue modelling synthes out there- again this is only my opinion.

I haven't had it long enough to see whether I might experience problems with it (TOUCH WOOD!).

Music Link (Korg's Australian distributor) has provided excellent and prompt service each time I have dealt with them. I email them quite often now and John McCubberry (I hope I spelt it right) and John Grant are great product reps. Keep up the great work guys!!!!

Of course I would buy it again!!!!! I have been playing since 1980 and also teach piano and organ privately. I co-own a MIDI based studio in Melbourne using LOGIC platimum 4 on PC, a Yamaha O3D mixer (GREAT BOARD) plus assorted Korg and Roland bits. I can see the Triton becoming the centre of the studio. It is basically everything I wanted my old Trinity to be (and I loved that keyboard to death before I sold it!) plus more. A WORD OF ADVICE- if you already own a Trinity and don't need the extra features the Triton offers than hold on to it as they both sound the same- THE TRITON DOES NOT SOUND BETTER OR WORSE! If however you have bought neither, than definetly go for the Triton- the extra features are well worth it! I will repeat this again- I COULD DO ALL MY WORK JUST USING THIS BOARD (and the soon to be released Korg D16 hard disk recorder!!!!). PERHAPS KORG SHOULD TRY TO SELL THE TRITON AND THE D16 AS A SELF CONTAINED HARDWARE RECORDING SOLUTION! (Just add mics, monitors and musical creativety and ideas!) Me being me, I would also use a Roland JV2080 because I love both Roland and Korg sounds. If Korg iron out a few of the issues listed above and bring out heaps of PCM boards, I would rate this synthe an 11 out of 10!!!!!!!! THIS KEYBOARD IS HOT. GO BUY IT!

I'd like to leave a short note about the effecter system. My pesonal opinion is, this effect system is realy good. It has two master(system) effects and five insert effects. You put channels to the insertion effect, instead of putting effects on channels. That means, you can asign any numbers of channels to a insertion effect or a group of insertion effecter. And the variety and quality of effects were pretty cool too. Especialy for the stereo compressor and Hi-gain Overdrive/Wah-Wah, which are my favorites. Using Triton's X-Y controller stick on the Wah-Wah was just full of joy. And the stereo compressor was pretty useful in making drum sounds fat. I would appreciate some more effects like just plain distortion or something like that, though. And five insertion effects are plentyful, but I think it would be really fantastic with about a couple of more insertion effects, like we have on Trinity.

Well, frankly speaking, I don't really like the accoustic sounds on Triton. Like guitar sounds, are totally out of my taste. Though I found that some of the accoutic piano sounds in the Piano ROM, was pretty good when you turn off the preset effects, but in my opinion it only matched well with some modern style music. It might have been better if it included some of the better (and bigger) samples from that SG proX. But, sounds from MOSS option board, were very good with that analog synth taste, and some sounds like electric pianos and some string section, as well as some of the drum set, were pretty useful for me.

This is my second review. I have TRITON for about two months now.
TRITON is very easy to use. Good interface.

SEQUENCER: 1
ONE OF THE VERY SAD THINGS IS THAT THE SEQUENCER DOES NOT RESPOND/RECORD/SEND TO SYSEX MESSAGES. SO ALL THOSE PRO SEQUENCING PEOPLE, STAY AWAY FROM TRITON SEQUENCER. EVEN IF YOU HAD A MIDI FILE WITH SOME SYSEX DATA EMBEDED, THE SEQUENCER WILL NOT SEND IT TO IT'S MDID OUT PORT. SO IF YOU WERE THINKING TO PLAY MIDI FILES OR SEQUENCE ON TRITON FOR YOU SOUND MODULE, YOU MIGHT BE STUCK, AS I AM RIGHT NO. I HAVE A YAMAHA SW1000XG SOUND CARD. I HAVE LOTS OF MIDI FILES WHICH HAVE SYSEX DATA IN THE FIRST MEASURE TO SETUP SW1000XG. WELL GUESS WHAT, THE WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER WILL PLAY IT FINE, BUT TRITON WILL GO CRAZY. IT JUST DOESN'T RECOGNIZE THAT THERE IS SOME SYSEX DATA, AND IT HAS TO SEND IT OUT TO MIDI PORT. I HAVE CONTACTED KORG SEVERAL TIMES COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS. BUT THEY SEEM NOT TO CARE. I DO NOT BELIEVE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH THIS WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT IT IN THE SPECIFICATION. ALL THEY SAY IS MOST POWERFULL WORKSTATAION. HAHAHA, YEAH RIGHT.

THIS IS A MAJOR ISSUE, BECAUSE WITHOUT SYSEX, YOU CANNOT DO REAL CREATIVE STUFF. YOU ARE LIMITED TO ONLY THOSE FEW MIDI CONTROLLER MESSAGES. YOU CAN NOT CONTROL EFFECTS FROM THE SEQUENCER.

SOUND EDITING: 4
DRUM PROGRAMMING IS VERY POOR. THERE ARE ONLY FEW PARAMETERS THAT YOU CAN SET FOR INDIVIDUAL NOTES. I WOULD LIKE TO SET VELOCITY TO CONTROL CUTOFF FOR EACH NOTE, ALSO PANNING CAN NOT BE RANDOM FOR EACH NOTE. SO THE DRUMS ARE NOT REALLY EXPRESSIVE AND LIVE.
ACTUALLY, TRITON'S SYNTH ENGINE IS PRETTY BASIC. I WISH IT WAS UPTO PAR WITH XP/JV SYNTHS.

EFFECTS: 10
GREAT EFFECTS, I WISH THEY WERE CONTROLLABLE VIA SYSEX IN SEQUENCER.

EVERYTHING OTHER THAN ACUOSTIC PIANO IS NICE!!
EDITING COULD BE IMPROVED.

KORG USA WEBSITE SUCKS.
I GOT MORE ANSWERS FROM KORG UK AND KORG ITALY.

A GOOD OVERALL WORKSTATION/SAMPLER. BUT DO NOT BE CAUGHT IN ALL THE HYPE IT HAS. MAKE REALLY SURE THAT YOU DO NOT NEED THE FEATURES THAT IT IS MISSING.

latest

64 note,Plenty of effects that can be used super quick.
expantion cards to add more pcm sounds 16meg added
sequencer in great.

Dont trade the trinity .I am not happy with the pianos at all
They sound cheap. I use a trinity pro and a Tr-rack .
Im glad i didnt sell either one to get my Trinton . I assumed the Triton would have the same if not better sounds then the trinity
NOT!!. Thats ok , I got one hell of a sampler on this triton
I will force myself to love the triton

so far so good

Korg on line sucks , These people need to get there heads out of there ____. ROland web site is 10 times better for archiving sounds , old manuals or ? I dont like there telephone techs at korg, They Think everyone that call for help has never look at there sticken manuals. There not much help.

Im 37 year keyboardist , Started out 25 years ago playing . My set up consists of TRinity pro , Trinton , Tr-rack . I feel the search is over . IM set for life . Ha ha. I hope $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I just got my silver machine versin 1.06 (updating soon).the overall quality
kicks butt. it sounds great.Just let me say here,i read complaints about the
unusual low ended presets,the machine was made to manipulate, hence the wonderful
fx section.so you have the options of adding desied highs to presets and later
to the master fx....win either way.
Editing is very easy, due to the mini television screen it has....it's absoluty great
for musicians who play often on darken stages.
The manual appears to be in some kind o hyroglphic script...enough said on that...

62-poly..great stuff and to actually think i was buying a kurzweil
k2vx....hm what was it thinking??....effects are logically laid out,
it's a sinche for first timmers....they sound great.The routing system
is well laid out as well,i love the options.
Great expandability, even though they're behind Roland in this repect
at least the amountof available cards to buy as well as the hardware
limitation of only two, but no doubt they sounds great too!!
The seq.is well done,not as seriously endowed in comparission to VST,
opcode..etc. the keyboard action is superb, not perfect, but good.....

output/modulation

As regardiung the sounds, the A001 piano isn't as bad as some would
have it, not a steinway but it is decent for ensemble work only...no
Elton John solos nothing!
I always say,bell and whistles don't make good synths,it's the sounds.
The pad and motion synths were hot. the bass, guitars, and some mallets
are also super...........this apperegio function is good for lazy
people like myself. The strums of guitars, the run of synths, and the
bleeps and bops with this class for having overall,the soudns are
great, the motion synths especially

no prbs yet

fair the

Over all, the triton hasn't blown my socks off yet.
It's good for studio work only i would say,performance wise, even
though there's performance features.
would i buy it again?...........yup

I USE 1.06 VERSION SOFTWARE,THE EDITIOBN IS VERY EASY,MANUAL....AS USUALLY..VERY POOR

POLYPHONY ,NOT BAD,EFECTES ARE GREAT BUT LESS INSER EFECTS THAN IN A TRYNITY SENSITIVE KEYS,ITS OK.SEQUENCER Y NEVER USED THAT KIND I USED A COMPUTER BASED SEQUENCERS.ARPEGIOS ARE QUITE INTERESTING

SOUNDS ARE AWFULL THAT PIANOS ARE "CANNED" ALL SOUNDS ARE POOR OR TOO FAT YOU HAVE TO EQ A LOT I CAN NOT WORK WITH THIS KIND OF PIANOS..ARE LIKE ELECTRIC"CHEAP TOYS " I DONT LIKE THEM.TRYNITY SOUNDS BETTER

WELL FOR ME MOST IMOORTANT IS THE CAPABILITIE OF MAKING GOOD SOUNDS..BUT TRITON HAS A SMALL ENGINE TO DO IT.IT CAN HAVE GOOD EFECTS OR OTHER CAPABILITIES SUCH ARPEGIOS..ETC...BUT NO SOUNDS

USUALLY KORG HAS A GOOD SUPPORT

NO I DIDNT BUY IT AGAIN.I P`LAYED TWO MONTHS AGO AND ITS A SHAME!!I THOUGHT WAS BETTER VERSION OF TRINITY BUT ..IT IS WORST IT LOOKS LIKE MORA AN 01/W THAN A TRINNITY..I CAN NOT MAKE MY CREATIONS ON IT....THE SOUNDS ARE SO ...CHEAP TOY....

Software Ver. 1.0
Workstation/Sampler.
Ok, about the overall sounds: TRITON is a dark sounding instrument, it's not bright like Roland or Yamaha. The presets will sound very good if you have a high end audio monitors, but when you play the same from ordinary speakers, like most people do when they listen to music, TRITON sounds dull. And you can confirm this by the fact that most of the preset sounds have heavy use of EQ, without that EQ TRITON sounds have too much low frequencies, that disappear in ordinary speakers. Although you can make it sound a little brighter, it's time consuming to change all presets.
Editing patches is pretty easy, you have lot of control on the sound, but not as much as I have seen on other synths. For example, can use two waveforms to make a patch, but they share one pitch envelope. So if I wanted to create a patch with one sound going up and other going down and finally meet or harmonize each other, I couldn't do that in TRITON. However, there are still lot of things you can play with to change patch.
The thing I like about TRITON is that, the presets are user writeable, so if you don't like it, change it and it will stay like that.

There are two manuals, one is User guide and other parameter guide. they are both great, the labeling of topics match with the screens on screen.

The touch screen is great, but use your nails instead of finger tips if you want to avoid multiple touches for the same thing.

62 notes. I wished for more.
Keyboard action is great, but it's kind of noisy when you strike the key hard, there is a little rumble sound from the keyboard body.
it's expandable, you can add more sound boards. the ones that are out now, aren't too impressive. I heard they are coming out with two more, dance and hip hop pretty soon. and a third one in plan, orchestral. I would like to see an Ethnic/Indian baord.
Sampling memory can expanded from 16 to 64MB.

OK, MIDI capabilities.
If you are looking for a good master keyboard for your midi modules, please DO NOT consider TRITON.
reasons:
1. The on-board sequencer DOES NOT RECORD OR SEND SYSTEM EXLUSIVE DATA. so if you wanted to store the modules settings in the sequence for a song, you couldn't with TRITON. However, you can use TRITON as a midi data filer. But then you will have as many files as number of modules for each song.
2. You can set only very basic track properties. Patch, volume, pan, transpose, and some more.. they are all on different tabs.

Sequencer:
It has a decent sequencer, an onboard arpegiator, and pattern recording. memory is 200,000 notes, i wish it wasn't volatile. the sequencer is not as smart as one on the Roland XP-80/60. The realtime loop recording could be better. Once you are in record mode, you cannot change tracks. You will need to stop and select a different track. sometimes it breaks your beat and your idea is gone!!!

Sampler:
very nice sampler, easy to use, 16MB memory exp to 64 MB

Effects:
This is where TRITON beats all other workstations.
Very nice useful effects, 5 stereo insert effects BUSSES. TWO master effects, and one master three band EQ. I love it.

As I said earlier, TRITON sounds need some mastering work. You can't just select presets and get a nice mix out. You need lot EQing to bring the istruments at the front. Kicks are too low, snares are too thin. You will need to bring kicks toword middle and also add some low mids to snares.

The useful sounds are few in numbers than other SE and synth sounds.
I think TRITON is a wanna-be-techno-synth.
Few useful pianos, flutes. Strings are OK. Drums are great. Guitars are good. Synths are great. SE amazing.

Only two kind of filters. Low pass, and high pass. And filters are funny. they don't sound the way they should. If you are using the knobs to change cutoff, it's strange.

Effects help a lot to create sounds. Without those effects. TRITON sounds plain. No color at all.

Lots of dynamics.

Overall, I was expecting a better overall sounding synth with this much hype.

I hope so.

Didn't welcome my suggestion of thinking about the sysex record capability in sequencer. he said "we don't have and we don't plan to do this". not even payed attention to how useful this feature is...

If it's stolen, I will get a TR-Rack and GM-EQUINOX.
I have it for about a month, I have Roland JV-1010, and the expereince is not pleasant to control JV-1010 from TRITON.
I love TRITON for effects, sampling capabilities, and large memory sequncer. Also love the way it looks. There are very few it to compare with. YAMAHA EX-5, GEM EQUNIOX. Both had less effects, so I went with TRITON.

If you are thinking of getting TRITON, think twice if TRITON is not the only one synth you will be using. If you are planning to include TRITON as a master keyboard, you are on the wrong track.

version 1.0.2 in my 61 key loanerstill waitin on my pro. presets are cool,,editing is so-so haven't gotten deep into editing yet....Manual?why just push screen and go

polyphony is fine keyboard action is smooth since I'm not a piano player..built in effects are awesome and easy to use just wish triton had RESAMPLING!!! sEQUENCER IS EASY TO USE I just don't like when you save a song(pattern) when you load it back up...it resets resolution to HI(default)loop has to be reset again.

strings are awesome brass is great drums awesome bass a plus

sure so far

never had to

will buy it again.
It is nice to have this board I can compose without turning my computer on..

I just had a chance to hear that thing as a trinity user I felt like doing it. The Trinity is very similar to this one, definitely. Most of the things are the same except for that sampler thinng which is a good thing to have on that board. Also the polyphony has been increased which is incredibly important. Overall it's not bad, if you're a Trinity user I really doubt if you should trade your Trinity, most of the things are the same, the sounds I mean, it has more "TOYS" to play with.

At last, better polyphony!!! For god's sake, how long???? the keyboard is the same as the Trinity so it feels great. I am little dissapointed about those effects although they're Stereo right now which weren't there on the Trinity. But, it has 5 INS and 2 Masters effects. the expandability has finally been fixed like I want it to be. the Ribbon controller is smoother but less sensitive. I still prefer my Trinity's at that aspect. the sequencer doesn't care about me as I don't need so I won't mention it. The touch screen is smaller I think but it doesn't really matter. Overall, Not bad Guys, at least Korg cares about users Unlike Roland.

Hm.... well, as simple as that. More toys to play with then you have better texture sounds. As a trinity user you won't find new programs here at all. the drums are the same, another snare and bass maybe but that's it. they added the TR-909 crashes unlike Trinity but who cares? get the PBS-TRI with the dance waves expansion and you've got it all. it will fit to ANY style. those who say that it doesn't sound for Trance is Bullshit. you can make it sound like Trance machine, Use your Imagination. the reaction is great from the keyboard. The acoustic piano is well, sucks as hell!!!!!!!!!! what the hell were they thinking about??? the PSR sounds better!!! come on guys, last effort, at least a good piano... no can do. Too bad. Trinity people, hear me, KEEP your trinities and expand them NOW before the expansions won't be available.

I didn't really had the chance to gig with it so I can't tell.

Sorry, I can't tell anything. I will tell you this: Trinity is NOT too different so if you bought it not long ago like me then don't trade it for Triton, it's not worth it. Just because it looks better and more programmable it doesn't mean you need it urgent.

I am playing keyboards all my life. I was definitely dissapointed from many aspects about this thing. I expected a Monster and instead I got a toy. This isn't a serious keyboard players' dream, get real! It it definitely a concept of Kurzweil's keyboards. Just the added polyphony and a larger seq and etc.. whatever! I wish it had a NORMAL acoustic piano sound. Even my Trinity's piano is better! come on guys! I will end this review in a few words:
Trinity should stay with you if you already bought it. It's like the X3 and N364, same deal guys. Same sounds More features. the X has a medium piano, the N has a very BAD piano. Just keep yout Trinity, it will definitely serve you for years to come. even till the next millenium.