INTRO

Forgive me the short or unceremonious nature of this write-up, but the length of it mirrors the effort Korg put into making something new. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not bashing Korg for not being innovative. They’ve released many new & interesting synths in recent years (more than anybody else probably), so in this respect the company is bringing us value. But not this time.

Why did I buy the “new old” synth from Korg at all? Back in the day I owned the Korg MS-2000 (which is the same engine as the Microkorg 1) and I enjoyed it. It was feature-packed and it sounded good fast. Many of you have been asking me to make a sound pack for the original Microkorg. But I hated the user interface of the Microkorg 1. Recently I was browsing discounted online offers and judging by the looks of it, Microkorg 2 seemed a fine little synthesizer. I decided to jump at the opportunity because of its generous engine, large colorful display and pretty design (at least for the white version).

USER INTERFACE

First thing that bummed me was the pitch & mod wheels – just like in the original Microkorg 1, they’re surrounded by bulges of plastic that seem to have been put there to stop you from securing a proper grab on the said wheels. This should have been gotten rid of in Microkorg 2 – unfortunately, it stayed. It’s crazy how manufacturers will always do something senseless or repeat past mistakes, despite the fact that synthesizer design has been developing for more than 60 years now.

Anyways, I’ve learned & mastered the intuitive Microkorg 2 user interface very quickly. I had to consult the user manual only once – to discover how to perform data backup. It’s a proper UI and tweaking the presets & navigating through the menus is mostly pain-free. Obviously it’s not a knob-per-function synth, but there isn’t anything I would have done differently with this small space if I was on the product design team. Well, maybe just one thing. There are so many animations on the screen, and each module and each parameter have their own animations, that some people may find it distracting. It looks like an aerial view of a fairground with all the colorful tents and spinning carousels. Surely a 5-year old child will find it enthralling, but for the grown-ups it may be a little bit “over-the-top”.

The portability is also an upside. The synth is very light in weight and can be powered by standard batteries. The keybed has a pleasant feel to it, the knobs have great resolution (they are more precise than the ones used on Behringer UB-Xa for example).

ENGINE

Listing all the technicalities is always boring, so let me just make a quick sum-up of the most interesting stuff (I’m on firmware V 1). Three oscillators each with classic waveforms + DWGS (digital waveforms) + samples (but no option to loop or reverse the samples). State-variable filter with overdrive. 6 slot mod matrix with uni/bipolar modulators and modifiers (including a “vintage mode” modulator). Vocoder, audio looper and a pretty advanced arpeggiator. All of that makes a very positive impression at the beginning. I like this kind of architecture, because there’s a lot of things inside, and a lot of these things can be put into some sort of interaction with one another. Such a setup should yield original, nuanced, lively & expressive sounds.

THE SOUND(S)

Unfortunately all the treats quickly proved – to put it mildly- doubtful, when I realized that for the most part the device sounds average at best, or like a humdrum 2008 VST plugin at its worst. The new goodies may be an upgrade, but the “virtual analogue” sound is definitely a downgrade in relation to the original Microkorg / Korg MS-2000. I just don’t seem to get any analogue feel from it.

I’ve grown really irritated & disheartened by this trend (removing the last vestiges of soul from the sound of modern synthesizers) because I’m witnessing this phenomena more & more often. So I was going to return the synth to the store after 2 short days of playing with it, but fiddling with the broad mod matrix and the generous FX section saved it from its wretched fate. I came up with a perfidious & tricky idea – I thought I would use the synth’s sub-par VA tone to make some cheesy sounds in the vein of a Casiotone or an old gritty sampler run through a copy of a copy of a VHS / 16 mm tape.

There’s only 100 of these sounds, but don’t treat this small number as a basis to judge the versatility of the synth (some of my soundpacks exceed 300 presets!). I could go on with making more presets, but my reason for engaging with synths in the first place is that I like to search for & discover new textures & ideas, as opposed to chasing a formula and becoming repetitive to the point of nauseating boredom. In other words – making more lo-fi sounds = boring. Making more “normal” sounds with the static / stiff / plasticky timbre = uninspiring.

OUTRO

But I’d like to be more objective (or end on a more positive note), so I’ll say this – the Microkorg is not a synth for me, but it’s not a bad synth either. Tone is in the ear of the beholder (listener), and I’m sure some people will find the Microkorg-2 sounding more interesting out of the box than, say, the Arturia Minifreak. Or more appealing in a production context where tricks like layering and equalizing bring added value and create new quality.

The user interface that Korg has been putting into some of their recent synths (Microkorg 2, Opsix) is, alongside the Hydrasynth, the best type of interface for a deep modern synth. Large & sharp display plus multi-purpose knobs that have their counterparts on the screen feels to me like the best way to tweak your ideas into existence, out of a maze of features. Sound quality may be subjective but good UI is always a godsend.

Let me just draw your attention to the big selector knob on the Microkorg-2 panel. Korg says that “the microKORG2 introduces a genre-based Category and Bank selector… (which)… lets users quickly find sounds that will fit any genre without endless and tedious preset browsing.”  If I look at the Microkorg 2 this way – as a machine for browsing presets – then the story takes a different turn. In a perverse way, the synth becomes cool. Who loves to tediously browse presets, eh? Microkorg 2 seems to come with the promise of ending our woes, if only we believe the marketing heads (who belong to the most honest & trustworthy people on the planet, as we know). I think the Microkorg 2 may also prove pretty usable in vocoding & live gigs, especially if we take into account the fact that in live context all nuances get lost in the hodgepodge of sound systems and the cacophony of sounds.

To sum things up, I’ll say the Microkorg 2 is a very portable synth covering a lot of basics and showing readiness for creative ideas, but it has one of the least inspiring, least lively timbre of all the synths I’ve recently played. If it was released as a digital synth (which it of course is), then I would be totally okay with it because it sounds just that – like your everyday pedestrian digital synth. The problem is that it’s supposed to be a “virtual analog synth that models analog circuitry” according to the marketing dispatch. Also, there’s no editor, no plugin counterpart (isn’t it just a Raspberry Pi in a box?). Korg seems to have chosen to invest more effort into introducing fancy animations, “trophies” and all the bells and whistles dancing across the colorful display. Props for Korg for trying to be dandy & modern. This stuff matters too. I bet it looks neat on stage and in our facebook posts. A classic case of form over substance. Yet for a sound that is truly “rich” (the word Korg uses to describe the Microkorg 2 sound in their promo materials), I’d rather pick the Minilogue XD – this synths is also portable and it comes with a good user interface. The only thing you would have to let go is the vocoder and the looper, which are present in the MK2 and absent from the Minilogue.

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