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When I saw the prototype over the Internet, I thought: COOL! When I saw the actual model released to shops, I thought: OK…When I finally bought one myself and took it out of the box, I thought: OH CRAP!… 777 Euro for this?

Korg has sucked me dry. I’m scratching my head and thinking:
– is this some new type of synthesis that Korg had invested 5 years of research & development into?
– is it some kind of space technology on pure analogue circuitry?
– is the synth big & hefty, with lots of knobs, and is it made of metal or wood?
If the answer to all these questions is “no”, then another question immediately pops up: where is this price tag coming from? Judging solely by its exterior, the Opsix does not make a good initial impression at all. It looks and feels like something coming out of a 1980 Casio shop. I think the Opsix / Modwave / Wavestate series are the most plasticky synths I’ve ever held in my hands. There’s no metal or wood elements, apart from the 1-milimeter thick aluminum plate plastered onto the surface. The keybed is as bad. I won’t say horrible, because that word is reserved for Soviet-era synths from Russia. But it’s definitely giving me me a cheap, toy-ish vibe.

UI

On the UI / UX front things look much better. The knobs are comfortable and the overall layout is ergonomic. The tweaking process is not that much different than the Hydrasynth’s:
– step 1: click a button
– step 2: twist a knob assigned to a display slot.
It’s a little bit more cumbersome due to the small size of the Opsix, the not-that-big screen, plus the shared / shift buttons. But that’s in relation to Hydra. To put things into perspective, I’ll also compare it to Behringer Deepmind. The Opsix screen design and editing process are much better than Deepmind’s. You might be surprised with this opinion, because the Behringer Deepmind has many more knobs (or sliders) and a noticeably larger screen.

But the Behringer Deepmind screen has irritating lags, and there are so many things packed into it that navigating the synth becomes tedious. Opsix, on the other hand, seems to be using a very fast processor and symmetrical screen-to-knob cross-reference, which makes its menu-diving experience much better. I even prefer to dive into the Opsix menu to reach the third LFO than to play the silly game of latching and un-latching the LFO3 button in Modal Cobalt 8.

The Korg team has managed to squeeze the most out of this limited space and maybe this is what we’re paying for – their brains. And their butts sitting in an R&D office on an expensive piece of real estate somewhere in California (the Opsix is designed in the US and manufactured somewhere in Asia).

However, I have a number of complaints. The first bummer that becomes obvious when I’m trying to control my sounds in a meaningful / performative way is that there are no macro knobs. This leaves me with only the mod wheel. Having just one controller is pretty drastic for such a deep synth.
The other complaint is a broader one. The Opsix was supposed to be the synth which made FM synthesis easy. I’m not really sure if it does. It definitely tricks you into thinking FM synthesis has become easy, because the synth comes with several knobs (DX-7 had none), and it sports a 2-inch-wide display (DX-7 had a one-inch-wide display). Of course once you get used to the interface and remember all the pathways, there is less ground for criticism and the workflow becomes acceptable. But to tell you the truth, I am confused. Why doesn’t this synth have more knobs and / or buttons? The Wavestate / Minilogue were cheaper yet they had more of everything on the panel. The Minilogue XD, for example, had it all: high-quality knobs & switches, metal chassis and even a wood piece! I understand that an FM engine with six operators and all the gadgets would entail a massive amount of real-time controls – but I’m not asking for that.

Let me start with the observation that there are no individual buttons for the six operators. Each operator should have a [ON / OFF] button or a [MUTE] button. It is crucial to be able to hear the presence or absence of individual operators in FM without changing their volume. Korg decided to bury this feature in a menu.

There should also be an additional row of buttons underneath the existing row (SEQ, VOICE, MOD MATRIX). Right now a number of features are accessible only via the SHIFT button. I won’t go on with examples. Generally speaking there are too many things that are missing / buried that could have been brought up to the surface. Analog subtractive synths which are easy to understand have much more generous panels. It’s an important issue, because if you don’t know what you’re doing in the FM dominion, or you do not take full control over it, you can forget about getting tolerable sounds from it. Your FM synth is going to sound like a broken radio.

So be warned: editing the Opsix to its fullest potential equals constant clicking between pages of modules. The interface is fine if you want to make some traditional sounds, because Opsix can work as a traditional synth with its sawtooths and filters, plus the quality FX unit is a quick gateway to make something nice (I think Opsix has the most interesting setup of reverbs). But it is not a good way to make FM easy. There seem to be better hardware interfaces out there if you want to learn or make the most out of FM synthesis.

THE SOUND (or rather THE SOUNDS)

I think this is the strongest area of this synth and the trump card that makes you turn a blind eye to its imperfections. The starting tone of the Opsix is very “unresponsive”, thin, static & barren and makes me want to cry. Just like with Korg Radias or Roland SH-01 / SH-201. After a while it begins to lean toward something I’d call a fusion of vintage Korgs – MS-20 & Polysix (with some Oberheim) and something more modern / creative / whacky, like a Virus TI or an Ensoniq Fizmo – this is where excitement kicks in.

Then it becomes an alpha-chameleon and the ensuing bewilderment and joy are hard to control, and I’m not sure if I’m listening to my Opsix or some E-MU module / NI Komplete plugin. That course of action is again similar to the Hydrasynth’s. This may be the source of controversy and the reason for love / hate camps – just as the Hydra was being described as “harsh-sounding”, for some people the Opsix may sound more like a PCM workstation than a traditional Prophet / Nord / Waldorf synth. Well, chameleons have their downsides too – they don’t sound like a million bucks right out of the box.

But in my opinion this reality brings some good news, for at least two reasons. One – it’s something different; it’s not an obvious, hackneyed sound. Two – it’s “laid back” yet “present” (a pleasing quality for the ear) and amazingly versatile in its shapeshifting ability. The six operators with their detailed parameters, the various filters, the diverse waveforms, the user-defined algorithms, lots of FX and a mod matrix that can modulate practically all of it make up a force to be reckoned with and enable the synth to create a remarkable, practically speaking never-ending supply of original sounds. I think this is the kind of synth that will yield a huge collection of customs presets over the coming years because each person tweaking it can (and surely will) approach the process differently. The generous engine gives tons of possibilities for every synthesis school out there. The only proviso is that you have to modulate quite a number of parameters to bring it all to life & make it sound appealing.

OP-6 vs DX-7

Two words for those of you who wonder how it compares against the DX-7. Unfortunately, no good news here. Opsix loses the old warmth and organicness of DX-7 somewhere along the way. Back in the day I used to own a DX-7 and a Casio CZ-5000. I thought the Casio CZ sounded like crap pitted against the DX-7. But compared with the Opsix, even the CZ sounds better, let alone DX-7. The Casio CZ lacked the aforementioned “depth” and “organicness” of the DX-7, but at least it had this nice, grunge, lo-fi sound to it. The Opsix fails even at that. It does have a “lo-fi” effect and 8 / 12-bit waves that you can activate, but come on – it’s like putting lipstick on a corpse. OK, maybe I’m being too brutal. I’ll say this: it doesn’t feel “authentic” it’s just noise. Or maybe the noise loses its appeal because the basic waves / sound generators are too “precise”. I’m not sure which way it goes. So if you’re a DX-7 nerd, be warned: the Opsix has a lot of stuff to degrade the sound and make it more dusty / lo-fi, but it is not a DX-7 kind of lo-finess (or it’s not an “innate” lo-finess – again, you have to modulate it to make it sound convincing.)

THE DEAL

So in the end I’m a little bit in two minds trying to judge it all in an objective fashion. On the one hand I’ve learned & accepted the interface, and even though I don’t always enjoy the Opsix’s dehydrated starting tone, I do love the original sounds that I’ve managed to achieve after some effort, and they inspire me to play some music. At the end of the day it’s all that matters.

If I say that it’s a great synth for modern leads, acoustic plucks, industrial / techno sequences and ambient pads / soundscapes, it will be a criminal understatement. Leaving the staple aside, to me the Opsix has become the first go-to choice for some never-heard-before novelty sounds & textures, and to my ears each and every one of these sounds has its appeal. Dirty, clean, metallic, woody, robotic, aggressive, silky-smooth, retro, decayed, bizarre, evolving – there is no end of adjectives that could be used to describe the results.

If there is anything that Opsix and DX-7 have 100% in common, it’s the “multi-personality and inspiring ambiguity” that defies categorization. It can imitate or emulate various instruments, phenomena and techniques of sound production, be it cello, mellotron / optigan, or bugs in a meadow. And this is wonderful and amazing to an extent that is rarely seen in the synth world. I think it’s one of the most interesting and capable synths to be released in recent years. I made around 200 varied sounds in the first couple of weeks but I only scratched the surface and I’ll never uncover the rest due to the limitations of my imagination.

I really missed the Opsix when my friend borrowed it for 3 weeks – I felt deprived of adventure. In your traditional analog synth it has become hard to find an untraveled path. After all, what can you do with “two oscillators and a filter”. With Opsix, all the details like volume levels, key tracking and oscillator feedbacks make a difference and create a web of never-seen-before intersections and interactions. Maybe this is the future of digital synths – quality DSP with a modular system underneath.

On the other hand, I’m wondering about the difference between these “cut-corners” modern synths like the Opsix and a high-quality VST plugin with a midi controller attached to it. If this is the future of synths, then I guess we’ve all lived through it already. Also, my memories of the DX-7 and my (too) high expectations for the interface do not allow me to fully appreciate this synth (I wrongly anticipated a knobby DX-7 on steroids).

And even if the UI is better than the Elektron Digitone, the current shape of this machine is still leaving me wanting. There’s no possibility to modulate the sequencer (apart from swing parameter), and the sequence is just 16 steps max. The arpeggiator is so-so: neither basic nor advanced. It would be nice to have some generative / randomizing features for the ARP / SEQ, because I find the Opsix great for arpeggiated / sequenced grooves.

The Opsix should have the interface of a Polybrute, and a 4-or-5 octave keyboard with poly aftertouch. A three octave keyboard makes it really difficult to create, polish and eventually play your pad or lead sounds. Again, I have to repeat: this is an FM synth, not a mono bass synth! Look at that unused space below the shift buttons and above the 16 sequencer buttons: it’s 1 x 10 inches of free space and it just begs to be filled with some knobs, preferably for the envelope(s) or user / macro assignments. And why oh why didn’t we get a joystick like in the Wavestate?

I see a considerable amount of wasted potential for a truly great instrument. The question is how much more above the €777 (or the current €500) price tag we would have to pay for all these goodies. I myself would like to pay a bit more, but instead have a product that makes more sense, like the Hydrasynth. If Opsix looked more like the Hydrasynth on the outside (poly aftertouch, more generous UI), and gained some minor improvements of the firmware (panning control, more precise envelope settings) I dare say it would enter the same league. Hydra is a different kettle of fish for sure; it leans more towards classic analogue sound and it has things in it that the Opsix does not have (wavetables, formant filters). But the inadequacy / shortage applies the other way round too: Opsix has 6 operators / oscillators, it has motion sequencing, it has more FX – and it beats Hydra in these areas. So at the end of the day both synths prove to be a sound explorer’s playground – just in a different way.

2022-06-26

OK, now we can buy the Opsix in the “SE” version with 61-note keyboard with aftertouch. Too bad the interface stays the same with all that new space on the panel.

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