Review: Korg Electribe

[admin]

Review of the
Korg Electribe Analog
Modeling Synthesizer

by Rich the TweakMeister

[url]Can be read here: http://www.tweakheadz.com/electribe_page.html[/url]

Get a price: http://www.zzounds.com/love.music?p=p.KOREA1&f=2035



Here is an excerpt:
I have a Korg MS-20 sitting here too. Why would I want an Electribe when I have the real thing? Well lets be clear on one thing. Analog Modeling that the Electribe uses is NOT Analog, but a purely digital representation of analog dynamics. Can you tell the difference? Yes you can. In addition to being much richer and thicker sounding, analog synths have a certain fluidity and instability. One note never sounds exactly the same. The knobs smoothly alter sounds, yet in a sometimes unpredictable way. The Electribe is perfectly predictable. You tweak a setting and it will always sound like that. Also when you start resonating at extreme settings, the digital nature of the sound shines through. That is a strength or a drawback, depending on what you want. To sum up, there are some analog sounds that the Electribe can only hope to simulate. But, its much better than a sampled analog waveform and it can fool most of the ears, most of the time. Its very much like the difference between hearing a sampled acoustic guitar in a track and having a real acoustic track. You begin to notice that certain nuances always sound the same, rather than always different. But in the mix, often the sampled guitar wins out due to one issue...

[Aaron]

I've have the EA-1 for two years and I still use it all the time... It's extremely easy to use and like Tweak said I can get the same sound whenever I need it...

[alterboy]

i just got an ea-1 last week and will post a review of it soon.

[farace]

I have an EM-1 and I use it all the time. Some people think they can make complete tracks with these things. You can they will just be very....eh. But when you need a nice synth line or a techno edgy bass line, with a little proccesing and some eq this wiil do just great. -FARACE

[Neverwhere]

i love my er-1... i still toss around the idea of getting an ea-1 every now and then... friend of mine that i was making live techno with a while back had one and it really compliments the er-1 amazingly well.

[mrtunes]

how much stuff can the ER-1 do for hiphop and house- funky or disco style. not techno?

[Neverwhere]

how much stuff can the ER-1 do for hiphop and house- funky or disco style. not techno?

the er-1 is well suited for any genre of music where you would need 808/909 analog style beatbox sounds.

[certaintimes]

Ease of Use:

The Electribe is very easy to use - out the box, turn it on and press play. You have noise! The buttons and knobs all feel well secure and of decent quality, the rubber keys are a joy to work with - they feel like you could hammer them away all day and they'd still be fine.
Pattern selection is done via the big knob, same as any groove box of this type. You have about 180 pre-made patterns, House, Techno, DnB, Big Beats etc. With a total of 250 patterns, each of which is made up of 64 steps.
I'm using it for techno - the factory defaults are very housey / commercial, so I strip a 16 step pattern down completely, then add one or two notes on the sequencer, then just tweak that until I like it, then copy it up to the other 32 steps.
A nice feature is being able to switch the step sequencer to act as a keyboard - this allows you to bash out a pattern then instantly switch to step mode and then tweak away.
Recording knob movements is limited to one button per pattern, but even so, is a great addition and allows some serious bending of sounds.
Theres a couple of pre made songs on there as well to show you how well you could be doing!


Features:
You get a 2 part oscillator, each part can be sent to seperate outs (2 outs in total) and also can be controller via seperate MIDI channels. This allows you quite a bit of freedom - try plugging one of the outputs back in to the input. The Input acts like a sidechain insert which allows you to feed a audio source through the Audio In. Giving you various effects like gating.
The Sequencer also works as a keyboard.
Distortion, flange, chorus, delay fx, all good, but not brilliant.
Tap tempo, allows you to set the BPM via tapping a button. GOod for live DJ setups I guess. Or this just picks up MIDI clock time codes, so it all plays in time.
NRPN MIDI allows you to control all functions from a MIDI controller.


Expressiveness/Sounds:
I like the sounds in this box, they happen to suit my style very well indeed. (Minimal). But then on the other hand some of the default patches which I wouldn't use give off a large sound by themselves.
The FX could be slightly tighter, but they do the job.
As with most sounds you either like them or not, so its a matter of sucking it and seeing. Personally I think you can create some warm, harmonious sounds, but then crank up the distortion or change the waveform and you can produce something much more grainy.



Overall Rating:
I wouldn't use this as a main synth in mainstream music, I can't see it being up to the job, but as an accompanying sound module it works very well.
I'm please with the overall performance of the module, would recommend it to any bedroom studio that is after a nice little MIDI controlled module.

[Jelle]

Are there other synths of that type?

I would like to buy an electribe, but I 'm not sure jet.

[Tracks]

Are there other synths of that type?

I would like to buy an electribe, but I 'm not sure jet.

There is also the yamaha an200(analog modeling) and dx200(fm). The dx200 has the same synth engine as the dx7 but also adds a few filters. They are both combination drum machine and synth.

[rapidfire]

Are there other synths of that type?

I would like to buy an electribe, but I 'm not sure jet.

There is also the yamaha an200(analog modeling) and dx200(fm). The dx200 has the same synth engine as the dx7 but also adds a few filters. They are both combination drum machine and synth.

The an and the dx, are they very alike, almost the same in sound and textures, or are there differences?

[dc]

I just bought the emx-1, about two weeks ago...
I was really excited... a friend of mine use it too, so I knew what it stand for.
the main reason for me was to make drum rhytms and specially the kicks... I know ... you could say that it wasn't nescacerally to buy the emX1 right away only to use kicks, but I'm glad I have a bit more than only drums, I use the synth in some other projects, and just foolin' arround, ....
I record everything right away on my software sequencer,
yeah, good choise !
love the sound of korg !!!

really nice , no regrets at all,

dc

[dc]

hey jelle , roeselare ???


ik ben van beveren leie niet ver van mn keet hèj man,


hèhè

[Proteus9]

There is also the yamaha an200(analog modeling) and dx200(fm). The dx200 has the same synth engine as the dx7 but also adds a few filters. They are both combination drum machine and synth.

I dont understand why you say that they both have the same engine, when you also say that one is analog modeled and one is FM.. Because that IS the case, so they do not have the same engine.

I just wanted to mention that because creating sounds in either synths is totaly different. They may look the same, but Fm synthesis is alot harder to master than analog.

[stefan808]

please anyone who is using the electribe, i have e.. r mk2 and want to usi it as a simple midi controller for cubase and softsynth as well how shoul i set up?thank for reply plese do not not push my to read the manual a i know it almost by heart) but do not know how to use this info

[Proteus9]

you need to have the midi out of the electribe connected to your midi in and then make sure the midi is setup correctly in cubase.