about to buy a microKORG XL

hello! so i'm completely new to production, made a few simple tracks on reason 4 yet have much much more to learn, nevertheless i have wanted a synth for years and a friend of mind is selling his microKORG XL at a reasonable price so I'm going for it

looking forward to just messing around on it but do have a few questions (specifically about the KORG).. firstly it comes with a small amp which isn't very good so was looking at saving up for some monitor speakers, was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions? was thinking about some alesis m1s

secondly I know the usb cable that comes with the KORG can be used to input MIDI into your daw but I was hoping to record audio, I know i'll need to buy some cables to do that and an adapter to get them into the audio input of my laptop but was curious as to how easy it would be to use that audio alongside the devices in reason, or if there is another daw or some software which might be better to use for this kind of thing..? any tips or tricks for someone new to production/hardware that I might find useful would be much appreciated

anyway thanx for reading i know i can find some answers elsewhere but thought it would be good to have a thread on here as this forum seems cool and chats about my kind of music !

I use Ableton which is pretty good for recording audio in. Unless the Korg Micro XL comes with an in built soundcard then you'd really be advised to get one 'cause the on board sound on a laptop will not be up to the job. The soundcard I use is a Focusrite Saffire 6 USB but they're are some reasonably cheap and decent 2nd hand soundcards to be had on Gumtree such as the Tascam US122.

Now as for monitors its up to you but believe it or not the older hifi's from the late 80s and early 90s have some amazing speakers with them! You can probably pick up an old hifi for £30-40 or maybe less with some awesome speakers to boot. I'm still using my Aiwa hifi and speakers because they sound so good plus they have 3-way sound. My friend is using old hi fi speakers too and they sound incredible which seriously deep bass.

Suggest you try your local recycling centre or gumtree to hunt down a decent hi fi and speakers.

don't listen to him about the late 80's early 90's stereos! stay the fuck away from those.

Nothing wrong with them. I use a pair of Aiwa speakers and I guarantee you they're as good as £200 monitors. My friend has some old hi fi speakers which sound frikkin awesome and he can master better than anyone on this board no lie so what ya talking about lol.

  On 11/29/2011 at 6:12 PM, Promo said:

Nothing wrong with them. I use a pair of Aiwa speakers and I guarantee you they're as good as £200 monitors.

brilliant.

  On 11/29/2011 at 6:12 PM, Promo said:

Nothing wrong with them. I use a pair of Aiwa speakers and I guarantee you they're as good as £200 monitors. My friend has some old hi fi speakers which sound frikkin awesome and he can master better than anyone on this board no lie so what ya talking about lol.

KNOWING your speakers AND YOUR ROOM can be just as important as having perfect monitors. Post a link to something he has mastered. Kinda sound like an idiot when you say he can master better than ANYONE on this board, when there is no way you have heard more than 30% of the music from people on here. Some people don't feel the need to post their music on here and those that do sometimes only post rough drafts in EKT.

  On 11/29/2011 at 12:33 PM, Wu kitty said:

hello! so i'm completely new to production, made a few simple tracks on reason 4 yet have much much more to learn, nevertheless i have wanted a synth for years and a friend of mind is selling his microKORG XL at a reasonable price so I'm going for it

 

looking forward to just messing around on it but do have a few questions (specifically about the KORG).. firstly it comes with a small amp which isn't very good so was looking at saving up for some monitor speakers, was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions? was thinking about some alesis m1s

 

secondly I know the usb cable that comes with the KORG can be used to input MIDI into your daw but I was hoping to record audio, I know i'll need to buy some cables to do that and an adapter to get them into the audio input of my laptop but was curious as to how easy it would be to use that audio alongside the devices in reason, or if there is another daw or some software which might be better to use for this kind of thing..? any tips or tricks for someone new to production/hardware that I might find useful would be much appreciated

 

anyway thanx for reading i know i can find some answers elsewhere but thought it would be good to have a thread on here as this forum seems cool and chats about my kind of music !

 

right ok, on a more serious note...

in order to get the audio into your laptop you will need an external USB (or firewire etc) soundcard with TRS inputs and outputs (TRS = same as 1/4 inch headphone socket). ideally it should also have MIDI in and out as well in case you ever get more synths/drum machines that don't have a USB connection. i recommend the alesis io2 as a good starter. don't get a soundblaster card. you will need to connect it all up with audio cables - all pretty self explanatory: audio outs from the Korg to the audio ins on the soundcard etc etc). also plug in the USB connection from the Korg to your laptop.

then you will need to set up your DAW to recognise and use your chosen external soundcard - all the info to do this should be in the instructions for the card - plus also set up your DAW to recognise and accept/send MIDI information from/to the Korg. this can sometimes be a bit tricky if you've never worked with MIDI before and usually involves lots of trial and error, ticking and un-ticking check boxes and fiddling with settings on the actual synth. you might get lucky though, especially with USB MIDI, and it might just all work straight away. most of my experience comes from trying to MIDI up older kit with obscure settings and menus which can be frustrating to say the least.

in terms of recording audio Reason certainly isn't the best choice, and it's not really very good at playing recordings of audio either imo. i think you would be better off with something like Reaper - a free multitrack program, fully MIDI compatible, really powerful and great for recording stuff on the fly. also Cubase, Logic, FL Studio and EnergyXT would also be excellent, but they ain't free

once you've got it all hooked up and working, i'd recommend just playing around with some riffs and patterns - play something on the Korg, while recording the MIDI notes (of what you are playing) in Reaper, save the MIDI recording, quantize it (basically: sort out all the timing errors), maybe edit a couple of the notes on the piano roll, trim it and loop it then hit play! you can then just leave the pattern running (while your Korg plays the notes you've just recorded) and fiddle about with the Korg's sound settings, presets, knobs etc until you find something you like - then record the audio of that back into Reaper for a few minutes while you tweak shit live, save it, cut it up, rearrange it etc...and you'll be making tunes!

edit: oh yeah monitors. yeah get some of them.... i use Fostex PM0.4 active monitors myself and really like them, think they're well cheap these days - £100 or so.

you might also want to get a small cheap mixer (maybe a Soundcraft Notepad or something - they're about £60 new) to act as a pre amp for the Korg to beef up the volume a bit. so the audio chain would be Korg Audio Outs > Mixer Inputs > Mixer Output > External Souncard Input > External Souncard Output > Monitors

  On 11/29/2011 at 7:26 PM, BCM said:

  On 11/29/2011 at 6:12 PM, Promo said:

Nothing wrong with them. I use a pair of Aiwa speakers and I guarantee you they're as good as £200 monitors.

 

brilliant.

but dude, his speakers have 3-way sound....

3 way? that's incredible.

i used my PC through an old 90's Aiwa stereo when i first started more than 10 years ago now, and i tell you my mixes were shit! lol.

i totally (had to) over compensated on bass, big time. they were terrible, terrible speakers!

EZ guys - my '90s stereo has Dynamic Bass Boost. My tracks sound really lush and bassy through it. However, when I finish mixing and play the track on my mate's stereo it's nowhere near as bassy. Where did the bass boost go?

  On 11/29/2011 at 3:32 PM, Gocab said:

don't listen to him about the late 80's early 90's stereos! stay the fuck away from those.

  On 11/29/2011 at 10:19 PM, analogue wings said:

EZ guys - my '90s stereo has Dynamic Bass Boost. My tracks sound really lush and bassy through it. However, when I finish mixing and play the track on my mate's stereo it's nowhere near as bassy. Where did the bass boost go?

lol. yeah. always switch that shit OFF.

my first shit was always way too bassy. on everything.

they went into the bose. the bose took all the baseboosts.

good monitors are not about sounding amazing. They are about sounding accurate.

But honestly, some shitty bookshelf speakers are plenty good for writing music. Definitely not a major priority when you're just starting out.

Watch your bass bins.

This is the first tune me and my friend did together which he mastered on my speakers. Yeah I ain't gonna lie I do use the bass boost lol but as mentioned above I know my speakers. And I don't change the settings when listening or making. They have a very good frequency response so I'm happy with them. Yeah I do appreciate there are better speakers out there but I don't wanna fork out £300 odd when I can make tunes happily with my existing speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3wQHVJpvZ4

thanx everyone, just got it home, can't play with it just yet as need to buy a lead and/or an adapter for the headphones.. appreciate the posts sleepy now will have a proper read tomorrow when i get back from the music shop :)