Minilogue XD

The Lounge Other Gear
#166

There’s a hole in Korg’s Minilogue/Prologue series. In USD:

  • Minlogue xd $620
  • Prologue 8 $1300

That’s the space where you could put an 8 voice desktop like jb mentions, or a 4 voice Prologue with either 37 or 49 full sized keys and a joystick. Or both.

Agreeing with GovernorSilver, Korg has had all sorts of variations on their products, often done as short production run sorts of things, so i’m even kinda’ expecting them to riff on the line, the electronics are modular inside and made for this, and Korg has some very good people in engineering too.

ADDED: I wonder how hard it would be to hack the XD and cut out the keyboard. Are there any teardown pictures of the XD anywhere? Markus Fuller did a teardown of the minilogue standard. Don’t know how similar the XD and the regular are to each other inside.

#167

The Plaits stuff sure sounds good in the XD

#168

The MS20 was more of a full size luxury affair… I had hoped they would do a desktop version of the MS20mini but that never happened and they’ve never done one of any of the 'logues. The only reason I got a monologue was because it was too good a deal to pass up and I’d moved house so I had a wee bit more room to accommodate the “full size” monologue.

If they did do a desktop version of the Minilogue XD I’d be all over it like a dog eating beetroot.

#169

I admit I glossed over the desktop MS-20 being a limited production luxury product.

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#170

It only really sticks in my mind because there was a period in time where I was seriously considering it but couldn’t bring myself to fork out something like twice the price of the MS20mini… no doubt it’s a great piece of gear but definitely one for the purists…

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#171

That escalated quickly… …just picked one up. Anyone after a cheap Minilogue/Monologue? Watch the Marketplace section.

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#172

Sorry for any of those who took offense. I was referring to these minikeys. Those things hurt my fingers every freaking time!?

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#173

I think the XD is a useful all rounder. A bit like Kante or Busquets. But not Messi or Ronaldo.

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#174

It does come with a copy of Izotope Ozone Elements. Mine was missing the voucher, but Korg support quickly sent me one.

#175

Cmon then, spill the beans? Its awesome or what :nyan:

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#176

I try not to fall into this trap of being excited about something just because it’s new (again). Also, disclaimer: GAS made me buy it, I don’t think I can honestly claim I needed one. It’s a beautiful instrument in terms of it’s looks. I love the matte black finish. This time around, there’s stereo output and two CV in jacks. The OLED waveform display still is a gimmick and the menu system is very basic. The sequencer now works via 16 step buttons. Also, there are some FX on board now, as opposed to the previous model’s noisy delay. Some of the design choices in the FX section’s UI are interesting, to put it mildly, but a quick run down of the FX gives me the impression they’re at least usable. The 24db/octave filter slope is gone now, you only get 12db/octave (that’s a change from the original Minilogue). I think I will have to read the manual. I haven’t had a huge amount of time with it yet, so take this with a grain of salt. I haven’t done any A/B with the original Minilogue and I’ve only tweaked some of the presets so far. Especially the sequencer examples nicely show off what the synth is capable off. I’ve been a long time fan of ghostradioshow and some of his presets are right up my alley.

Overall, I feel the inclusion of the user programmable oscillator has increased the sonic palette of the Minilogue immensely. I downloaded and took a look at the logue SDK for oscillator/FX development, but ran into an issue with a missing header file (has anyone got it up and running and cares to share how they got there?). In all honesty, as fascinating as this option is, I don’t see myself developing many of my own oscillators, I simply don’t have the time - but hey, who knows.

I won’t even try to suggest my ears are designed to spot subtle differences in sound. What I’ve heard so far I like, it seems to lend itself well to creating nice Detroit-y chord pads and stabs. Clever use of the sequencer, a drum machine and a beefy mono synth thrown into the mix and off you go.

To summarise, I like it a lot, but it’s early days and usually I find anything awesome as long as it’s new. Not sure that’s going to help you a lot, but at least it’s honest.

7 Likes
#177

I wish they added a 2nd filter hipass and bandpass for the dubby techno nerds :sunglasses: this is one big reason for still eyeing on the pro2 (and on the bank account). But otherwise it sounds fantastic. Hope korg is at Superbooth :scream_cat::scream_cat::scream_cat:

#178

Just run it through AH?

#179

There is at least one set of filters available for the user FX, from dirt box, obvs not analog tho.

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#180
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#181

What contact for Korg did you use? Mine was also missing any vouchers, but no response from SupportKorgUSA (contacted last week).
Thx

#182

I found an eMail address for a local contact in my country, which is not the U.S.

#183

This thing is tempting me as I have no “one knob per function” synths - I love my Elektron gear but it would be fun to have something totally hands on and this seems to have the right mix of flexibility, simplicity and price! Also would love to use it as a platform for learning DSP.

How do the effects work in terms of using more than one at a time? I couldn’t work it out from the user guide. Can you have delay, reverb and modulation at the same time? Can any of those be user effects? Can you have more than one user effect at a time? Is the routing fixed?

#184

I tried the old minilogue in store last week and it is really hands on. Quite refreshing being used to the a4. Sound is also great. Also some cool chord function.

Then this week i found out that they released the xd and i am gassing a lot. It seem that all effects now can be used simultaneously:)

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#185

I played with an XD in the store last weekend. It’s dope. I like it.

But it’s really big. Too big for my small space.

I also couldn’t figure out how to program slides.

And. It wasn’t clear to me how to make it 1 voice (mono synth). Do you just turn the Unison mode down to 0?

Curious.

But yea. It sounds really awesome. I want one. But I don’t know where it’s go.