MS-20

The MS20... how to write a review on this beast....

Well, for starters lets concentrate on the things it doesn't do. Arpeggiator, built in effects, it only has two oscillators, the envelopes are fairly limited and the *on-screen* gui is a pain to work with because korg seemed to think that we would all enjoy scrolling around a window instead of seeing all the controls in the same view...

oh well.

However. What it does do in its most basic form, is bridge the gap between musical instrument and software. The fact that the MS20IC is a stricly one knob per control affair means that you have total hands on interactivity - something I don't think any other VSTi does. A lot of people have gone through it with spectrum analysers and so forth and done the "well its okay but there's this peak at 22.134Khz that the original does.." - which clearly indicates that these people need to get out more. I've never played the 'real' thing, but as far as i'm concerned this might as well be it. Hell it's the closest I'll get to an MS20 without risking ebay...

GUI, despite the annoyances from the screen version, has to get full marks for the MS20IC.

So how does it sound? Great - really good for basslines, odd weird effects and the filters are superb for running external noises through. I was playing around and before I could say 'homework' I was playing that riff from Da Funk... easily done. The band-pass trick with the High/Low filters is unusual and nice to play with, and the thing distorts to a resonant squeal with ease.

Features are dependent on what you're looking for. It's not Z3ta+ or Absynth, that's for sure, but if you want analogue leads, basslines and effects, look no further. Drop in a few effects from your chosen host for more silliness...

Korg do ship the original MS20 manual with it - can't get better than poorly translated chinese for authenticity - and the patching guide is a good introduction to using the patchbay. It does call for experimentation: which is probably the best way to get the most out of this synth.

Decent number of presets, but again the best thing to do is initialise the instrument from the controller and just play with it - the number of hours spent wondering "what happens if I plug a patch lead from there to there?" are far more fruitful than copying presets.

Customer support is good provided you look on the forums. I had a weird issue when I first got it, wherby the controller wasn't picked up as a midi device. Turned out that I had 10 midi devices installed since my old Edirol UA20 had been installed twice, and neither had been uninstalled since changing to my Firepod: Korg even provided a utility to ditch redundant midi devices so thumbs up to them.

VFM - this is the killer and will probably annoy a lot. I bought this in the UK from Absolute Music online for the grand total of 150GBP for the whole of the legacy collection including the MS20ic. That works out at 50GBP for the MS20+MS20ic - this thing is an absolute (npi) bargain!!

Stability is good so far. I'm about to move to a new DAW so we'll see how things go...Read Review