A huge, free sound program packages is out at the same time for both Roland's and Korg's flagship synth. Roland's V-Synth GT got a 450-piece patch bank from th manufacturer - Juno, Jupiter and SH sound creations mainly, with some early Roland D-additions. Click here to download.

Korg's M3 benefits a 3r party development by Qui Robinez. This patch bnk consists of 64 sounds, and can be found here.

Korg's new 1-bit recording technology can move into the rack now: you can purchase it (called MR-2000S) for 2000 USD. It samples at 5,6 MHz in 1-bit resolution but also works in the standard, 24/192 PCM mode. Mp3 rcording/playback is performed, too, and all the ins and outs are professional, balanced XLRs. It has 80 gigs of hard drive - it can hold up to 14 hours of recording, using the best recording quality. Comes with an editor/converter software. Click here to know more.

After a long time Korg has unveiled a new sensation again: a new workstation, M50 which has basicly a very similar sound generation system as in the M3, but with a very competitive price: 1500 USD for the 61-key version (more keys to come later). For the money you will get 256 megs of sound ROM, 608 preset plus 640 user programs, 170 different effect algorhythms, a sequencer with huge note capacity, and a polyphonic, programmable arpeggiator. All this comes in November, check the product page for the rest of the info.

Korg's strangest synth, DS-10 on preorder from now, they will ship it in September. As you probably remember this is a software synth for the Nintendo platform, and quite a complex one: just check this video  - the soundtrack was composed fully on the DS. Two synths and a drum track, at the same time. Kling, klang.

Korg nice yellow toy, Kaossilator has a surprise: David Bottino blogger let us know it. With some button push and trick, without any hardware modification anyone can force the gadget to memorize four bars instead of two. If you have the machine and some time try it.

Finally Korg made something gorundbreaking: this new family of devices called Nano is a big help for the laptop musicians. All three USB devices are ultra-lightweight, slim, and easy to transport even inside your laptop bag. The keyboard, nanoKEY has 25 keys with velocity, and an ability of sending not only Note Ons but Control Change messages, too. Second, nanoKONTROL is based on nine faders and nine knobs, all sending controller information. It will have a software application to assign each element to the desired function. The third to, nanoPAD has 12 dynamic trigger pads, and the famous Korg X-Y pad. We still have no pricing information, even the product page is written in Japanese, strangely.

Frankfurt' Musikmesse, the world's biggest musical instrument and studio equipment show was held last week, and we were there of course to have an insider view of the current state of the music industry. We experienced slightly even worse mood than last year, the industry's weaking and transforming rapidly. Three sharp process can be observed:

Korg had no any new, exciting synthesizer hardware or software at NAMM; instead of them they facelifted two existing model. X50 (on the picture) and MicroKORG (check the visuals behind the link) can be ordered for a limited time with these extraordinary design.

Gary Kibler, a tricky producer from London made a full album with only a single Korg Kaossilator module. It is available from ReverbNation freely, check it here, it is called "The Yellow Album". Although it will not hit the top position of the charts it made a huge impression on the music market already. Songs are repetitive - as they came from this device only, real-time, no preparation or cut-copy-paste applied -, but anyway, the material is quite enjoyable.

New Kaoss products are coming from Korg: in the first picture is probably the smallest synth module of the world, Kaossilator. It deals with Korg's modeling sound generator engine, in focus with the Kaoss pad, which controls note and pitch on the X axis, plus cutoff, modulation and other parameters on the Y. It comes with 100 program presets, and a big table of microtuning parameters: 31 scales total. Kaossilator plays phrases as several Korg synthesizer does, and it records them with loop record function and layer more and more tracks real time. A smart arpeggiator is also in the set, so it is a perfect tool for the live electronic musician as it seems. Still no price announced, here is the official Korg product page in German.

Two DJ mixers are also debuted in these days: on the picture you can see the smaller, two-channel configuration, KM-202 - the bigger with four channel is called KM-402. Kaoss pad here insults the internal effect processor which can have 100 programs with ordinary effect types like reverb, delay, phaser, 6 types of EQ and so on. But it has smart features for supporting live performances: the best example is the FX Release function which keeps all the effect types with release intact while changing the effect program. No matter how badly do you push the effect selector buttons the result remains musical. The mixers are also fully digital inside with 24 bit resolution, and I have to mention an other nice selling point: the crossfader has several diferent characteristics. Check KM-202 here, or KM-402 here. We still have no price information.

Korg has announced the new version of their software synth package, the Legacy Collection Analog Edition 2007. It contains all the goodies we have in the last Analog Edition plus a new classic Korg instrument from the eighties: Mono/Poly. The very original synth of the age was a monophonic monster with its four oscillators and the beasty filter, but also can work as a four-voice polysynth, at a very reasonable price point - polyphonic instruments were expensive toys then.

The new Mono/Poly has a 128-voice polyphony, with a 16-level unison mode, and has two multieffect processors. The original synth capabilities has expanded with a huge modulation matrix with 159 sources and 35 destinations. The price of the full package is 250 USD, but owners of the latest Analog Edition can upgrade for 100 USD only. More to be known here.

Korg unveils ten new products at NAMM, here are the first three. MINI Kaoss Pad does the same like the bigger ones, but - what a shocking news - it is smaller. And works on batteries, and has 100 effect programs. The big workstation synth is M3 - the name recalls the old M3R module which was the small and rack-mountable version of the M1 synth - but this one is positioned higher. Basicly it is a cut-down version of Oasys, transformed into the affordable category. It has 120 of polyphony which is performed by the heart of Oasys (HD-1 chip). It works from a massive 256 megabyte ROM set, and a 64 megabyte of sampling RAM (expandable up to 320 megabyte). You can order M3 in three different versions: with a keyboard of 61, 76 or 88 keys.

Downside is R3, a small synth plus vocoder, based on the Radias-technology. more to come later.