Ok. Excuse my addition to the Motif vs Kronos stream. But’s it’s all good in the lounge, right?

Does anybody have any experience with both a Motif XF and a Kronos, and has created user samples in both? If you’ve compared the sound of sample playback on each, I’d like to hear your observations.

Ideally, I would like to hear about comparisons between the 2 keyboards’ sound when using similar if not the same user-sampled instrument, without the application of the board’s digital filters, eq, or effects. In essence, I suppose it’s comparing the sound of the DA converters and other aspects involved in the simple playback of a stored sample. (By the way, what other aspects are involved? Do these board compress our user created samples?)

I am comparing these two, because these two boards are really in a class by themselves, in that they are keyboards that support large user multi-samples.

I am not concerned with comparing the factory-shipped sounds (including alternate synthesis engines).

Yes, this topic is arcane.

I have both the XF and a Kronos. Yes I have made sample waveforms for both of them.

They’re both great. I can make both of them sound great, as I am a programmer. I can make
good sounding voices/programs in both using the same sample waveforms. It’s just a
matter of knowing how to program each keyboard.

Each one has its own distinctive “tone color”. No point in trying to describe the difference, but if they’re both running into the same sound system and level matched, you can hear the difference for yourself.

If you’re looking for whether one is “better” than the other, you won’t hear that from me.

My recommendation - buy both.

Thanks Dave for your observations.

Do you think if each workstation’s filters, eq’s, filters, & envelopes were not engaged, would you observe a different tone color?

My guess would be it’s such a narrow-focused matter that it’s not signficiant. It’s likely that I’m extrapolating my perception of the differences in the factory-included sounds of each, onto the blank slate of the user-sampling path. I suppose that a different DA-output chain may yield a slight sonic difference, but it’d be negligible in my overall satisfaction of the straight sample playback.

I’m definitely interested in other people’s thoughts about this; even if the thread’s dated.

Thank you,

DS