KORG OASYS Demo & Review 

It kind of has been, this was the foundation of what would later become the KRONOS. That said, this was probably the last times one of the big synth companies made a flagship synth with a complete disregard to cost; it was like 8 grand if I recall? All that aside, I still remember the first time I saw one at Sweetwater back then and there was really nothing like it. In hindsight I think the mid to late 2000's were a pretty cool time for synths and that era often gets overlooked!

@Irife I own a kronos and love it. I had an opportunity to buy an oasys but passed it up for less than the kronos. It's simply too old, the components even for the kronos are getting hard to find.

@@forrestperkins6237 I have tossed the idea around a few times but yeah, its just not worth it in the end I think.

The newest version is called Nautilus, and they removed most of the performance controls.

Discontinued support you said? Two years ago I got answer and instructions from Korg on my problem with Oasys :)

KORG достойный аппарат!😁👍🇷🇺

Blimey if the OASYS isn't a beautiful piece of hardware though, it's kind of insane Korg actually made something like it. I don't think I'll ever stop wanting one, but it just makes no sense compared to a second hand Kronos, which I'll probably end up getting soon now that I can actually afford one. I'm less bothered by Kronos being EOL than the lack of physical controls on the Nautilus, so not much of a choice really. Still, if I ever run into a well priced OASYS, I might just be persuaded to buy it just on the basis of how crazy it is :).

I have one, to my great surprise it only cost me £185 a while ago. The sounds it can produce are really quite something for the time, though polyphony is an issue. It's similar in concept to the keyboard OASYS, but the actual models are quite different, it has Minimoog and Prophet 5 emulation instead of MS-20 and Polysix, for instance. It also has one thing Korg never implemented on it's keyboard descendants though: a fully featured SDK, SynthKit. This allowed third parties and even users to design entirely new synth engines from scratch, some of which are very interesting. I've heard very good things about the ones released by Harm Visser in particular, but unfortunately my efforts to find a copy have so far been in vain.

I remember them back in the day, pre keyboard.

I have one that I bought for 250$ a few years back.. never plugged it in though - any luck with the Harm Visser synths? He disappeared off the face of the earth along with his website. A version 2.0 includes the triton soundset.. synthkit has been released to the web also, but requires macOS@@ozzyp97

They would have sold far fewer Kronos units at the price they would have needed to charge… but from a user's perspective, I agree.

Plastic is nearly vintage now anyway

I have a great many of the most popular sw instruments I can run on my plenty-fast Mac. I bought an M1 in late '88 and have a few of the subsequent Korg workstaion models Korg released over the years (decades). The Linux-running OASYS & Kronos boot times are beyond absurd, BUT what I've yet to see in sw is a package of some kind running on a Mac or PC that gives you the no-fuss instantaneous switching between 'programs' & 'combis' on the scale of modern workstations. This facilitates flow & creation for many in a way that sw running on a standalone computer with sounds every bit as good or better cannot. Even if you're just writing on an OASYS or Kronos (or equivalent) to sketch out the idea, to later replace some or all of the parts with different sounds, these instruments still have a place for a lot of folks in creating, and of course are much preferred for live work vs a laptop for many.

@@Robert44444444 ROMpler style VSTs with instantaneous switching have been a thing for years and years, even from Korg themselves. I sold my Triton Extreme when the Triton VST came out but I still have my M1 for its lofi ADC. I also have a Fantom-XR (downsized from an X7) and a Motif XF, the latter is overall the best workstation I've ever owned and one I can happily use without a PC. The XF also shows that when done properly you CAN have a Linux-based (MontaVista in this case) system if you're smart about it. Korg made zero effort to optimize the Kronos and it shows, the XF even with a full 1GB expansion board boots up in less than a minute without an SSD. It also doesn't store the factory content in RAM iirc even if the switch is still instantaneous The Triton sequencer (which is still in the OASYS and Kronos) is absolutely abysmal. Besides, CPU and SSD speeds are getting close to near instantaneous loading of even things like Eastwest OPUS instruments.

You have to remember that the OASYS project is from 1995 but due to its self cost at the time more than 21 thousand dollars it was divided into models such as trinity the synthesizers Z1, Prophecy and Karma and a powerful audio recording card with 8 channels for use and computer that was very expensive and lasted little on the market., only 10 years later with cheaper parts for computers korg launched Oasys with petium 4 processor. today any processor for smartphones is much superior but an example is the new akai mpc key 61 you will load very good electric piano sounds you have to wait 2 3 seconds this is terrible for live use it doesn't matter at all use a strong processor but not be optimized and in that korg does well for live use.

The Oasys was originally intended as a technology demonstrator. Korg engineers packed in every feature that they ever wanted in a keyboard. It was priced the way it was because it wasn’t a mass produced product, nor was it ever positioned as such. For those around it at the time of release, it was an insane revolution that gave the hardware keyboard world the shot in the arm that it needed to continue to grow. Everyone wanted one, few could afford it. The Kronos was the mass produced iteration that was the flagship that everyone else aspired to equal.

@@adriankeibord2 - it's funny you should say all this. It's mostly true. I attended a demo showing of a 'prototype' instrument Korg was calling "OASYS" at the NAMM Show in Anaheim in Jan '96. John Bowen of Sequential, then Korg R&D, and now maker of his own synth, the Solaris was the man conducting the demo and it sounded awesome. Later in '98 or '99 Korg offered the OASYS PCI… which is the 'card' you eluded to. It was ~$2,700 US list… and it was great, but bombed… too expensive and bit ahead of its time. I bought one in 2001 on closeout from Guitar Center for $399. It was a damn good product @ $400. Lastly, I'd say for the brave and adventurous, there has long since been a methodology for hacking the Kronos (and presumably an OASYS as well) to be able to upgrade the hardware components (motherboard, processor, etc) and achieve faster response, greater polyphony (up to 200 voices with any engine/fx combination) and reduce the horridly long boot time. I'd have it done to both my OASYS & Kronos if there were someone in my part of the state offering the service (the software is the technical part)… but alas, it doesn't work that way.