Korg Legacy Collection Digital Edition

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Lupita Calvi

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Aug 4, 2024, 4:14:32 PM8/4/24

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Manyother Wavestation enthusiasts seemed to agree, so there was renewed excitement when Korg recently announced the Legacy Collection Digital Edition. This once again includes the Wavestation emulation (now up to v1.5), but this time it's partnered with a software emulation of Korg's M1 workstation. This makes far more sense to me, as the M1 is probably the most famous and best-selling digital workstation of all time. Even people who still have Wavestations and M1s have an incentive to buy the Digital Edition, since it includes the sample and patch collections that were originally only available on expensive ROM/PCM cards. By my reckoning, the cards in this bundle would have cost over 1000 at their original prices.

If you're already using a Syncrosoft dongle, another option is to add the licence for the Digital Edition into it, rather than into the new dongle provided by Korg, so that you're not tying up your USB ports with unnecessary devices. I checked with both Korg and Steinberg to see how they felt about one of their dongles being used to store the licence relating to another company's product, and they confirmed that there's no technical reason why it can't be done, but did point out the complications that might ensue if the dongle was lost or stolen. In the end, I had insufficient space on my existing dongle to license the Digital Edition anyway, so I plugged both dongles into a USB hub, registered the Digital Edition on the www.korguser.net web site, got my Activation code, and then used it to license the Korg dongle. So far, so good.

But it was the sounds themselves that caused a stir. There were 16-bit samples from a variety of acoustic instruments, a set of short sampled attack portions, digital waveforms, and of course that famous hard acoustic piano, which proved ideal for cutting through dense rock and dance mixes. Astoundingly by today's standards, these sounds filled just 4MB.

All these sounds are available on Legacy M1, plus the original 100 factory Programs and Combis, and the samples, Programs, and Combis from the M1EX internal expansion. The real bonus, though, is the inclusion of the contents of all 19 of Korg's original ROM/PCM cards (see the box below). Not all the content is recycled; Korg have added a preset bank to showcase the extra features unique to this Legacy recreation. There's a resonant filter (how hard we programmers tried to work around the lack of one on the original M1), an extra LFO for amp modulation, and a new compressor, plus many extra effects.

While the original M1's Programs sounded rich due to their two effects blocks, when you switched into Combi mode these two blocks became Master effects assigned to all Programs, so the individual sounds lost a lot of their character. On the Legacy M1, when you switch to Combi mode the two Master effects are available as before, but you can also optionally retain the two Insert effects of the individual Programs (so up to 16 supplementary effect blocks are available). For more control, there's also a new Multi mode that offers full eight-part multitimbral operation with up to eight separate stereo outputs, with individual effect sends from each Program to the Master effects.

Although there is still a maximum of eight multitimbral parts, it almost goes without saying that with Legacy M1, limited polyphony is no longer a problem (the M1's 16-note polyphony dropped to eight in Double Mode, and even lower in many Combis). The Global settings now include user-selectable polyphony values of eight, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 256 notes to suit your needs.

The new Multi mode is a supercharged multitimbral Combi with up to eight Programs (each with two Insert effects), assignable to a maximum of eight MIDI channels and eight stereo outputs.Most people will start by selecting one of the five Select buttons across the top of the interface: Browser, Combi, Multi, Prog, or Global. Clicking on the Global buttons produces a screen with three sections devoted to MIDI settings, keyboard and scale tuning, and system settings such as polyphony, output gain, and number of stereo outputs.

The left side of the interface displays a Performance area where you can globally tweak various aspects of the Program, such as output level, pan, filter frequency, and attack, decay, and release times. These edits are normally lost unless you specifically save them to another Program slot.

The Browser provides a quick and versatile way to find the sound you need from the 2700 supplied, using Instrument and Character choices such as those shown at the top of the window.In Combi mode three additional Page Select tabs are enabled: Performance, MIDI, and Master Effects. Performance lets you tweak the same list of Program parameters as in Program mode, but this time they're shown on the right side of the interface as a table displaying all eight sets of parameter values (one for each Program).

The MIDI page lets you adjust the MIDI channels, key zones, velocity zones, transpose, detune, and various MIDI filters for each Program in the Combi, so you can split sounds across the keyboard, switch between them as you play louder and softer, have some but not others respond to aftertouch, and so on. These controls largely explain why the Korg M1 can have such a 'full' sound.

Multi mode is almost identical to Combi mode, except that by default each of the eight possible timbre slots is routed to a different stereo output (from 1/2 through to 15/16) for multitimbral use, and this time all the IFX buttons are enabled by default to retain their Program effects. Essentially Multi mode makes it quicker and easier to assemble Programs for multitimbral use.

You can browse by the contents of each Card (handy if you're familiar with their contents), or use the Search button to look directly across all cards for instruments of 16 different categories, including piano, organ, strings, woodwind, brass, vocal, guitar, bass, synth lead, synth pad, and drums. Multiple choices are accepted, and you can further refine your choice using the 16 Character buttons, which encompass such aspects as bright or dark, fast or slow, and fat or soft! Once again, multiple choices are possible. Once you've selected a sound in Card mode you can also switch to Search mode and all sounds with the same search instrument and character settings will appear, so you can hone your choice.

The browser can also be used to choose the basic Multisounds used in each Single and Double Program, and even the kit used in a Drum program. You can audition each sound using your MIDI keyboard or the on-screen one, and either hear it in context with the oscillator, filter, and amplifier settings in place (and the other Programs in the case of a Combi or Multi), or click on the Solo button it to hear the Multisound in its raw state, or the selected Program by itself. There's also a handy Preview button that helps when browsing by continuously playing one of six preset phrases. My only regret is that you can't assign instrument/character tags to the sounds of imported User banks, to include them in your subsequent searches.

I had no problems importing any of the M1 SysEx dumps I've collected and programmed over the years, and I was pleased to find that everything sounded almost identical to before. The only difference was that everything sounded cleaner, with less background noise, presumably because I was listening via a modern interface, and not through 18-year-old A-D converters.

The new resonant filter sounded lovely and adds lots more versatility to the synth, as do the new effects options, although to my ears the effects output levels did seem to be globally slightly higher in the mix, and on most Programs and Combis I had to reduce the reverb level from around 18 down to 13 for a better match with the old hardware (this was particularly noticeable with drums). If you want to revisit old M1 songs, your mixes won't sound quite the same until you perform this tweak.

I did find it slightly frustrating that once you'd selected a sound in the Browser and returned to one of the other edit pages, the card and number of your choice wasn't displayed anywhere in the interface, and although clicking on the Browser button again returns you to the same card page, your most recent choice isn't still highlighted. Because of this, it was often hard to find sounds I liked for a second time. Similarly, it would be helpful in a future version if the file name of an imported User bank was displayed somewhere, to remind you which one you're auditioning several hours down the line.

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