Electronic Music 411 - Make love to the RADIAS (A Review)

This is a short collection of thoughts on a what may now be a discontinued synth, the Korg RADIAS (At least Guitar Center stopped selling them). I bought it maybe 2 years ago, and thought I would share some of my experiences.

You can get a full outline of its features at the Korg site (http://www.korg.com/Product.aspx?pd=262) , but I'll outline a few of the pertinent ones here.

- OSC 1: saw, sine, triangle, square, formant, PCM waves, PCM drum samples, noise
The PCM waves are of decent quality, though some of them sound pretty cheesy (see: guitar chord). You can, however, modulate the switching between various samples waves, which gives a cool sound. Organs, elektrik pianos, various combination of sine harmonics included. The drum samples are all of good quality, but there are only 128 of them, which seems a bit weak to me. Its also kinda a pain in the butt to put together drum kits when compared to something like ableton or even battery. But I guess that's hardware for you. The formant synth sounds - well, if you can find a good use for that in a track I support you. But I don't think it sounds as good as a remember Delay Lama. Then again, perhaps I have too fond a recollection of Delay Lama.

The standard waves all can be pulse-width modulated on OSC 1 only. There are also 2 decent sounding unison modes, which can be combined for some fairly dense sounds. Korg's answer to FM, VPM (Variable Phase Modulation), and cross modulation, offer some interesting sounds, though I haven't found much use for them myself.

- OSC 2
This provides all the standard waveforms, which can be put into ring modulation or sync modes. Not nearly as many options as the first oscillator.

- Filters
The filters sound alright, though not really screaming at high resonance. Honestly, they don't seem quite as nice as the filters I used to use in Buzz, and definitely not as good as the Fromahge. Still entirely usable though, and there are two of them. As an added bonus, Filter 2 can do Comb Filtering, which can do a kind of delay effect at low frequencies and high resonances.

- Drive and Waveshaping
These options can be placed before or after the filters, which is a nice degree of versatility. The drive sounds pretty nice at low levels, and, well, overdriven at high settings. There's also a bitcrusher and various sub-oscillators, all of which sound decent. All these drive and waveshaping settings can't go the full distance on fixing the RADIAS' biggest problem, its lack of presence, but certainly help.

- Vocoder
I haven't really used this that much, but I think that it has the potential to sound good - some people who've used it certainly think so. I've found it somewhat counterintuitive to implement, but that could be me just being an idiot. The RADIAS comes with a headset condenser mic which, while not sounding all that great on its own, is perfect for vocoding.

-Effects
In my opinion, this is where the RADIAS really shines. It includes a rotary speaker simulator, distorsion, overdrive, a neat-sounding but somewhat limited grain shifter, a cabinet simulator, multiple delays, and other effects. Many of these, such as the delays, can be synched to tempo. Up to 3 effects can be used at one time (though some effects, such as the aforementioned rotary speaker, use two effects slots), two per timbre and one per program. These are really useful when external audio is routed through the line inputs, which allows the RADIAS to act as a very useful effects box.

-MIDI
Though this is not as well implemented as I would like, with occasional difficulties cropping up, most of the many knobs on the surface of the keyboard can send MIDI messages, and there are 5 MIDI CCs which can accept modulation messages. This can get a bit annoying sometimes, as when I am recording a part in live and it records a knob change that I don't actually want it to be recording; however, this could also be quite useful for automation.

-The Sound
This is one of two caveats I have with this synthesizer. It simply doesn't sound that full and rich. I guess this is to be expected from a VA, and perhaps it is also a product of how I am programming it, but it has much less body and presence in a track than, say, Operator or Analog. This is fine, and perhaps useful, for pads and other sounds of that type, but for leads and basses it is not really up to snuff. I thought this was due primarily to my audio interface, but it is still an issue (though slightly less of one) since I upgraded to a MOTU Ultralite. It sounds fine when used as an effects box, but I don't generally use it for anything that will be grounding a track. An example of it being used as a bass sound can be heard on the track Ferocious which I've posted in the releases section - its not terrible, but it just doesn't sound as massive as a good plug-in.

-The Presets
The other caveat I have with this synth are the presets. They are typically of the "hold down one key play a whole song" variety. Does anyone actually use these? I imagine someone must, or they would probably stop using them, but I find them annoying when I want to audition a sound and the arpeggiator is already on. Beyond this, they are generally of somewhat mediocre quality, though some of them are useful starting points. I don't really tend to use presets much, or generally just use them as starting points to be greatly altered, but I want to this Korg could do a better job than this.

-Overall
I'm not going to say that I regret buying this synth. It has taught me a lot about synthesis, and its a useful effects box. I haven't exhaustively auditioned other synths that I could have gotten for 1200 (what I paid for this unit). But I understand there were definitely other options which may have suited me better. If it sounded better I could reccomend it with much less hesitation. As it is, if you are looking for a hardware vocoder/external effects unit/pad synth with some unusual features, it may be worth the current going price of 800 dollars. But in all honesty, there is probably better out there for your money.