The Kronos vs Montage: Which One Should You Buy?

Hello and welcome to the channel. My name is Derek and today I'm going to do a comparison between the Yamaha setup and the Core Chronos. These are two of my favorite keyboards. Some of my favorite keyboards here are the Yamaha Mount and the Core Chronos. Very, very powerful keyboards, both. I want to say from the beginning that this will be more of a talking video and less of a playback video, as I say in many of my videos, there are tons of videos that are available. If you just want to listen to the Core Chronos, you can go and watch videos of people just playing the Core Chronos and the same goes for the Yamaha build, it will be the mod build that came out in 2016, the Core Chronos, the original core.

Chronos came out in 2011 it has most of the same sounds you can basically listen to them there are tons of videos and stuff about them but I want to give more information and cover other things that seem a little more. less popular on youtube and platforms and stuff like this because personally as someone who uses these keyboards and puts them through their paces both in the studio and live, the sounds are just one important aspect of the keyboards themselves so there are a whole. There are a lot of other aspects and things that I think are very, very important, so basically I want to talk about a lot of what these keyboards have to offer because a lot of times when someone is trying to make a purchasing decision and they're looking. for something in the price range of one of these two keyboards, both keyboards are often available to the extent that maybe you want to use them, maybe you would like to buy one of these keyboards, so I'm going to do a comparison to hopefully , help someone. make a purchasing decision now, another thing I also want to say is that I understand that these two keyboards are not really direct comparisons, a lot of people compare them, they are in the same price range a lot of times if someone is looking maybe buying the Kronos

which

they're looking at, you know, looking at the Yamaha setup as well and vice versa, but I have to say that the main Chronos is a music workstation, so the keyboard category it belongs to is a workstation. designed so that you can compose, arrange, record, etc., complete productions simply using the keyboard and without needing to do anything else, so you don't need to connect it to a wrist, you don't need anything like that.

which

is a full-fledged production system the core cronos now the yamaha assembly is not a workstation according to yamaha it is a synthesizer yes, if you go to a music website and search for keyboards and type on a workstation the yamaha will appear a mount, but that's because that's the way they design their searches, because they understand that someone who is looking for a workstation may be at home with a Yamaha mount, but that doesn't make it a workstation, I think the main thing to understand here. is that yamaha is not trying to create a workstation keyboard, it is not a workstation hello, I'm phil clendenin, I'm here at the end of the music to show you a little bit about the

montage

music synthesizer, the music synthesizer now

montage

is a music synthesizer and what does that mean it's about you being able to make sounds it's a synthesizer so the sequencer in it is just a pattern sequencer uh it's not a full sequencer you can't get into it there and edit a bunch of notes and do. a lot of things you can actually do on the cronos as far as the sequencer goes because it's not a workstation it actually comes with software they give you a version of cubase that comes with it and you're supposed to install you know it on your computer and you use it together with a daw, the core of Chronos is not the same, it's all in one, it's all designed for you to use, you know that on its own, so technically they are now in two different categories. yamaha used to do or yes, yamaha used to do the reason the yamaha reason the whole reason series the reason series their workstations all have sequencers and things like that they are complete workstations designed to do all your recordings and everything on the keyboard same, um, but when they came out with the setup, they abandoned the whole workstation idea, so they don't make a flagship workstation anymore. um korg recently, very recently here, like in the last month, they've actually discontinued the main chronos, so if you're thinking about getting your main chronos, you might want to pick one up real quick because I'm pretty sure that once they they're gone, they're gone, so, this is a workstation, they came out with another keyboard called the korg nautilus now the nautilus is another complete workstation designed to do everything within the keyboard, so, but the nautilus isn't really a flagship, it's not a step up from the core cronos, it's actually more of a step down. to be honest they remove some of the controls and things that remove after touch and stuff from the keyboard, you don't get the little joystick and stuff, uh all the sliders and stuff gone, you get some knobs and stuff like that, but they actually just took it away, made it less expensive, and pretty soon that will really be the only workstation besides Chrome.

I guess the flagship workstation will really be the flagship workstation that they offer even though they are technically core chronos. Talking is the flagship, but this has been discontinued. Yamaha assembly to date has not been discontinued. Yamaha is still making them, so I just wanted to make those things clear that this is a workstation, it's not, so it's not a demerit that this doesn't. I don't have a sample and it doesn't have a full sequencer and stuff because it's not trying to be a workstation and honestly the only two companies that are really making flagship workstations right now, you know, full workstations are the uh. like korg and uh kurzweil so kurzweil just released a new uh the k 2700 is a workstation designed to do everything within your keyboard, but yamaha has abandoned the whole workstation idea and really so has roland if you go and look at the roland Phantom, if you look online on the Roland website, the Roland Phantom says it's a synthesizer, it doesn't call it a workstation, so that explains why it's just a pattern sequencer that you get and you only get certain time signatures like four four and three four you can't do six eight times uh it has a 32 measure loop limit and so on and so on and they give you a bunch of different sound packs and things like that that can come with It's a lot of free stuff that they, you know, they just include with the Roland uh Phantom and it's just you know it has a great workflow, great midi integration and all that kind of stuff, but it's not really a workstation. so roland right now is not making workstations uh yamaha is not making workstations korg and uh korig and kurzweil are the only keyboard companies left making workstations but I want to talk about these two because the people who take one purchasing decision often compare these two keyboards and so I want to talk about how they are similar, how they are different, and how they are unique from each other to help you make a purchasing decision, so the first thing I'm going to do is spin the keyboard and we're going to actually compare the backs of the keyboards and their connectivity, so let's go ahead and get to it, so here we are, we're looking at the back of the center chronos here and first here, starting on this side, uh you get left and mono or left and right here these are your main outputs and they're all balanced here and then you get four additional um you get four additional outputs as well and these are fully assignable so you get your standard your left and right and then you get four additional um outputs as well um and then they give you the pedals so you have your damper pedal which is like your normal sustain pedal and you get a switch and another and another pedal so two different pedals uh that you get is in addition to their um addition to your um sustain pedal there and then you have the sony philips digital uh in and out so you can go in and you can directly go in and in or out of the cores uh using just a digital signal here a very clean output and then you have two inputs of audio that are uh these are also balanced and you can just press this little button here and you can change it from uh mic or line uh the same thing here and uh you do get a volume control here so you can adjust your input level when you come in with a microphone or if you come in with an instrument like a guitar or something or even another keyboard etc. then you have your midi out midi in and you have a midi pass through uh too, I'm just moving the keyboard down a little bit more here um you also get the usb a ports you get uh you get two usb a ports and one usb uh b as well and the only other thing that's down on the inside is going to be a power switch and in addition, you're also going to get your um, your uh, your AC, so you know the unit is inside the power supply. the unit is inside so there isn't any kind of wall wart on this instrument that you wouldn't expect in this price range so anyway that's the back of the cronos and i mean the headphone jack has a headphone jack.

The headphone jack is actually on the front of the unit and that's something I like about the Core Chronos. I like having the headphone jack on the front, it makes it really very convenient when you don't have to reach around the back or you know your headphone cable is in some kind of weird position, it's just there on the front, it's really convenient, but anyway, well, now let's look at the Yamaha setup we're going to take. a look at the back of that unit so now we're looking at the back of the Yamaha setup and we'll start over here uh this is your um you've got your left, left, mono and right inputs, so here's Your inputs uh a d here and this is where you know you can plug in, you know, like a guitar, microphones or another keyboard or whatever, you can plug it right into the instrument right here, like the Court Chronos, uh, the switch between microphone online.

It's something you have to do within the software itself, here you don't do it on the outside and the input level adjustment is done on the top of the keyboard, versus the back of the keyboard in the core of the cronos, where if you had Knowing that you could adjust your input level on the back, you actually do it up here on the keyboard, so for me it's more convenient up here than on the back, you have your headphones, uh, your headphones. jack here of course this is on the back and then you have your left and right mono so the left and right outputs are your main outputs.

Here they are also balanced and then you get two assignable outputs as well, so now remember in the core. chronos you get four assignable outputs and two mains, one here you get two mains and two assignable outputs, so the chord chrono actually has more analog outputs on the keyboard, but they're both balanced, I know a lot of people don't believe that. Knowing if it's balanced or unbalanced really makes a difference in many cases, in most cases I would have to be okay with that but sometimes just using it here in the studio I have cables and stuff everywhere, my center cores and my Yamaha assembly. they are noticeably less noisy than my uh nord stage 3 and my yamaha modi things I pick up that uh sound on those keyboards as to where on these I don't so anyway having the balanced output jacks is just a nice thing to me so then you have your pedal controllers you have one controller one full and two and then a sustain pedal and then an assignable uh footswitch as well, so this gives you an additional foot controller, you get a total of four, including the um, including the sustain pedal, and in the center chronos you get a total of three including the sustain pedal so you actually get more foot controllers on the Yamaha setup and then this also has a midi in and out and if we just move down very slightly , here is great so now you have a USB to host this is so you can plug it into your computer and then you have a USB to the device and you can plug in other units and stuff and control them via midi that way or you know you can plug in your flash drive and so on. and so on, the only other thing it has is the on/off switch and also the AC input, so those are the back of the units.

Now the Core Chronos gives you two USB A ports as to where it is. it only gives you uh it only gives you one and but this and this doesn't give you the Sony Philips digital inputs or uh outputs like the Core Chronos does and the Chord Chronos gives you more audio outputs, so it gives you analog outputs of Audio. more than the assembly,but having said that, I have to say that in the Yamaha setup, when you plug in the USB, you can plug in the USB. We will talk more about this, probably later you will connect the USB to a daw.

This will actually send 32 individual tracks, uh to. uh your friend this is how your auto interface works it will send 32 separate tracks and you will receive six tracks back as to where the central chronos will only send we will only send two so you will stay and just then it sends the main one and that's what goes into your daw here, you actually get 32 ​​channels via USB, so yes, it has less assignable analog outputs on the back, but if you're connecting via USB to a daw or something, this actually It has many more audio outputs than the Core Chronos.

Alright, perfect, now let's turn around, let's take a look. on the front of both units and let's talk about that so now I have both units turned over here and let's take a look at the front panel of the cronos cable. I mean um before. I'm referring to the front panel specifically, the core cronos took me about a minute and 50 seconds to boot up, so you know it was off. I turned it on, it took me a minute and 50 seconds for the Buddha to boot. I don't have any additional sound packs or anything here, I have nothing that's loading anything extra that's loading into RAM, so that's the minimum you're going to get as far as boot time, one minute and 50 seconds. and the Yamaha setup, when I booted it up, took over 16 seconds to boot up and be ready to go, so a lot of people are worried about the boot time of the core cronos, yes it's a bit long.

Lots of boot time now for me personally, the only way I can really see it interfering is in a live performance if you somehow lose power or crash or something, although I've never had the Chronos core crash with me. I've had it for years and I've used it live in the studio, you know, everywhere, performances, rehearsals, everything, I've never actually dropped it even once, of course that's not everyone's experience . Some people have experienced, you know, some failures. and stuff like that, but in my case, I haven't really experienced any crashes with the Gore Chronos in general, my hardware, uh, everything is pretty solid, it doesn't crash or stutter or do anything that you know out of the ordinary, even if you know that I still have a cork m50 and my core m50 has never crashed on me and I've had it for 11 12 years or something so it hasn't crashed at all either but yeah if you were on the show and your keyboard fell off you lost power , something like that core chronos is going to take a lot longer than the montage to start it back up now, normally, when I'm doing a show of any kind, uh, I have it, you know, you know, plugged in so you know a computer or something I have a computer or something running or my npc one or you know some other you know other things that are going on so if my keyboard falls or something happens or we lost power uh you know it's going to ruin the song anyway , so it won't really matter much, it'll take me longer to reconfigure everything and stuff like that and restart the tracks, and you know, that's all, it's a big deal if you lose power or something during a show, it's always bad, but you know, if you're just playing basic sounds and stuff, yeah, this will take longer to boot up now.

Let's take a look at the front panel of the uh core cronos here, so the core cronos will actually give you nine sliders, um here, and then the master also counts as a slider, so it gives you nine sliders of which you have control over eight different ones. channels at a time, press one button and you would be controlling eight to 16. So you can control 16 different channels from the front panel and then it gives you these different karma scene buttons and you know they're your you know play silently so they have a variety of different functions here so you get all these buttons also one two three four five six seven eight gives you 16 buttons and then one two three four five six seven eight eight knobs also gives you a value knob so you can change the value of different parameters that you know and things inside uh no, not a slider that gives you a little joystick uh here also to control various parameters it gives you a selection wheel and then it gives you You have a song list button here, so you just press the song list and it goes right to your song list and then it gives you a number pad so you can type in the numbers and things you want, you just type and, uh, It's nice to go there and it has some buttons here, like the global combined program sequence sampling disk so you know you can be in the different modes that your keyboard has and then it has all your bank buttons so you can choose your different banks and stuff. like that and you put out your patches and stuff like that and then it has transport controls that you know, like start and stop, you know, pause, you know, forward, rewind, all that kind of stuff, then it has a sample like record button and it has you. like your start and stop for your sampling because this also has a full sampler and uh, we just scroll down a little bit here, we can see here that we actually have our pitch bend and modulation all in one. just the joystick and then it has two, two buttons, these two buttons up here give you those two buttons and then it has a ribbon controller as well, so that's the front of the Korg Chronos.

Now let's take a Look at the assembly, now we're looking at the front panel of the Yamaha assembly and I guess I'll start again here, it's got a lot of buttons here, and you can do a lot of different things with this. I can control your arpeggiator. I'm picking different parts and stuff like that. A lot of your motion control stuff. They can be selected here simply using these buttons. You know you have your mute and your solos so you can do different mutes and solos. tracks and so on, all with this kind of button matrix, here you have your live set so you can access it directly, just like the main cores, it has a song list function, it has live sets that you can access directly to your live sets by pressing this live set button and get your performances now this doesn't have many different modes so the core cronos has like a combination mode, a program mode, a sequence mode, a sampling, this is always in performance mode, all your sounds are always ready to go all the time, so they are unique, different, they are different from each other in that way, it has some directional buttons and things like that so you can control what what happens on the screen and really the way it's designed is that if you don't want to use the touch screen with a Yamaha mount, it's not really necessary, you can do pretty much everything just using the buttons now, if you want to use the touch screen, so you can so it's all about how you want to work and how you want your workflow to go, that's one of the benefits that this has on the modi x, the yamaha modx doesn't have it, they took away a lot of buttons, so you're then it depends more on the screen, um, but a lot of the functionality, most of the functionality is basically the same, it gives you a selection wheel and things like that and then you have the octave control so you can control your octaves and transpose.

It's right here in the front, that's not something that the um, the Korg Kronos has, so if you want to just change your octave on the Chronos chord very, very quickly or if you want to transpose something very, very quickly, uh and the yama in the uh. in the uh cronos it's not um it's not that fast um do things like that then you have your transport controls you know you start and stop you record your progress backwards things like that uh and then it has the infamous uh super controller there that you control, I think they are 128 parameters all at once, which is kind of mind-blowing, you can pretty much assign anything to the super knob and then control with the super knob any kind of parameter control and things you want, you can assign that super knob and the control controls everything and uh yeah so that's the super knob and then they also have eight encoders and what I like about these is that they're backlit with LEDs, same thing with the sliders you get eight sliders and your sliders actually have LEDs for that you can look at and you can tell at a glance where your pieces are and stuff, just by looking at where the LED lights up because sometimes the slider might be all the way down here, but your level will actually be up here or something so you can look at it and know where it is just by looking at it, it's lit up now with the center chronos, it doesn't have the same functionality, there's no LED next to the sliders so your sliders don't necessarily represent where your levels actually are and so on, so that you can't tell at a glance, you have to look at the screen to see what's happening now, something else. about this is you get eight sliders um with the chord chrono you actually get nine now for some people it's like nine eight what's the big difference?

Well, if you're playing an organ, an organ manual has nine measures, so when you play an organ here it sounds like a b3 or something, then the sliders become your adjustment bars, just like the center chronos , but this one only has eight, so you can't make exactly the same adjustments that you would on a real organ because you only have eight sliders, the core cronos gives you nine, so when you play using the cx-3 sound engine In the Cronos core, you actually have nine physical sliders for your drawbars and you can do it like you would on a real organ.

You can't actually do that with this because it's actually missing a slider, so if you're a big organ fan, that could possibly be a big problem for you, but then you know just a variety of encoders and stuff. there and we'll slide down a little bit so we can see and you've got a tone container and a mod wheel here so it's not a joystick what you get you get two separate wheels and then you get a ribbon controller one here just like you do it in the um core chronos and uh and then you have some instead of just having two buttons that you actually have uh you have four buttons here to control various parameters um when you're gaming so those are the front panels now let's get into the keyboards and let's talk a little bit about how they work well, so now we're taking a look at the central chronos here and um, that's the central chronos that it's on and therefore the central chronos. it has a few different modes so it has the combined program mode which is now in program mode only if you choose individual sounds you find them in the program so this is just I'm going through different programs um pretty clear , I can come here to a basic search like a category and then I can search by categories right now, it's on the keyboard and you can go through it like a submenu, you can go to your acoustic pianos or you can go to your synth type pianos or your real ep, so let's go back to your own swirls and things like that and it has a bunch of different categories it has your organ, you know, it has your bell and malice, your strings, you know, uh, vocals, woodwinds, guitars, bass.

I know a bunch of different categories, but if I just say ok and press ok here, as you can see, it actually brings up a specific interface here for the ep, so I can turn on the vibrato right now, I can adjust the intensity of the vibrato. I can adjust the speed of the vibrato. I have an amplifier cabinet. I can turn it on and off. Just turn it on there. I can turn up the variator. I could do all that there. I can adjust the problem. I can adjust the base like you can on a real electric piano, let's go to the base here on the right and I can adjust the insert effect so that it has different um um like guitar pedals like on a real piano, like on a real electric piano and you can Go and I can go through them here so there's a compression there and I can change the various parameters of the compression itself and I can do that of course with any of the effects so it was like a real um like a real um. ep there, um, let's get out of there, we don't necessarily need to go over that well and just so you know, literally, by flipping this over here we can, you know, change the sound drastically and it's right here, all in front of my face, um and then I .

I can go and I can change, okay, right now it's at the moment uh ep1, we could change it to this, let's do a little b5, let's go here now, let's choose something with a rod now that I choose the rod, it's uh, it's different, like this which gives me kind of a different interface that mimics the type of ep that is, so this really reminds me of the plugins and things that you would use now, that's just um, it's just the electric pianos, but let's see if I go to here. go to the keyboard and let's go to the organs and let me choose jimmy's oregon here now you can see the interface is completely different so this gives you nine independent and non-independent sound engines and this particular one gives me the ability I do all the kind of organ editing that I want to do so that we can, you know, choose thetone so we can make a vintage tone or a clean tone like vintage, we can make it smooth, right, I can make it clean, clean and smooth, I can make it.

It is clean and bright. I can adjust what kind of you know, the various controllers and things that I want to have. I can control the percussion. I can control the amp simulator so I can control how fast I want Leslie to accelerate. or the rotary speaker to speed up when I speed it up or how slow I want it to go when I speed it up I can control how fast or how slow it reaches its top speed um and I can control you know if I'm you I know go down to a lower speed.

I can, you know, say, Hey, I wanted to slow down at a certain pace. I can even choose which direction I basically want the horn and the rotor to face when they're done spinning um it's got like organ brakes and stuff in there um so it's got all kinds of different things specifically for organ and then of course he's got your drawbars so it has your drawbars and stuff so you can um you can change and all that too and um that's something I like about this or the nautilus on the nautilus you actually have to use the um uh, you have to use, you have to use your um, your touch screen to adjust your drawing bars, uh, and in a real way.

Practical gaming situation using the touch screen simply will not work. I think there's a way to map it to some of the knobs that it has, but then you know it doesn't have nine crossed knobs, so you know that's something that's kind of a waste with the Nautilus um that you actually get with the Core Chronos, so if playing the organ is one of the things that you do, the Core Chronos having these faders actually makes a difference if that's the type of playing um that you're going to do. that's a program mode you get nine different independent sound engines and depending on the sound you choose the sound engine you're using will change your interface and it's dedicated specifically for that sound and I really love that it's like working with plugins um on a computer then it has blend mode blend mode is for when you're going to set up different layers and different sounds and things like that so I have different layers and things here so this is my piano and I have ep and a pad and a chord maybe not, not on this one so I already have a drum track set up for this one so whenever you go to set up your layers and set up different splits and have different things happen across the uh the keyboard, you're usually going to be in combination mode, so if I want to set up a new combination, I come here and we go to the user, we will initialize the combination here.

Now everything is set. Everything is initialized. I can come in here and I can change channel number one. I'm going to choose a different acoustic piano, uh, let's see, go to the German grand piano, maybe yes, German chronos, press German, enter, I have a German grand piano now, not applicable. Let's try that again, let's go to the big German hit, okay, you already did that and if you wanted to add another sound, let's look at a base, maybe let's go here, let's go to the base and which base we're going to choose, it doesn't really matter.

It really matters, I'm just going to pick that good hit, enter, I can't hear it, I have to enter my timbre parameters and I have to change the pitch here 2 0 1 g, now you have a bass and a piano, right? So now we have that set up, so now we have a base and a base and a piano at the same time and of course you can split it, you can split the channels and things like that so that they have a you know, a base on the left and the piano on the right or whatever you want to do, if you want to do different layers like this, let's choose something other than a base, let's go to my category search, let's go to strings, maybe yes, go to strings and uh, we'll just choose that one there so now my number two is a little bit loud turn it down and then I go to my insert effects and I can control the insert effects on each instrument um right now none of the insert effects are If I can turn on the insert effects, you get 12 insert effects per combination, so you have six, a total of 16 different instruments, but you get 12 insert effects, so you can use the same insert effects on some of the instruments or you can apply them, you know. maybe four insert effects for one instrument if you want, it's really up to you, so you'll get 12 insert effects plus two master effects as well and then two effects in total, even on top of that, just keep in mind that if you're using a lot of effects on your core chronos that you're actually going to consume some of its polyphony because it's processor based, it now has dynamic polyphony, um, so it's going to extract certain sound engines and apply polyphony where necessary. to apply it and get it out from where you don't need it, however if you're using a ton of effects and stuff like that you'll eventually start to have some polyphony issues, okay, so you have your blend mode, so you have a sequence mode , so sequence mode is kind of like a combination, but the difference is that when you're in sequence mode, this is the mode so you can sequence the creation of your songs a little bit and you get 16 midi tracks, 16 audio tracks, so let's record something here real quick, now let's go to the drums, let's pick some drums here and I'll go over here, we'll go to our drum track here, that drum track, drum instrument, pick a drum. we want it to be natural drums, we'll do the studio drums which is good and he records, so you have a sequencer, um, and it'll be 16 tracks for audio and 16 tracks for midi and it goes on, you can change all the various different track parameters , you can go into track editing, you can change all the different notes and things you want, you can delete tracks and you know, delete bars, move bars and things around all kinds of things, it's a complete sequencer and, uh, too you get audio tracks so you can record audio just plug in the inputs on the back and record the audio you know into your content and you get 16 tracks of that too and all the streams end up being saved to a disk um so on your hard drive there so um so you have copy mode you have program mode you have sequence mode and you have a sample mode so you can connect another keyboard to this and it supports full multisampling um also and um and then you can edit your loop points and things like that and knowing how to test whatever you want and put it on the keyboard so you have a full sampler as well, so the core cronos is very, very powerful, very powerful keyboard um and pretty much if you're looking for an all in one solution you want to do everything within the board, the core chronos is one of the only keyboards left that you can still do that um and not for long because I think I said it before, but Um Korg just discontinued the Core Chronos so if you're looking maybe you know you're going to get a Core Chronos, you'll want to get one as quickly as possible because it won't be long before they're all gone, so it's a basic look, you already know a lot of the features of the core chronos.

Now let's go to the Yamaha assembly and take a look at the way it works, okay, so now here we are. I'm taking a look at the Yamaha setup and I have the Yamaha setup uh so I know it's not directly analog because this is not the 8 88 weighted. I didn't need it because I have the Chronosyn88 core and I have it. I also have a Roland rd 2000 in 88 so I only needed a seven and that actually saves some weight this thing weighs 30 something pounds it still weighs um but you know it weighs 60 something pounds the 8 mount weighs like 60-something pounds, the Cronos weighs 50-something. pounds if you're looking for a lightweight keyboard, none of these keyboards are the keyboard for you, so anyway, with that being said, here's the assembly, now the assembly has a mode, you're constantly, you're always in performance mode, no it has like a blend mode and then like a patch mode or a single mode or a program mode or something like that you're always in performance mode having access to all your sounds and everything at once there's only one mode and i In fact, when I first got it it was a little confusing because I was used to the traditional modes and all that, uh, but after you know how to use it for a while, I actually prefer this type of setup, I actually prefer it better, you know, always being in you know, performance mode, now it has two independent sound engines, it has the awm 2 sound engine and it has the fmx sound engine, so it has two sound engines, each sound engine has 128 voice polyphony and they are separate, so they don't like to steal from one. another or something like that, you know, the awm 2 sound engine has 128 voices and the fmx sound engine has 128 voices, so they both have 128 voices, let's go ahead and go to my performance here, so it has a search for categories. like the chronos you just pressed, you can just press a button and now you're searching in multiple categories, so I can tell I have piano, keyboard, organ, guitar, bass, strings, brass, same kind of concept, um, search of categories, I can choose the different ones. categories by pressing the buttons too, so this is my piano, this is my keyboard, Oregon, guitar, bass, strings, brass, wind instruments, so basically I can do everything here using buttons instead of using the touch screen, which I want to make now, an important key difference, let me. just go back to my pianos here and let's choose the cfx concert grand piano which is kind of their flagship.

Oh stop playing it's really sloppy when I play I try to play the piano on some of my weighted keys after playing them on weighted keys anyway uh so this is the cfx grand piano it's very good I like this piano but something What you

should

notice here is that this piano actually occupies four different slots now you can control a total of eight parts from the keyboard now you can have 16 parts like the goros, but 9 to 16 will have to be controlled by some type of external midi source like another keyboard or something, you can't actually control them from the keyboard, you can only control eight on the center chronos that you can actually control. 16 different channels, split them all up and place them on the keyboard any way you want and you're ready to start building.

You only get eight, so you get half the control, half of which you can control half of the same number of instruments. Right now, this particular performance actually occupies four different spaces, occupies four different parts, so I have five, six, seven and eight where I can add different sounds and things, but one through four are actually occupied, so that in the main time if you shoot. To pick up a piano, it doesn't matter what piano it is, it only takes up one slot, so when you're in combo mode, you can literally play 16 different instruments if you want, and in fact, you can do more than that because you can. you know how to layer some things in different ways but at least you get a minimum of 16 you can know you can layer them there but you can't do it with montage you can only control eight at a time and this takes up four the reason it is needed a four is because different pianos are set up to handle different speed levels, they have different samples and things like that so you know you trigger them depending on where you hit, how hard you hit, different samples will play.

So I can go in here, let's say I wanted to see this part here and I can say edit this part and this part here, so what I did was I went in this first part, part number one, and if we come here, and we edit it, hit edit and you can see now there's item one, item two, item three, item four, item five and item six all on or I can see it here and I can mute them. I can mute the different elements using the buttons, so this part is made up of six different elements, so if I start turning them off or muting them, all the elements are actually off in this part, so it's a little strange when I turn them back on. turn on, you can hear what is playing.

What if I turn them off and the sound you're hearing is actually coming from one of the other parts? So if I make an edit here and this has three different elements and this is what the different parts or the different parts actually look like. The performances are actually designed so that you have eight parts that you control from the keyboard, um, in each performance and each performance can have up to eight different elements and those eight different elements are actually the raw waveforms that are used to create Sound. So, it's great for creating sounds and a lot of deep sound design and stuff like that, just you know, layer the things you know, layer the sounds any way you want and you know, and you're off to the races. so you can go very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very deep, uh, so let's go here, let's go back to my category search now in your category search, it's color coded, so you have blue, um, some of these are in blue, blue means It's a multi-part sound, so if I press Enter, you can see that this takes upyou know it has two parts to make this performance to make this organ sound and if I'm going to go edit it and press edit It's going to be like any other sound um so you know it's set up on a rotary speaker and stuff like that, but if I want it to you know, click noise and other things, it doesn't have a dedicated interface. editing the organ I can get closer here to the rotary speaker and I can choose a different rotary speaker if I wanted to do the tremolo correctly, but in essence it's the same because it's the awm 2 sound in essence, it's the same as you know, pretty much everything. otherwise the way you edit now this is organ FM and I can come here and we can hit edits and it's like editing any other type of sound um FM.

I've gotten to the effects here, you get the, you get your two insert effects and stuff like that, one of them is a rotary speaker, I can change it and so on, but it's not like a dedicated interface where I can actually go in and dial in how I want the organ to be you. I have to use the parameters that are available in the awm 2 sound engine and I am referring to the fm x sound engine for that particular one. So I like having the nine independent sound engines. I like being able to control 16 sounds at once. from the bed of keys instead of just eight um and as you know this one requires a four so you know you really just get another four that you can layer with and do different things with um but overall I would say I've I've come to appreciate the workflow and the way I can layer sounds and everything that's appreciated in the Yamaha setup.

I really really like the Daw integration and being able to do multitrack recording and stuff like that in one failed attempt, it also gives me a lot of flexibility, you know, being able to control so many different channels, right off the keyboard, so I love the fact that it has that remote control. you know, you know, setting up ableton live and stuff like that because I integrate these keyboards into my studio and stuff like that and I really like the way you set the sound parameter, the way you set your controls the way you set your controls and things like that to control your various sounds and things like that on this keyboard it's much easier to route things to the super knob or router to these knobs or router to the sliders and things um on the center chronos you have to use something called a mixer amx um it's a little more confusing in my opinion using that now they're both going to have pretty steep learning curves uh but I think because of the central chronos because here's the downside of having nine separate sound engines nine different sound engines you have to learn all the sound engines separately so the cfx i'm not cfx the cx-3 you know the organ sound engine doesn't work like the sgx2 sound engine so you have to learn them separately to be able to edit your instruments.

Now it offers some flexibility and things like that, but you're learning a separate engine and here you're really learning two engines, okay now as to which is more powerful? Which one does more things, that will surely be the core of Chronos. Core Chronos does more things, it's more powerful, it's a workstation, it does more things, but as far as which one is going to be more intuitive, in my opinion, this one. The keyboard here is more intuitive and I can do pretty much everything I need to do here just like I can with the montage, I mean, just like you came with the court timelines, uh, the set list, uh, the live sets.

They leave something to be desired. um I miss when I'm using this I missed that master EQ that's there in the core cronos where you can adjust you know the EQ from the song list so if you go to a venue and you know the sound system is a little bit different a little bit off or whatever you can quickly adjust you know your settings and make it sound good um and this one doesn't have that and it also has some color coding um like you know look this one is red and this one is yellow but when you actually You are, you know, looking at it at a glance, just that little strip of color, sometimes it's really hard to see.

I like the fact that the entire square is colored in the chord. chronos now I think both instruments sound great both sound great they sound different they have different um some different character but I like the way they sound but as far as the workflow and how they work I really prefer the montage to the uh core chronos though to this day the cronos core is still my main instrument, it's still my main keyboard, but I think you know little by little that will change again, especially as I start to implement more of ableton live, you know, in my current live sets and different things like that, I think at some point the core cronos just because of its interface and the way you know it's very, very autonomous and does a good job when you work with it alone, but As soon as you want get to the rest of the world, that's where you start to have some issues and their age and stuff really starts to show, but they're both very, very, very good keyboards, just remember. that this is not a workstation, so if you're going to do full productions and things like that, you're going to need other tools, like the

kronos

core, if you just want to work on the board that gives you the ability to definitely gives you the ability to do that, but I really like these scenes, setting up these scenes, I really like arpeggios and stuff where you can, you know, switch between them.

I like the way he does the whole doll integration, um, it's just you know. It is more modern and therefore fits better in my setup normally when using the chord cronos. I'm really using it as a standalone, I'm not using it with other equipment, you know, I mean, I'm going to have a two keyboard setup, but I'm saying I'm using it by itself, it doesn't necessarily control anything or I'm not using it to control a daw or something with the mount, I can do that stuff so, if I could recommend one for someone to buy if they don't, well I can't really, I guess I can't give a recommendation, they both have their strengths and Its weaknesses, the nine sound engines are really, really hard to beat, being able to do a lot of your multisampling and stuff like that and set your loop points and stuff, if that's the kind of thing you need, you definitely need to look at a chronos instead of a montage if you don't need those things. you want a modern setup, you want, you're integrating it with the daw, you're going to control ableton live and stuff like that, you're going to do multitrack recording from here to a daw, so this is definitely the way to go, you don't want to get a Kronos central, but at the end of the day they are both very, very powerful keyboards.

If I only had one of them, I could make them both work and do everything I need to do now, maybe it's harder. in one or a little bit more, you know, it's not intuitive, I want a different one, uh, but the reality is, as I could, I can make it work. They're both powerful, excellent, top of the line machines and that's why I say they're both uh. they're my, they're my favorite keyboards um my yamaha setup my central chronos and my nord uh those are my uh those are my favorite keyboards that I have so anyway that being said uh I hope this is helpful it's been helpful if I've been useful if you like this type of in depth videos, go ahead and hit the like button and the subscribe button and hit the notification bell so you can get notified when I upload new stuff.

Thank you for staying with me so long and I will. see you in the next video