About The Kronos' Pcm Memory; About Polyphony - Korg kronos Operation Manual

Introduction to KRONOS

About the KRONOS' PCM memory

"PCM" is another way of saying "samples." The KRONOS
has several types of PCM banks, as described below: ROM,
EXs, User Sample Banks, and Sampling Mode data
For more information on the contents of the included ROM
and EXs sample data, see the Voice Name List (VNL).
ROM
The KRONOS ROM contains the basic multisamples and
samples, and is always loaded and available.
EXs
EXs stands for EXpansion Samples. These can be loaded or
not, as you wish. The KRONOS comes with a number of
EXs libraries, including multiple gigabytes of samples.
User Sample Banks
User Sample Banks may be sounds that you create yourself,
or load from imported Akai or SoundFont 2.0 libraries, or
WAV or AIFF files.
Sampling Mode data
Sampling Mode is used to create and edit samples. When
you save Sampling Mode data, it becomes available as a
User Sample Bank.
Using samples in your own sounds
You can use any of these bank types, together or separately,
when making your own sounds. Simply set the Bank as
desired in the Program or Wave Sequence Step's
Multisample Select fields, or the Drum Kit Drumsample
Select fields. For more information, see:
• Program: "Bank (Multisample)," on page 57 of the
Parameter Guide
• Wave Sequence: "Bank (Multisample)," on page 793 of
the Parameter Guide
• Drum Kit: "Bank," on page 798 of the Parameter Guide

About polyphony

Most hardware synthesizers offer a single, fixed method of
synthesis, a predetermined number of voices, and a fixed
amount of effects processing power for a specific number of
effects. KRONOS is different; it has no fixed synthesis
method, its polyphony varies depending on which synth
engines are being used, some synth engines provide
additional effects (augmenting the 16 normal effects slots),
and there are sometimes trade-offs of processing power
between voices and effects.
This flexibility means that the system can deliver power
where you need it the most. As you play different sounds
from different synth engines, the KRONOS automatically
divides its processing power appropriately.
Unlike most computer-based systems, KRONOS also
monitors the overall processing power, reducing the overall
number of voices if necessary, to make sure that there are
never problems with the audio.
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Lossless compression
When EXs data is loaded into RAM, the KRONOS uses a
lossless compression technique. This yields a modest
reduction in size; for instance, EXs1 uses 284MB of RAM
for 313MB of data.
You'll notice that this is much milder than the dramatic size
reductions of mp3, or the PCM compression sometimes
found in other synthesizers. There is a strong advantage over
these other methods, however: the KRONOS compression is
completely lossless, and causes absolutely no degradation in
audio quality.
Loading samples at startup
The KRONOS can load your favorite samples automatically
at startup. For more information, see "Automatically loading
sample data" on page 174.
User sampling RAM capacity
The KRONOS is equipped with 3 GB of RAM.
Approximately 1 GB of this RAM is used by the operating
system and ROM sample data. The remainder is shared
between the samples in EXs, User Sample Banks, and
Sampling Mode.
This means that the size of the currently loaded EXs and
User Sample Banks trades off against the memory available
for Sampling Mode. The more space used by EXs and User
Sample Banks, the less is available for Sampling Mode.
Using Virtual Memory for EXs and User Sample Banks
generally lets you load more samples at once, but may still
use a substantial amount of RAM.
Note: To check the amount of sample RAM available, see
"0–1f: Free Sample Memory/Locations" on page 686 of the
Parameter Guide.
For more information, see "Free RAM and approximate
sampling times" on page 131.
Normally, you shouldn't need to think about this at all; it will
just happen automatically. Sometimes, however, it can be
convenient to know how the system is allocating its
resources. The Performance Meters page shows this
information; you can find it on the Perf Meters tab of P0 in
Program, Combination, and Sequencer modes. For more
information, see "0–2: Performance Meters" on page 7 of
the Parameter Guide.