Customer Reviews

KORG DS-10 Synthesizer

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow. I was expecting this to be a lot simpler than it turns out to be. It's almost like a tiny pocket-sized version of Propellerhead's Reason software. Obviously it's very limited by the DS hardware, but if you like messing around with music and music software then you can have hours of fun with this.

You get two monophonic synths with their own sequencer tracks for note/gate/pan/volume, plus a couple more tracks that can be assigned to modulate a long list of parameters and settings. The synths are simple but have most of the things you need to replicate classic analog synth patches, and there are a few relatively novel routing options and modulation sources. Synth patches can be saved and loaded separately from whole compositions.

You also get four "drum" voices which turn out to be four more instances of the same basic synth, though with a few less options and much simpler pattern programming. So in total you get as many as six sounds happening at once, plus a very basic global effects section. The drum sounds each get their own FX though.

A complete song is made of up to 100 strung together instances of 16 different "patterns". Each pattern encompasses up to 16 beats/notes plus the programming for each synth and all its sequencer data. So each pattern can sound and act completely different.

All the programming and composing is pretty much done at the pattern level.

Just about any knob or setting can be twiddled in real-time during playback, and you can interact with it through a two-octave on-screen keyboard or an X/Y "KAOSS" pad in addition to editing events directly in the sequencer view. You can also play the 16 patterns back manually so there quite a few performance opportunities.

The manual is of course very limited and someone could write a book about programming and making music on this thing. It strikes me as a product where the developers had way more fun than their bosses thought they should have. There are lots of well thought out details and some things that the manual can't even begin to discuss in enough depth.

It's not really a "game" of course so much as it's like buying a 1995 vintage synthesizer workstation that came with documentation in Japanese. You need to be inclined towards this sort of thing in order to have fun with it, but it has much more depth than many pocket sized synthesizers and sound modules of the past.

Anyhow, if you have any interest in classic synthesizer hardware or music software, you'll probably love this. Probably not a good gift though for a child who isn't already motivated in that direction. One of the better "adult level" titles for the DS though.

Just an excellent way to get some great sounding electronic music going. Agree completely with the review that calls this a pocket-sized Reason. While not as comprehensive as Reason, the intuitive interface, excellent sound design possibilities, and ease of use make this great musical fun.

Really a well designed program, and the sound either through headphones or connecting from 1/8" jack out of the DS to a decent amp is fantastic. I've got a home studio with lots of soft synths, and this rivals many of them in terms of sound quality.

A great way to learn basic synthesis too, you can apply the knowledge learned in the synth and sequencer of the DS-10 to many others.

Highly musical, loads of fun. Highly recommend, it's a steal for the price.

I've barely scratched the surface of what this can do, but I'm sitting here with a grin on my face just thinking about how much fun I'm gonna have. If you love analog synths and your Nintendo DS, you will love this. The virtual patching and multi-track step sequencer are exactly what I was expecting. I was anticipating a possible letdown, but this does not disappoint. Make no mistake - This is not a game. It's an analog synth modeler and multi-track step sequencer. But I repeat myself. Did I mention this is awesome?

who knew such a small little ds card could sound so powerful?

small japanese developer aq interactive collaborated with korg on this little doo-dad, with korg personally overseeing the sounds. what results is a remarkably deep, intuitive, and just flat out fun cart that will leave you with countless surprises with every turn of the knob.

for beginners, it comes packed with two demo songs (called "sessions") and a number of preset tones to choose from. right away, novices can learn the basics of how a synthesizer works, tweaking every little aspect of the tone. afterall, the best and most fun method of learning a new instrument and new style of music is being adventurous and experimenting.

which leads me to the meat of the matter...

more experienced synth users no doubt will be impressed of the flexibility of tones through the full patch-board functions. with time, patience, and a good ear, the patch-board can be used to make AMAZING sounds. couple this with the comprehensive 16-step sequencer, three adjustable effects (delay, flange, chorus), a kaoss pad, basic mixing board, a four-part drum machine (with completely tweakable drum tones), and the ability to sync up to seven other ds units, there is absolutely nothing you can't do! all this crammed into one little cart, which is essentially a real-deal synthesizer you can take ANYWHERE!

of course, it does have a few very minor flaws. a basic eq would have been a nice addition, and the lack of a polyphonic keyboard means no chords. the inability to adjust the sounds in real-time while in song mode is a bit questionable as well. but these are easily overlooked and in all honesty, i feel these limitations make it so much more interesting and enjoyable.

if games like guitar hero and rock band appeal to gamers who love music but lack the ability, the korg ds-10 must be designed for the gamers who are musicians. this is a must for the electronic music fan. trance, trip-hop, synth pop, house, techno, and even eno-styled ambient and merzbow-like noises, the possibilities are endless. a fun little sketchbook for bigger projects, a great way to bring out that music maker in you, and a fantastic performance tool, i feel the ds-10 is a serious gift to the gaming community, one which is sure to influence and inspire. i recommend going into this one with a basic understanding of music theory and keyboard layout. regardless, i'm sure it will not detract from your enjoyment of the korg ds-10 if your knowledge is limited. definitely a must.

This is the most fun I've ever had with my Nintendo DS. I've had the privilege to own, or work in studios equipped with, some of the finest analog synthesizers to ever grace this earth: Mini Moog, ARP Odyssey and 2600, Oberheim Matrix, Yamaha CS-15, Roland Juno, Korg PolySix, and many more. This little "game" brings the experimental joy of some of the best of them to a handheld device, and all for the cost of a video game.

Let's talk about the good:

The interface is instantly comprehensible to anyone who has used analog synths and sequencers (or their modern emulators like Reason).

The limitations of the computational hardware are very effectively masked by providing a comfortable set of tools, that feel like design decisions rather than just tricks to avoid over-taxing the wimpy hardware. You get two highly flexible monophonic, two-oscillator, synthesizers and a four note drum synth, and each has a 16 pattern sequencer. Everything works entirely glitch free...I remember early analog synth emulators for PC and Amiga and Mac that had a hard time keeping up, and would sometimes glitch if too many things were happening. The limits of the hardware have been respected in this product, and you can push it as hard as you want, and everything still works as it should.

KAOSS. If you've used any modern Korg synth, you've seen the little two dimensional control surface they call KAOSS...in DS-10, your stylus becomes an awesome realtime controller for two different attributes, selected from filters, pitch, amplitude, and about a dozen other options. KAOSS is deeply satisfying, and they've captured the spirit beautifully in DS-10.

Simplicity, while still providing some pretty advanced features. If you have experience with analog synths, you'll master the DS-10 (or at least be able to get useful results out of it) in a couple of hours of play. But, I'm also still discovering new tricks, and getting news sounds out of it, several days later, which is a lot like real analog synthesizers. There's a cool "patch" page that allows pretty advanced modulation, in addition to the standard ADSR envelope generator, low/high/band pass filter, and sync-able VCOs found on the main synth edit page. Lots of fun and lots of flexibility.

Now for the bad:

The sound circuitry on the DS is not even a little good. I don't know if it's the whole chain, or just one particular component (DAC, preamp, etc.), but it puts a fearsome limit on what you can really do with your DS-10. Highs are crunchy and lows are rough. Mids are tolerable, if a little honky. And everything is a bit noisy (and not a good noise like a classic Marshall tube amplifier--this is the kind of noise that gave early cheap digital synths a bad name).

This can never be your primary sound source on a recording, if you want your recording to turn out awesome. It just doesn't bring the sonic goods to the table. A quality analog synthesizer brings a really wide range of sounds to your palette, including very effective lows and highs (the range of an analog synth is usually far beyond that of any conventional instrument). A DS with DS-10 merely brings lots of squiggly thin little sounds, and some cool ways to interact with those squiggly thin little sounds. This is not the fault of the developers of DS-10; those guys have my utmost respect. It's merely a limitation of what kind of sound quality one can expect from a super-cheap little gaming device that was meant to be heard through headphones or half inch speakers. Running it through a nice amp and good monitors reveals a much broader spectrum, but it's still not an acceptable substitute for the real thing...which is tragic, because the software is truly awesome to use.

I would actually love to treat the DS with DS-10 as a real instrument. DS-10 certainly has the soul of a real instrument, but in this case the body is feeble, and the DS' lousy sound output quality brings it all crashing down. So, it's a fun way to play with new ideas, an occasional "interesting" source of sounds, and maybe even a way to introduce kids to analog synthesis (but don't expect a 10 year old to make sense out of this without some guidance, it is still a complex topic and there's a lot of "knobs").

So, this is one of those odd occasions where I can point out huge glaring flaws in the product and still recommend it wholeheartedly. It's reasonably priced, it delivers a lot of fun, and it's probably a more satisfying way to spend an hour on the train or a few hours on a plane than the new Mario game...you might even come up with a cool tune or two in the process. Which brings up one possibly annoying oversight...it doesn't seem to provide any means to export songs for use in other contexts. It has very cool data sharing features for working with other DS-10 equipped DS units, but seemingly no way to get songs off to a PC. Which means, as an idea scratchpad for working on songs that will be developed further on bigger equipment, it's got serious limitations.

Nonetheless, I can honestly recommend DS-10 for any musician that wants to expand their musical palette and their mind a bit.

Somewhere along the line the vintage synthesizer market took off and launched prices for classic analog synths like the Korg MS-10 beyond the reach of most non-professionals. The Korg DS-10 is not a game: it's a digital simulator largely based on Korg's iconic MS-10 synth, packaged for use with the Nintendo DS portable game system.

In addition to the full range of virtual dials for manipulating the synthesizer sound, you can simulate an MS-10's patch cords by drawing connections between virtual patch sockets on the DS touch screen. Once you've got your base sound, you can play with it on a touch screen keyboard, use a basic but functional sequencer where you can save a fair number of patterns, or play a Korg Kaos pad-like touch interface where you plot different aspects of the base sound to the X and Y axis and manipulate your output by drawing on the touch screen with your stylus. There is also a basic drum sequencer, and drum pads, and a limited selection of pedal-type effects (chorus, reverb etc.) that can be applied to the sound. Multiple compositions can be saved for reuse: each save file accommodates two synthesizer sounds with their unique arrays of sequencer patterns and drum track.

For what this software does it does a great job, it's a lot of fun to play with and could certainly be used fruitfully in recorded or live music. As far as downsides go: in 1978 the MS-10 may have been the pinnacle in user-friendliness in synthesizers: today it represents a steep learning curve and the DS-10 is as complicated as the original. There is a lot to be gotten out of the software but anyone expecting a straightforward path to listenable music may be disappointed. There is a multiplayer mode allowing compositions to be transmitted to another DS, but in general there is no way to save anything offline, so with a limited number of save spaces, if you were to use the unit a lot it would be a matter of time before you ran out of space to save your favorite compositions. Since sounds are created by manipulating virtual dials with the touch screen stylus, recording composition data with pen and paper, for instance, would be difficult if not impossible for all but the simplest compositions.

Furthermore, the only output option is the DS 1/8 inch stereo headphone jack. The sound quality of the output is good but not to the standard of a professional quality synthesizer.

In short, the DS-10 is a novel electronic instrument that rivals many popular classic synthesizers with several solid but limited composition tools. Because of its limitations it does not rise to the level of a true professional instrument, but it could certainly earn a place in a recording project or band much as many lower-level synthesizers have, at an extremely competitive price for the level of features. Here's hoping there will be many more true non-game virtual instruments produced for the DS.

Okay,
I am a synthesizer FIEND! I was the lab instructor at a local college synth/em class for five years in the seventies (teaching on the arp 2600, oberheim, moog, buchla and yamaha machines) I am no keyboard wizard, but if you want to talk overtones, subtractive v fm or other synth theory and accoustics I am in. I have owned dozens of synths over the years (just gave away a lot of them to a local school) but I heard about this and ordered one. Before synthesizers were widely available I would take an AM radio and record sideband interference from other electronic devices. (later I did the same thing with a hand held humbucker) and then manipulated the tape.

This is the best bang for buck in the entire history of electronic music!

The DS10 is FREAKIN AWESOME!

How awesome? You can select from many scales on the KAOSS pad, you can tune every drumbeat and produce distinctly techno sounds. The two synths are very VERY close to the real thing.

So I took my DS10, my gakken sx150, my korg pandora, my little mixer, a stylophone, and a casio vl-tone and i have a tabletop EM band. Midget Synth! Doll HOUSE music!

Dear DS Developers, more more MORE!

Give me a long run sequencer with wifi output control through my mac to other devices and local simple voices for programming.

Give me a pro level drum machine

Give me a mini moog.

I will buy extra nintendo boxes just to run them all

how about a small wifi programming device for ds based synths

the sound is totally awesome---look at it on a scope
it's shiny.

the Korg DS 10 has let me finish a piece of music that's been waiting for 8 years for this application

thanks,

Richard s.

The presentation is as barebones and intuitive as it gets, which makes for a suberb instrument. This is not a game in the traditional sense, it is a portable sythesizer as the title suggests. Nonetheless, it does not fail at being funner than most DS titles, if you want to get your musical fix. The two keyboards and four drums are full and you can put the music in note by note or use the stylus or drum and keyboard tool, thus allowing you to fine-tune your music to perfection. The four drums have which have their own separate synthesizer - like each keyboard (however any effects take effect on all drums at once). Like a brick and mortar sythesizer, there is all sorts of knobs, allowing you to create a inestimimal amount of different sounds, allowing your 16 loops to be as varied as you would like them.

All in all, the "game" is endlessly replayable, due to the fact that it is actually an instrument, which present excellent value for the money. I did not expect this game to be so deep and well executed, due ot the limitations of the DS, but like another reviewer said - the limitations lie within you. However it does not make a good gift for a non-musician. But if you like creating music, or want to start doing so, you will not regret this purchase; if you just want to have simplicity, this is the pinnacle of complexity on the DS.

The Nintendo DS has been around for a while--four years this November, to be exact--and during these long months game developers the world over have exploited the system's unique abilities to bring the most memorable and lasting gaming experiences to players in many a year. With KORG DS-10, XSEED Games has taken the movement one step further, bringing the Nintendo DS head-first into the realm of productivity.

KORG DS-10 is not a game, and if you're expecting anything like Guitar Hero (as did so many poor consumers who snatched up Jam Sessions), prepare to be disappointed. This is a hardcore program--an application that allows you to create and perform music on the fly.

Included in the software are two fully-functional replications of the KORG MS-10 synthesizer, complete with Oscillator 2 support, advanced routing and modulation options, and a sixteen-step sequencer. You also get a four-voice drum machine and a limited version of KORG's kooky KAOSS pad, which you can use to manipulate sounds just by dragging around on the touch screen.

There's nothing else to be said, really. The experience is extremely smooth and controlled entirely with the touchscreen. You can input notes either via a piano roll or a virtual keyboard--the latter of which is necessary to record notes longer than 1/16th.

I have a couple minor complaints that limit the product's usability
- Even though you can incorporate as many different synths in your song as you want, only two of them can play a single note at a time (because you only have two synth boards). This isn't as limiting as it sounds, and there are many ways to circumvent this (I'll discuss these in my Video Review).
- A song can be up to 100 measures long -- which is fantastic -- but can only contain 16 unique measures. That means a lot of repetition. Coupled with the fact that you can't improvise on the virtual keyboard while in song mode, this severely limits practical application.

Other than these nitpicks, the KORG DS-10 Synthesizer is a versatile musical instrument that is an indispensable tool for any musician with a Nintendo DS. For [...], this is simply the best value for money when it comes to portable sound synthesis. It isn't perfect, but you'll never find a better deal.

For more, including a more in-depth look at the interface and advanced features, check out my video review -- coming around in just a few short days.