E Q U Korg Triton I P Korg continue to hone the workstation concept they made famous with the M1. M Gordon Reid gets hyper integrated. E N verybody seems to be talking about the Triton, and amplifiers, plus the most elaborate modulation T which is not surprising… Korg defined the afford- matrix of any current synthesiser. But Korg’s forte has, Eable workstation when it introduced the world- for the past few years, been in the effects sections of its beating M1 in 1988, and the O1-series maintained synths. These allow you to take almost any voice and T Korg’s position well into the early ‘90s. A number of warp it into the most refined or outlandish sounds imag- other manufacturers seemed to be catching up towards inable. The Triton does not disappoint. There are no less E the middle of the decade, but in ‘95 Korg demonstrated than five Insert effects busses offering 102 algorithms, S that it had lost none of its innovative zeal releasing the plus dual Master effects busses that support 89 of the Trinity. The Trinity offered physical modelling, digital aforementioned 102 algorithms. There’s also a three- T I/O and hard disk editing options, and proved to be band Master parametric EQ, and flexible routing from all perhaps the most revered synthesiser of the last few the busses to the six outputs. Some of the effect algo- years. So maybe it’s not surprising that many players rithms are ‘double size’, and using these reduces the total see the Triton as ‘Trinity 2: The Sequel’. Indeed, it’s number of effects and busses available, but the effects hard to approach the Triton without referring to its pre- section remains a sound mangler’s dream. You can even decessor. It shares the same brushed aluminium use the audio inputs to direct external sounds to the appearance, and is dominated by a similar, large, touch- effects, making the Triton a powerful multi-effects unit sensitive screen. But what’s this… knobs? And buttons and a vocoder in its own right. marked ‘arpeggiator’ and ‘sampling’? While the Despite its potential complexity, the Triton encourages cosmetics are out of the Trinity mould, the guts of the experimentation and, once mastered, it simply feels like a Triton are significantly different. So let’s cast precon- powerful analogue-style synth soaked in digital steroids. ceptions aside and dive in. The signal path remains resolutely oscillator-filter- amplifier-effects, so it should strike terror in no-one. The Basics As for the sounds themselves? A trip to your local The Triton is a 62-note polyphonic, 16-part multitimbral music emporium will demonstrate that the Triton digital workstation. Like all Korg’s recent flagships it maintains – or perhaps extends – Korg’s pre-eminent comes in three models: the basic 61-note Triton, the 76- reputation for luscious pads and ethereal textures. note ‘Pro’, and the weighted 88-note ‘Pro-X’. All the There are also many excellent organs (no other manu- models share the same ‘HI’ (Hyper Integrated) sound facturer comes close to Korg’s Leslie rotary speaker engine, dual arpeggiators, sequencer, high-density floppy effect), genuinely deep basses, powerful brass and drive, MAC/PC interface, and a sampler with (initially) smooth string sounds, plus scores of other notables 16MB of RAM. Irrespective of model, you can then add contained in the 512 Program memories. Oh yes, and two PCM expansion cards, a six-voice multitimbral there is also a GM bank compatible with both Yamaha’s physical-modelling synthesiser, a SCSI interface, and up XG and Roland’s GS formats. Is GM incongruous on an to 48MB of additional RAM for the sampler. instrument of this cost? Yes, but it’s potentially useful As always with Korg instruments, the Program is the nonetheless. fundamental unit of a sound. In the Triton this is a complex patch based upon (up to) four PCM multi- Room to Expand samples. In my experience Korg don’t necessarily lead The Triton also has space for two 16MB PCM expansion the way in go