My Korg Radias Story

Korg Radias with DIY wooden ends

My Korg Radias story

and about finding its place in my cellar

A reason for me to buy Radias on 2012 was to broaden the synth sound palette which was mainly based to my Origin. Origin is a great piece of art itself, but it has limits especially in producing modern sounds. For example, Origin has no supersaw oscillator and also its effects miss some qualities to make this kind of huge power synths which you hear in so many records nowadays. Just listen to David Guetta's songs, to see what I mean. In fact I had quite nice results when combining those two - Radias and Origin. They were nicely complementing each others weaknesses and I got quite powerful sounds when I layered those two together.

      Radias gives you many thing which you don't get from Origin. First, you can get a decent "supersaw" from it by using its unison mode(s). It has a lot of synth & drum PCM waveforms too. One of the best parts of Radias is its step sequencer and arpeggiator. With its good computer editor program it is easy to make drum beats and bass lines and those sync nicely together. In fact, I routed Radias' MIDI clock also into the Origin to make this whole system to sync together. This worked great. (iConnect MIDI did a great job here.) On the other hand, Radias is kind of a futuristic-digital-analog modelling-trance synth, which is criticized to lack some power or sounding thin. As a long time Origin user, I can confirm these claims to a certain extent. It seems to me that I cannot get same "analog" punch from Radias, which I get from Origin.

     This usage - combining Radias and Origin - changed on 2013 when I bought my Virus TI2. I must say that when it's about producing modern sounds Virus has so much more power and character. Suddenly my Radias seemed to be without use in my setup. I even started to sell it away. Now, in the beginning of 2014, I am so glad I could not find a buyer at that moment and I decided to keep it. Strangely this synth also had some special emotional value to me. On year 2013 I built my own wooden ends (check picture above) to make it look more like a desktop module. These wooden ends also made it more stable and put it to better angle for using it. At the moment it seems to me that Origin and Virus make the core of my synth sound. Is there still room for Radias? In fact there is: it has a great Vocoder! Now when I realized this I think I will never sell it away...

Check Radias Vocoder in action:




Radias vs. Microkorg XL ?

Radias and Microkorg have lot in common. In fact they basically share same synth engine; Microkorg XL is build upon Radias' architecture. Well, to be honest, compared to its big brother Microkorg can feel more like a toy. But it can be very useful too, because of its compact size. One good thing is its keyboard; it's surprisingly easy and fun to play. Soundwise it's quite similar to Radias, but it's much more limited. Here's a little comparison about main differences:

There was a time (2012) when I had them both and in fact I combined them as a special "Korg Hybrid" (Microkorg as a Radias controller):

My "KORG HYBRID" in action