r/Korg

Having some FM volca fun.

Hi guys, I'm thinking about buying a semi modular synths in the 200€ price range (a bit more or less would be okay of course). I know Behringer have a couple semi modulars in this price range. I already have a Korg Volca Keys. It also should not be monophonic.

I would be happy about answers!

Hey guys,

Hoping to finally figure this out, on my second NTS-1, could never get the first one to connect to my laptop so swapped it out. Have the new one connected to my PC currently, have read on Windows 11 the Korg midi driver is no longer required but despite the NTS-1 showing up in device manager in the midi devices, trying to update it always gives me the device not connected message.

Thought not needing the driver would make this easier but it's the same issues as when I needed the driver.

Any help or insight would be most welcome, about to give up on Korg if I can't get this or my NTS-3 to update/utilize it's customization.

Thanks in advance.

A few people asked me what went into this patch, so thought I'd do a walkthrough, starting from the INIT patch, and explain the process and my thinking as I go Enjoy!

This is something I have struggled with over the last few years of owning both the NTS-1 MKII and the NTS-3, and it's been difficult to find all the relevant information about how Mono inputs are handled by these devices. I spent the last half hour or so meticulously testing how these work so I decided to make a post here laying it all out for posterity.

The NTS-1 MKII and NTS-3 both have stereo (TRS) inputs. If you feed them a mono signal with a TS cable, you will get audio only out of the left channel. That's kinda par for the course.

You can fix that, though, by going into the global settings menu of either device (Boot + EDIT on NTS-3, boot+Reverb on NTS1), then scrolling over to the monoaural settings (MoNoFF on the NTS3, MoN0 on the NTS1), enabling that setting (MoN oN / MoN1), and then saving those settings (press fx4 on the NTS3, arp on the NTS-1 MKII)

For the NTS-3 this will work fine but will revert after a reboot forcing you to go in and toggle it again every time you boot the device.

For the NTS-1 in mono mode the device listens to the RIGHT audio channel (ring) instead of the industry standard LEFT channel (tip). That means a standard TS cable feeding mono audio into the NTS-1 MKII with the Mono setting enabled will be dead silent. You need to somehow feed your mono signal into the right channel either using an adapter or half-plugging in the TS cable to get this to work.

Oh and of course, on a reboot, the NTS-1 MKII will lose the setting as well.

On a reboot into the settings, both devices will show mono mode turned on, but you need to toggle it off and on again to make it actually work on subsequent boots.

The ultimate conclusion here is basically that it's a pain in the ass to get mono inputs working on these devices (especially the NTS1). The best way to use mono inputs with these is to use a mono-to-stereo converter to make your mono signals into stereo signals before they reach the NTS devices.

I hope this helps someone or saves someone some frustration moving forward, and I hope someday Korg puts out a firmware update that addresses these issues.

Hey, I’ve got a dilemma: I already own a Korg E2 (both the synth and sampler versions). I’m thinking about buying an older Korg model, but if I can only get one, I’m thinkin between the ESX and the EMX. Would the ESX make sense? I play tekno music in the 160–190 BPM range. Thanks a lot for the advice and tips.!!