Korg Kronos 61 2025 Workstation

General

The Kronos returns! The 2025 edition of Korg's mighty workstation features the same tried-and-tested design as the original but comes loaded with even more sounds and some mouth-watering functions. This is the medium-sized edition, so it comes with a 61-note keyboard and strikes that perfect balance between weight and performance while under the hood, the extra sounds include a stunning Italian piano, a Tine-EP and various others, each hand-picked from the immense KRONOS Sound Libraries. Since this is one of the most comprehensive workstations going, it features a built-in sequencer with no-less-than two loads of 16 tracks: 16 MIDI tracks and 16 audio tracks. KARMA is included as well as a big stack of effects. The Kronos 2025 also supports external controllers, including the nanoKONTROL so the cockpit can be expanded at will.

The Kronos 2025 Edition: A Mass of Sounds

Because the selection of ready-made sounds on offers here is so enormous, it'll be some time before you get to know them all and then more time before you even start playing around with the synth engine. A stack of nine engines are at work here, including a PCM engine for you bread-and-butter sounds plus some more specialist engines, like the SGX-2 which is specifically designed to handle high-end grand piano sounds, and the EP-1 which focusses on modelling electric pianos, including an emulation of a legendary Rhodes. Since Korg also has a pretty illustrious analogue synth catalogue under its belt, you also get to play around with MS-20EX and PolysixEX engines. More off-the-shelf synth sounds are supplied by the AL-1 engine and, for the FM-synth fans, there's also the MOD-7. With this model, you can even pluck virtual strings with the help of the STR-1 engine.

Workstations: Still Relevant?

The Korg Kronos is the latest in a long line of Korg-made workstations like the M1, the 01/W, the Triton, the Trinity, the Oasys and the Nautilus, which goes to show that workstations are anything but outdated and have definitely not been made redundant by DAW software and modular synths. Workstations like the Kronos have also become one of Korg's speciality, and cater for both studio and stage-based musicians — the most famous example being Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater).