New Korg Electribe 2 & Electribe Sampler Versions Compared

This video, via loopop, compares the Korg Electribe 2 and the Electribe Sampler, both Grey and Blue versions, and Black and Red versions.

The video covers the shared features, differences between the Electribe 2 and Electribe Sampler and also what’s new in the newer Blue and Red versions.

It also has cool oscilloscope and spectrum analysis of the different oscillator, filter and resonance options of the different models.

20 thoughts on “New Korg Electribe 2 & Electribe Sampler Versions Compared

  1. still no song mode. still an audible 35ms-long gap/mute before pattern switch. (for comparison: roland´s jd-xi has no gap when switching patterns.) export as .wav and ableton pack only without efx. you still cannot midi sync an event recording as slave. in order to bypass that problem korg came up with the pattern chain function which is a cumbersome pita. sampler has no bpm detector, and auto sync function for imported .wav loops. buy a second hand mc-808 or mc-909 and you get more for your money.

    1. The sampler has a slicer instead of auto beat matching. Let’s you edit loops more precisely than just having to use a preset algorithm

  2. the 2 things I wish they would add via an update are a shift+ decay/release to add sustain and the ability to chain channels together so that you can create multi osc drums, like with noise + sine/square, etc.- if they do a V2, I would really like an fx send in/out….

  3. They broke the features in half for no practical reason. That business model is obsolete and I hope these were last examples of this kind of thinking.

    Now they both are insufficient.

    Still, even if they are aftificially gimped, I would have considered buying one of them, if they didn’t remove the transpose, that their predecessors had.

  4. emx has a special place in my heart. its my first bit if kit and the limitations of it really made it fun.
    chaining the efx alone was such a clever way of experimenting.
    even when you take out the clicking, mysteryphony, gaps, e2 is sooo bland. its an overgrown kaossilator not an electribe. my biggest gear disappointment. thank god for volcas.

  5. Also dislike the broken business model – why can’t we have a single device that does both.

    And I preferred the previous EMX-1 SD version – which has an analogue valve distortion circuit – as well as being more fun to use, more tweakable, and much better looks! 🙂

  6. I love my Es2 sampler, it’s so good for getting ideas down quickly and I find it infinitely more fun than using a DAW. I export the ideas as Live files and finish them off in the box. Highly recommended…. however I do have one gripe and that is the noisy sound output. The well documented 13k whine is present in mine and makes it useless for live use. Reminds me of the sound when I first started making music with a PC and didn’t have a proper sound card. But still, a very fun machine that I thoroughly enjoy using

  7. I have both, very fast and inspirational workflow. The idea of no presets and creating every sound from zero is amazing it really enhance the creative process. The Electribe synth sounds really good.

    In the other side the sampler has a very slow workflow of menu diving and files managment (they don’t really make good use of the Electribe screen). The only solution I found is work my samples in software and export them to the ElectribeSampler already trim and cut and with short names because the screen can’t show the complete name of the wav files.

    The sequencer its the real weak point I find in the new Electribes:

    If KORG grow the sequencer to 8 bars patterns in a future firmware it could be a better live performance groove box, but with only 4 bars it feel very limited because you must prepared everything in advance chain patterns and save all options before the show. Now you can’t save the patterns during a live show, if you do the pattern jumps erratically and the sound cuts for a moment.

    If we could change the assigment of MIDI channels on each track could result in interesting ways of layering sounds and sending MIDI data to external hardware.

  8. I really enjoyed the E2. I sold it because of the limited polyphony. Having delay eat polyphony was heartbreaking. I still think it’s a great groovebox though. Some of the songs I made on it I still have on my soundcloud. I can’t say the same of the OP-1. In fact, I sold the OP-1 because my E2 songs consistently came out better, and the workflow was faster. The synth and the effects are better as well. I will probably pick one up again this year. The workflow is super quick.

    JD-Xi is a killer groovebox if you don’t mind working with presets. The synth is a deep sea menu diving adventure. Mixing analog and digital is always a plus. The drum samples are fantastic and the amp gets you where you need to go without so much tweaking.

  9. I bought the ES2 and definitely regret it. The new MPC Live seems like it is well worth the extra $$. Korg in general is good value for features, but they need to commit more resources to optimizing workflow. The amount of menu diving and just bad designs make the Electribes a poor choice for live performance.

    For the Sample there is no time stretching, so it is extremely limited for vocals… It also takes a lot of time and work to get the samples you want loaded onto the machine. There’s no way to empty a pattern, so if you do not have any patterns that are empty, you will have to manually reset everything to start from scratch. The step editer requires a ton of menu diving, and there is no option to shift a note. Also, no polymeter. Every sample/instrument must have the same amount of steps in the pattern. Some encoders have limited range despite being applied to all the samples/instruments… so if you want to adjust a parameter and the knob has been turned from the last time, it’s impossible to gradually change the value…

    I think the synth version would be more useful if that’s what you are looking for, but I still would not recommend getting involved with this disastrous interface and sequencer.

  10. The absolute worst thing about this unit is the 13k whine which is on the inputs and outputs and on samples when recorded. You can see this on the wave form very high up at 4.15 seconds. You can work around it by loading samples and exporting samples with the sd card but its such a noisy unit to work with if using headphones it wears away at you. The best thing about the unit at the end of the day is 16 channels of 64 step sequencing of whatever you want because you dont need the sound of the unit for that.

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