Korg today announced three new keyboards in its wavestate line: the wavestate SE, wavestate Limited Edition Platinum, and wavestate mkII.
Korg introduced the original wavestate at the 2020 NAMM Show. The original wavestate debuted Wave Sequencing 2.0, which takes the legendary Wavestation’s Wave Sequencing synthesis to the next level.
The original wavestate has impressive capabilities, with the most common criticisms being: a) It’s a “VST in a box”; and b) Some would like a heavier build and better keyboard. Korg has tackled those criticisms head on, first introducing the Wavestate software synth, and now releasing the wavestate SE, featuring a 61-note keyboard with aftertouch.
Here are the highlights of Korg’s new wavestate synth line:
Korg wavestate mkII
The mk2 expands its unique palette of lush, evolving pads and driving rhythms with improved polyphony (96 stereo voices), new and updated sounds, and a refreshed look.
It has 4 GB of user space to import samples and its compact form-factor, with 37 full-size keys, transports easily and fits neatly into any stage, studio, or desktop setup.
Features:
- Wave Sequencing 2.0
- Extensive modulation with hands-on control
- Gigabytes of samples – and import up to 4GB of your own
- Modeled filters, including MS-20 and Polysix
- 96 stereo voices
- 4 Layers with Vector control
- 14 simultaneous effects
- Set Lists and Smooth Sound Transitions
- Randomization
- Free Editor/Librarian and Sample Builder software for Mac and Windows
- Compact. Great design. 37 full-size keys
Korg wavestate SE & wavestate SE Platinum
The wavestate SE features Korg’s premium 61-note natural-touch keyboard with aftertouch, for the same feel as Korg’s high-end workstations. Aftertouch provides fingertip control of the wavestate’s unique, evolving sounds.
Factory Performances have been updated for Aftertouch, and new sounds have been added as well.
Under the hood, wavestate SE also features 120 stereo voices of polyphony – almost twice as many as the original wavestate – and also includes 4 GB of space to import your own samples.
The metal body is sleek and strong, ready for gigs and studio alike. ?The metal knobs have just the right weight for easy tweaking.
wavestate SE is also available in a Limited Edition Platinum finish. And both versions ship in a dedicated hard case, including space for cables and a sustain pedal.
Features:
- 61-note natural-feel keyboard with aftertouch
- Hundreds of updated sounds
- Road-worthy metal construction
- Exclusive hard case included
- Limited Platinum edition option
- Wave Sequencing 2.0
- Extensive modulation with hands-on control
- Gigabytes of samples – and import up to 4GB of your own
- Modeled filters, including MS-20 and Polysix
- 120 stereo voices
- 4 Layers with Vector control
- 14 simultaneous effects
- Set Lists and Smooth Sound Transitions
- Randomization
- Free Editor/Librarian and Sample Builder software for Mac and Windows
- Special crossgrade to wavestate native software
Pricing and Availability:
The wavestate mkII is available to pre-order now, with a street price of about $700 USD. The wavestate SE is and wavestate SE Platinum are also available to pre-order, with street prices around $2,000 & 2,200. See the Korg site for more information.
Of the three little Korg digitals (Wavestate, Modwave and Opsix), I think this one makes the least sense to put into a larger keyboard. More than the others, the Wavestate is about the busy 1-finger jams, which can easily be fired off from a crappy 3-octave keyboard.
The other two are more for playing IMHO. An Opsix in this larger form factor would be an insta-buy for me.
Interesting and sensical take that makes the omission of a nice large screen on this updated unit feel like even more of a ridiculous and terrible oversight.
I agree the OpSix would benefit from the 61 key form factor. The Wavestate is one of the greatest pad/ texture synths ever (as was the Wavestation). My band mate and I have lamented since it was released that it lacked the 61 key range for this purpose.
I suppose that blows up all hope for a 3-in-1 in the upcoming years.
I’ve been thinking this for a while.
I purchased a Novation Launchkey specifically because I missed the boat on Opsix Hardware. Too late for me, but I would assume Opsix get re-released as hardware, as well as the MW.
I think you can essentially already get a 3-in-1 (plus more) with Nautilus / Kronos / OASYS?
I thought the point of these three synths was to break out some of that tech, and perhaps improve it a bit.
Small screen, big price… seriously Korg…
Is this based on the latest Raspberry Pi?
I could be wrong but AFAIK the Pi only handles the UI.
..quite the opposite. you don’t need a 1.2GHz quad core ARM Cortex for panel controls. The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 is a system-on-chip. It’s got the CPU and RAM on chip and all the IO needed to process audio w/ a few external parts. The mundane housekeeping loops (i.e. UI etc..) are done on an external mcu.
Yes u need that in a 2200,- euro synthesizer… it’s a rip off anyway imo.
What do you think is in most high-end synths? Magic pixie transistors parts?
The electronics in synths are all dirt cheap these days, unless you’re doing a Moog and trying to recreate vintage designs using new old stock parts.
You’re paying for the design, the case and the build quality of the interface (keyboard, pots and knobs, jacks, etc).
In this example, you can see that using the high-end parts and just making it twice as big is more than doubling the cost.
> You’re paying for the design, the case and the build quality of the interface…
And salaries, carpets, photocopier toner, marketing, transportation; whatever a company needs to keep producing products.
Yeah the raspberry pi modules sound like a DIY arduino thingie. It’s not, they’re very powerful and useful for many applications (albeit handicapped by the nature of system on module (SoM). A lot of devices are using SoM’s these days as it decreases development time and the prices can get relatively close to that of using discrete components (ie laying out your own mcu, dsp, ram, etc..). If you compare the cost of the dsp, ram and sigma delta dacs in the ob-x8 the cost is about identical to that of a raspberry pi compute module
Except for the extra polyphony, I fail to see how the new MK2 unit differs from the original. According to LoopOp, all of the Wavestate units are identical, engine wise, except for the polyphony. Given that the only thing that changed in the MK 2 is the polyphony, the ad for it seems to be a bit deceiving on the part of Korg. My advice, wait for the gullible morons to “upgrade” and snarf up an original Wavestate when they are selling for $300 on Reverb!
I had the original Wavestate, bought it about a year ago after being *extremely* impressed with the Wavestate Native I bought first. Sold the HW Wavestate yesterday.
However I eventually noticed the CPU difference factor: On the Native I had about unlimited voices (I see that is has 64 voice polyphony, but I never encountered a barrier in number of voices, and bear with me), but on some complex patches as the Assam Ambience Split, the Wavestate HW started to steal voices where the Native did not.
Plus that switching presets on the Native (MBP M1 Max) would immediately load the new preset and produce sounds, while the original needed a second or three in order to sort things out before it could produce any sound.
Not that it is a huge factor, but I prefer the computational power of the plugin host over the HW.
Yeah, so no vector joystick or performance controls, but:
A) I never used the vector joystick that much
B) I usually found that when using the performance controllers, it changed the preset completely, and as far as I could tell there was no ‘position zero’ on any controller you could go back to and then get back to how the preset originally was.
The SE has twice the voices. I wonder if they added a second Raspberry Pi compute module? Oh well, owning this synth is just a pipe dream due to the current US / Canada exchange rate.
You could do a creditable concert with just three Wavestates, maybe even two. If you programmed them carefully, you could do a mini-Kebu thang.
I must applaud Korg for concentrating on higher end more. I don’t think they ever did low end stuff well, and the midtier prosumer market has already saturated, solid gigworthy instruments are better investments in the long run, and Korg has a solid reputation for making them
I get that these are upgrades of a sort, but it seems like Korg has been doing an awful lot of re-marketing.
“It seems like Korg has been doing an awful lot of re-marketing.”
What are you even trying to say?
The larger versions were previewed before the compact versions were even released. Korg pretty clearly didn’t want to take the risk of releasing $2k synths in the middle of a pandemic, without having any idea whether people would buy them.
Now they’ve proved that there’s enough interest in these synths to justify doing deluxe versions.
Seriously, I’d rather pay for a Roland Fantom 06 with 256 voices of polyphony, 16 multitimbral parts, with integrated 404 sampler, looper for live performances, 32-band vocoder, with fatar T9 keys, bigger and full color screen…
Really Korg scam and some fools want to be scammed.
Scam? lol
They’re not misleading anybody – they’re just releasing a nice, full-size synth, built well enough to last a generation. This is exactly what a lot of people have asked for.
Maybe you want a workstation keyboard, but most people like synths that sound good and are fun to use, and when they want to make a track, they use their DAW to record it.
Does the new versions have more than 50mb sample RAM ? This is the main bottleneck in the wavestate sample storage capability.