General

Wrapped up inside an all-new compact jacket and loaded with a vocoder, the Korg KingKORG just went NEO. This ultra-portable synth still houses the same sound-engine as the original KingKORG, but shrinks things down to a manageable thirty-seven keys. An XLR input has also been directly planted on the control panel: plug in a microphone and engage the built-in vocoder and all of the fun that comes with it.

The Features of the Korg KingKORG NEO

The NEO is so simple to control and get to grips with that it might even be one of the easiest-going synthesizers around right now. At the same time, the sound-engine is pretty diverse, granting access to virtual analogue sound, wave tables, and even samples, so when you hear the piano sound in the clip included under the Videos tab on this page, you're hearing sample-based synthesis. This feature alone makes the KingKORG NEO pretty flexible, especially on stage. Basically, you're looking at the synth that can do everything, and the layout is subtractive, so you also get some sweet filters - seven LPF, six BPF and five HPF to be precise - and you even get two envelopes and two LFOs to play with, and a three-fold effects section to polish everything off.

"We Are the Robots!"

While the on-board vocoder is set up for vocals and speech, the effect analyses the frequency spectrum of the incoming signal and then applies that spectrum to its own signal (which is often bright synth pads, raw basses - anything with a lot of overtones), so there's nothing holding you back from feeding this audio effect any other sound source, just to see what happens. Just think what it could do with a drum loop! What you'll get in return is satisfying, retro-futuristic sound that many a sound-designer will happily experiment with for days on end.