Korg Modwave Wavetable Synthesizer with Sequencer and Kaoss

At the NAMM Show 2021, Korg presented a new wavetable synthesizer called Modwave, which is equipped with wavetables, offers a sequencer, and has a Kaoss pad for modulation purposes. We know the housing from wavestate and opsix.

Two oscillators are the basis for the well-known opsix core – engine, but with 4 envelopes and 5 LFOs, filters with MS-20, Polysix, and other filter types, and different slew rates. The Raspberry Pi platform offers 32 voices. The waveforms of the DW-8000 are also built-in.

There’s also a samples section, which is huge with gigabytes of memory, but it’s solid. So it is a rompler that cannot be fed by the user, similar to the wavestate. This is emphasized not answered in a later presentation of the editor. So there are certainly no own samples planned in the Modwave.

The wavetables know users even from those in the Electribe Wave as an app, but there are 200 pieces, allowing extremely extensive. The waves are more based on Waldorf’s early PPG-like waves, as they consist of 64 waves. They have some kind of warping algorithm that can generate another 230 million variations from the wavetables.

The modulation matrix has all segments of the envelope generators and parameters as destinations and allows all LFOs, envelopes, controllers, (poly) aftertouch as sources. However, as with the other two, the keyboard is only equipped with touch dynamics or release dynamics. This means that the synth is only pressure-sensitive on the receiving side. There are also two mod processors along with key tracking and of course effects. The device weighs just under 3 kilos and therefore can be called portable with its 3-octave keyboard.

There are a ton of effects in the new Korg synthesizer, including reverb, delay, chorus, and other modulation effects. There is also amp simulation and distortion. This is all divided into 5 sections Pre, Mod, Delay, Master, and EQ.

The pad is not an effect control element, but a kind of movement assistant that maintains a movement by “nudging” it and can create a kind of two-dimensional LFO through friction and angle of incidence/emergence movement patterns. This is well suited for wavetables.

Korg Modwave price and availability

At $799.99, the price is similar to the other synthesizers in this case. The Korg Modwave can be pre-ordered on the Bhphotovideo.com website.