KRON has landed in the shop!

[Loque]

The mega CV tool has finally arrived. Intro price until Nov. 13.

https://shop.propellerheads.se/product/kron/

[Heater]

That is an incredible CV toolkit. It looks almost overwhelming.

[Bumbum]

looks really "F U T U R E"
that arp seems really cool but damn, learning curve seems to be really steep

[Loque]

Full-Loaded-Feature-List...would take the whole weekend, to get into this and still miss a lot of stuff. I am mostly interested in the note quantization and hopefully i get it done somehow

[starship]

Heyo! And in the shop, I seriously didn't list all of the features. :) I didn't want to scare anyone away, more than I already might.

Re: note quantization. That was a late addition (a few months back), so it's not that hard to just generate notes. It's a little more difficult to use it as a pass-through arpeggiator, but I have a device patch and combi patch set up that do that. I had to make a last-minute fix to those patches too... so I'm not sure it's the best I can do at that, but I think it works. :)

Since it was a pretty late addition, it's not as feature-rich and easy to use as I'd like it to be. And y'all, I ran up against the SDK limits like a mofo. Keep that in mind b/c it explains some quirks. :) Like those scales will always say "C" at the start b/c I can't pass in more data to the display function, unless I can use a newer SDK version to fix that.. which is possible.. I'm going to leave it at this SDK version for a bit to have a stable old version available before I start with new SDK features.

And.. re: steep learning curve... :) :) :) IMO, and don't get me wrong, it's a complex beast... you can do a whole lot of stuff even if you don't grok most of the KRON. The basics are not a big deal. Like if you don't grok the gate channels, use back panel gate-ins. If you don't grok the curve sections, ignore 'em. ;) And especially on the LFOs and grid, basically almost anything you do to the controls there will have a visible/audible effect.

My overall philosophy, which I bet some of you will find fault with ;), was to put any option on here that I or my beta testers could think of. Which sounds nuts when I say it like that, but all of the options and such were a response to a need that someone (usually me) found while making music or patches. So a lot of stuff on here you really don't need to worry about until you come to a point where you wished the KRON did xyz, and then it probably does.

And obviously, I'm learning this shit as I go! :) Some of you have seen how scary this thing looked a couple years ago. This GUI design shtick is not easy! :)

Cheers!!

[starship]

Oh, btw, I'm thinking of doing a community patch refill (free or including them in the KRON itself) at some point, in a couple, few months (give users some time to learn the device :)). I'd like to get some good combi patches with Reason 10 devices, popular REs, etc. in there eventually.

Anyway, apologies for taking so, so long to release this thing, but there was a lot to get done... :)

And now I can focus on pushing out the PSDN 2.0. Same story there, but I let it go in lieu of pushing the KRON out. It's pretty close. I hope everyone realizes that releasing software the way I've been doing it also makes me annoyed. :) Aaargh. So I can relate. :)

Cheers!

[esselfortium]

If you're using a newer SDK for the next version of this, it might be worth considering splitting the controls into several pages to declutter the interface and better organize the tons of options.

[theshoemaker]

looks really "F U T U R E"
that arp seems really cool but damn, learning curve seems to be really steep

Yupp, It is! And I like the way Mark implemented my feature request I'm happy to share my patches, some are almost finished some are not. But most of them make use of the sequencing/ARP feature.

Sorry Mark for not comming back to you in time with my patches and the Backdrops. When you find someone here on the forum who likes to give a take on the Backdrop I'm happy to share them (I used Gimp to edit them, not sure I can export to Photoshop).

Btw. I posted the backdrops again here ... If anyone is interested in.

viewtopic.php?p=356967#p356967

[chimp_spanner]

Hello! First of all congratulations on releasing your RE. I have trialled it and I won't lie; it's pretty daunting/confusing. Your back panel has more controls than most front panels haha. So I can imagine there's a LOT of power in this thing but right now, I can't quite figure it out

Personally...and this is just my opinion...you could split each of these modules up into a smaller device, so the "toolbox" would consist of a dedicated quad LFO, quantiser, envelope, XY pads, etc. You'd also give yourself a lot more room for text labels and larger controls!

It's just a thought; maybe for down the road! I don't intend this to be negative! More than anything, again, congrats on the release. I can't wait to see what people do with this

[remo101]

I was beta testing this device for a while and I just wanna chip in to say: I absolutely LOVE it! I would advise anyone who likes to mess around at the back of the rack to trial this device.

Personally I believe that Reason needs more devices like this in order to truly fulfil the potential and promise of the whole modular-CV system. With that in mind I wanted to address some points raised....

So I can imagine there's a LOT of power in this thing but right now, I can't quite figure it out

That's exactly how I felt when I first got this thing in my rack - my advice is not to be intimidated by all the controls - remember it's a "toy" so "play" without fear. You don't have to understand much in order to get some great results out of it: Start by just using the LFO sections on their own and then notice how much control you have over the timing, phasing and shaping of a simple Sine wave even before you get into anything fancy!

Personally...and this is just my opinion...you could split each of these modules up into a smaller device, so the "toolbox" would consist of a dedicated quad LFO, quantiser, envelope, XY pads, etc. You'd also give yourself a lot more room for text labels and larger controls!

I both agree and disagree with this point. I mean yes it would be great to have each KRON section as a separate device, BUT it's also great having them all together in one place: There isn't an ounce of fat on this device - everything is there for a reason, (a few times during beta testing I emailed the dev to request certain features only to be told it already had them - this is a very deep and versatile device). All of those different sections perform different functions which can be combined in many useful ways....

....Now sure we could do that with multiple devices - but think about the mess it would make around the back of the rack, plus the excess CPU overhead associated with lots of devices. I've got a lot of CV devices cuz I love 'em, but sometimes it gets really annoying when you have to connect 10 devices together just to make some simple adjustment to a sine-wave LFO. With KRON you can do it all in one place with a negligible CPU hit.

[starship]

Yo!
Recent first:
Chimp_spanner:
I do plan on making smaller devices based off of parts of this, so there are some features and especially GUI improvements I plan on making for those. Thanks, re: my back panel! haha A big part of why it's all in one device is to avoid latency. You can do a lot of stuff with basically zero latency on here that would add several batches with multiple devices, especially gate-triggering, modding, etc. As for larger controls, well, I'm not a fan of REs with giant controls and few options. This was my response. FWIW, many of these controls were ridiculously smaller when I started. Be thankful. ha

But, as I think I say in the manual, there's a reason why the LFOs and such are so packed. I found it was easier to grok them if I could basically see all of the controls lit up or not, sort of seeing the gestalt of the LFO all at once, without having to move my eyes around and read labels and see stuff that wasn't active getting in the way. If that makes sense. So I know it's daunting!! But I really think in the end, it's easier to use this way. Not that I can't improve on it. Believe me, I am a humongous critic. lol Why do you think it took so long to release?

Shoemaker:
No worries, shoemaker. we can set that up for a future upgrade. Was that your idea? haha, I remember you had some good ones, but I've lost track of who came up with what.

esselfortium:
Do you mean folding panels or lua displays with controls on them?

Also, re: arpeggiation:
I might be able to add some kind of option to make pass-through arp work more easily. It's literally something I forgot about at first when making the note quantizers, and then added another mod destination to help with it, but I might be able to figure out a way to make it work better with another mod destination meant specifically for it or something.

However, I hit the custom properties limit (last month). This doesn't mean I can't add options. It's just going to make it a pain-in-the-ass to add entirely new widgets, though I have a plan for that (basically using lua displays). Adding things to existing menus is easy. And I haven't dived into the new SDK yet and talked to the devs about a couple questions I have about different possibilities for getting around this limit in a major way. So I'm not completely sure what is possible at this point, which features of the latest SDK I can implement.

Btw, by my own calculations, which were apparently utterly wrong, I had tons of room on that front. Oops.

[esselfortium]

esselfortium:
Do you mean folding panels or lua displays with controls on them?

Neither, I think

The current RE SDK lets you have actual switchable panels with normal 'physical' controls, like the different FX pages on Europa and Grain, or the switchable panels on Kong and Thor.

[dancing fool]

Yes, it's there.
KRON in the shop
i've beta this one to.
Many nights with lots of fun playing with this tool.
just dive into it and let CV take control.

[starship]

re: panels:

Oh, duh. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that or not. I'm not even sure if I could get it to work well with the KRON's layout and feature set, but that's something I definitely wished existed like 4 years ago. Very cool.

But like I said above, being able to see everything at once is pretty useful when it comes to grokking a patch. That's why I have a lot of stuff lighting up when active, so you don't have to decipher whether knobs are on 0 or not. I had planned on doing foldable panels because there are many times when I don't need sections, but again, with the current layout, I'm not totally sure how well that'll work. And the effort required to do this layout was ridiculous. haha

Yeah, I've been holding off on experimenting with the new SDK till I had both devices in the shop. I'm looking forward to starting some new REs and experimenting. Once I get the PSDN 2.0 released.

[chimp_spanner]

Yo!
Recent first:
Chimp_spanner:
I do plan on making smaller devices based off of parts of this, so there are some features and especially GUI improvements I plan on making for those. Thanks, re: my back panel! haha A big part of why it's all in one device is to avoid latency. You can do a lot of stuff with basically zero latency on here that would add several batches with multiple devices, especially gate-triggering, modding, etc. As for larger controls, well, I'm not a fan of REs with giant controls and few options. This was my response. FWIW, many of these controls were ridiculously smaller when I started. Be thankful. ha

But, as I think I say in the manual, there's a reason why the LFOs and such are so packed. I found it was easier to grok them if I could basically see all of the controls lit up or not, sort of seeing the gestalt of the LFO all at once, without having to move my eyes around and read labels and see stuff that wasn't active getting in the way. If that makes sense. So I know it's daunting!! But I really think in the end, it's easier to use this way. Not that I can't improve on it. Believe me, I am a humongous critic. lol Why do you think it took so long to release?

Cool! Nice to hear about the smaller devices. You'd have a customer in me straight away if you just made an ADSR with four faders! But yeah great to see such an appetite for opinions and open mindedness on your part man. I'm sure it's really scary to put something you've made out there into the world but there seems to be a lot of love for what you've made so at some point I will try and make the most of my trial period and master this thing!

[Loque]

Puhh....very complicated. I just could not figure out, how to trigger the envelope. I thought i can just press a note onthe keyboard and it runs. The manual says, it requires a gate signal from the back or a gate channel. Just to get a few steps forward, maybe someone can help with a lil few things
* How can a trigger the envelope?
* Can i quantize notes to specific scale?

[Catblack]

I have been finding that Kron breathes new life into unused synths on my rack. It's the kitchen sink and then some. It's going to CV heaven in a gold sarcophagus with all your urns and chariots and mummified cats.

Here are a couple of initial patches I've made pairing Kron with khz One. If you use the lower 4 backpanel CV inserts on the khz One, you can cycle through it's presets and land on controlling it's filters rather than pitch. (See the 'gloomsday' patch, khz One has a backside mod matrix in case you don't remember.)

[remo101]

I just could not figure out, how to trigger the envelope.

The easiest way is probably to plug a CV gate signal into the back in the "envelope" section at the top-right.

But you can do it from the front like so...

1. In the "Gates" section click on the top "source" widget (blank black text box) and select "noteV Note Velocities" from the list.
2. In the "Gates" section Click the red-button to enable "Gate 1":
   now when you press keys on you're keyboard the "Gate 1" green-lamp should light.
3. In the envelope section click the red-button to enable it.
4. At bottom of "envelope" section turn the "Gate" knob until it shines red and tip says "envelope gate channel: 1"

...If it's inside a combinator then you'll need to use the programmer to enable MIDI notes sent to the device.

The reason for all those steps is to support lots of variations. So for example change the "Gate 1 source" from "noteV" to "lfo1" and enable LFO-1 - now the envelope will trigger whenever the LFO goes above 0.

[starship]

Yeah, just like remo101 said!

Those gate channels on the left side can be driven by sources via the menus on the left, quants (below the gate channels, the gate-generators) via the little lighting-up green knobs, and trigger buttons that are at the bottom of that section. And then everything that can be driven by a gate has small lighting-up red through purple lamp-knobs that point to those. That way, you can do combos of triggering all devices via something like a MIDI note or a gate input on the back panel, etc.

When you start turning a gate channel knob on, there's a lamp that lights up next to the gate channel's enable button. So when you move that gate channel knob from 0 to 3, off then red through purple, correspondingly-colored lamps light up on the gate channels. The quant channel knobs work similarly, green through yellow. They can be used to drive the gates (via these knobs in the gate channel section) and/or quantize the LFOs and grid.

So like remo101 said, the reason for this extra bit of setup is that it can support a ton of different variations, make certain things have zero latency on-board, and make it easier to trigger multiple components with a single gate.

And on the LFOs, Quants, and Grid, there are gate type menus next to those gate channel knobs where you can select e.g. one-shot, n-shot gates. The env doesn't have this.

Re: catblack... Sweet!

[nbot]

@starship - If I may suggest something. Some of the knobs and labels could have more contrast for readability reasons. I'm using display with resolution 1280x1024 and I'm having problem reading the GUI. Otherwise, what can I say - it's a MONSTER

[electrofux]

This is probably the most insane RE so far. Much respect for making this work.

Great potential in there even though it is hard to get through because of the sheer number of options that had to be crammed in there.

Love what i see in the videos. So many useful and surprising functions.

[AttenuationHz]

Just out of curiosity is there a limit to the size of devices in a seemingly infinite rack? The main thing you're greeted with is the jam packed features this beast has. Space wise it might look less daunting to use for beginners if it was spread out a bit imo or on different pages within the RE if that is possible. Can't wait to dive into it, bet it would break something in the 10 beta!

[electrofux]

While it is great to have this compatible with lower SDK versions, the 4 LFOs would most likely better be packed into panels and thus free some real estate.
But i gues you just cant have both.

[NicolaAlexandraHajdu]

Hello! First of all congratulations on releasing your RE. I have trialled it and I won't lie; it's pretty daunting/confusing. Your back panel has more controls than most front panels haha. So I can imagine there's a LOT of power in this thing but right now, I can't quite figure it out

Personally...and this is just my opinion...you could split each of these modules up into a smaller device, so the "toolbox" would consist of a dedicated quad LFO, quantiser, envelope, XY pads, etc. You'd also give yourself a lot more room for text labels and larger controls!

It's just a thought; maybe for down the road! I don't intend this to be negative! More than anything, again, congrats on the release. I can't wait to see what people do with this

Need to underline the above-quoted message because i share the same thoughts! For the meantime i will happily trial it and then subscribe IF i can't make it prior the end of the sales period (because the Reason 10 Upgrade is my TOP priority for this year). This is really a "no brainer" tool for everyone serious with the Reason rack's modular environment. IF the developer decides to let it as compact as it is i won't complain or else i would miss all those beautiful options of a must-have gem that has great potentials to keep me fascinated and calling to explore. I'm also looking for PSDN 2.0 with high expectations. The patient wait is worth it.

Much Love
Nicola

[starship]

Btw, I can make more tutorial videos! Not today. Taking a break, but if I get a better idea of what's confusing, I can address that stuff directly in a video... Though I have covered all of this in at least a couple videos... granted they're in a long, multi-part format where who knows at which point I'm going to explain something or other. And the manual is in-depth. And there are help popups all over the thing, with those yellow ones on the back being more of an overview/explainer. I'm still happy to answer questions though, but I did try to forestall some of the confusion by making a ridiculous number of help popups. :)

nbot:
Yeah, I hear you. The background and even knobs have been in flux for a while, and I agonized up to the nearly last minute - a week, changing stuff. So I may at some point do a new post here and have screenshots of different options for users to vote on. I wasn't happy personally with my background, I just settled for a compromise between things and reluctantly had to cut myself off from messing with it. :) And I got used to it more. :) Not that I'm unhappy with it, but I can usually tell when something is off. Figuring out how to fix it or what the problem is... is the problem. Which is where feedback comes in handy!

electrofux:
:) thanks!

AttenuationHz:
I think it's 9U. The KRON is currently 8U. Yeah, I haven't tested Reason 10 yet. Been too busy doing this. :) Looking forward to though. And re: pages... I'll think about it. It'll percolate, but I have doubts about how useful it would be for this particular device.

And seriously, send me bug reports if anyone finds something. PM me here or email support@alien-seed.com (maybe a better option). re: "breaking something in Reason 10 beta..." :)