- Korg's Kaoss pads are now well established industry favourites, as their ability to provide flexible, truly-hands on effects control over any audio signals you care to throw their way have found favour in the studio and onstage. In 2007, Korg added to the Kaoss product line with Kaossilator, a similar touch pad device which, rather than simply acting as an effects processor, was loaded with synth sounds which could be triggered from the touch pad. Perhaps in part to separate the capabilities of the compact original Kaossilator from applications that have sprung up for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, Kaossilator is now reborn as Kaossilator Pro, which immediately suggests a more serious instrument than its sibling.
Kaossilator Pro's design almost completely matches that of Kaoss Pad 3, with a central LED display of flashing lights on the control surface and a set of surrounding rubber buttons, rotary dials and a fader on the left-hand side. Connections-wise, you'll find a headphone port and microphone input with volume and trim controls respectively on the front panel, alongside an SD card slot for storage. Meanwhile, round the back, RCA line in/out ports, a USB connector, MIDI In/Out ports and the external power supply input complete the line up. Somewhat surprisingly, Kaossilator Pro can only be powered this way and some will consider it an oversight that such a portable device doesn't feature an option for battery power.
Once you're powered up, the visual contrast with Kaoss Pad is all too clear, with bright green lights here replacing Kaoss Pad's red ones. The most basic form of operation is available from the off, as the touch pad immediately triggers the currently selected sound with, by default, a scale from left to right matched across the vertical range of the central pad. In other words, moving from left to right makes the pitch rise, while moving straight up and down triggers the same note but modifies aspects of the sound's tone, such as its cutoff frequency or modulation depth. You can't modify specifically which parameters will be changed from vertical movement for the moment, though, as they're locked into each program.
Kaossilator Pro is packed with 200 internal sounds which are usefully organized into instantly recognizable types: lead sounds have their program numbers preceded by "l," and basses "b," for instance. Both the key you're playing in and the scale of a sound's range can be controlled, so you can move easily between musical keys, between tuning scales and across a range of up to four octaves, which makes it possible to fine-tune the surface to your performance.
The gate arp function is modified from the original Kaossilator concept and immediately takes any sound and routes a volume gate through it to get it triggering chopped up note repeats. The depth or speed of arpeggiation can be controlled by the adjacent fader, which takes its cue from an oddly-placed rear-mounted switch to toggle between speed and time, so that it either controls the length of each note, the rate or arpeggiation relative to the current tempo. The self-explanatory "tap tempo" button ensures your sequences play back at the required speed and getting your gated sequences in time with another track is therefore child's play.
The next major step up is the provision of four independent internal loop recorders, which let you record a phrase in real-time into one of four banks. You can pre-specify the loop length and when you've recorded the first phrase, then switch sound and loop bank to record a second. Being able to build phrases up in this way is great fun and your results can then be volume-balanced, muted on and off or erased individually. What's more, audio via the line in or microphone inputs can be recorded to these banks. As Kaossilator Pro supports tempo-sync'd playback, DJs looking to build sequences from sources with different tempo should prick up their ears. The final 15 programs are dedicated to processing, Kaoss-Pad style, so that any external audio being routed to the unit can benefit from bespoke effects treatments. This also brings Kaossilator's vocoder into play, which is capable of some fantastic and immediate results and which should also prove both a live and studio favourite.
Loop sequences and sound data created onboard can be saved either to an SD card or via USB to your computer and, as you'd hope, the provision of a USB port means that you can even use the Kaossilator Pro as a control change "provider" to manipulate other gear you have in real-time.
However, on the subject of external communication, Korg have missed a couple of opportunities with MIDI compatibility, the chief one of which is that rather than outputting note data, Kaossilator Pro only spits out MIDI controller numbers, so unless you're prepared to use or set up a middle-man MIDI message conversion solution, you can't simply plug Kaossilator Pro into another device and trigger notes from it. This works the other way around too, as the internal synth can't be immediately played over MIDI without control change to note conversion. On the upside, a free editor can be downloaded from Korg's website which hugely aids the process of assigning MIDI controller numbers and importing audio loops directly into loop bank locations.
The Kaossilator concept has come on in leaps and bounds from its humble origins but the Pro model comes with a correspondingly higher fee over the original model and its current MIDI implementation does slightly let it down. That said, for non-keyboard players looking to add sounds, effects and real-time vocoding, there's plenty on offer here and Kaossilator manages to provide all of this in a package which isn't really rivaled by anything else out there at this point in time. There's still plenty of development potential for the Kaossilator brand, but several giant strides have been taken already and as a tool for generating phrases, sounds and effects on the fly, it comes highly recommended.
Ratings:
COST: 4/5
VERSATILITY: 4.5/5
EASE OF USE: 4.5/5
SOUND: 4/5
BUILD: 4/5
TracklistDisplay:
4-digit LED
Input connectors
LINE IN:
RCA Stereo Pair (RCA line inputs)
MIC:
1/4" Phone Jack
Output connector
RCA Stereo Pair (RCA line inputs)
HEADPHONES:
1/4" Stereo Jack
MIDI/USB connector
MIDI:
IN, OUT
USB:
Type B
Dimensions:
8.27" (W) x 8.90" (D) x 1.93" (H)
Weight:
2.87 Lbs
Accessories:
AC Adapter; Protective pad sheet.