The Triton: Part 2

If you were unlucky enough to read of my recent purchase of a Korg Triton rack, you will know that the instrument and I did not ‘hit it off’. However, after a couple of weeks tinkering and some expensive ROM expansion the Triton is beginning to make itself quite useful. 

I purchased the ‘Pianos/Classic Keyboards’ and ‘Dance Extreme’ ROM boards soon after the machine arrived and I must say they are quite good. I would even go as far as saying they are more varied and useful than their Roland SRX or JV counterparts. Once the board is installed in the machine, you need to load the parameters for the 128 associated programs into the Triton’s memory from a floppy disk. Once I located the data, it loaded quite quickly and painlessly. Thankfully, the machine does hold this data in memory and there is no need to load it each time you boot the machine up (I wrongly thought it was necessary to load the data every time you turned the machine on). 

The programs themselves are proving to be quite useful with a good selection of drum kits in addition to the usual collection of electric pianos and basses. Having mentioned electric piano patches, can anyone tell me why ROMpler synthesizer manufacturers insist on including literally hundreds of preset electric piano patches? I rarely use a Wurlitzer, Rhodes or DX piano sounds so why would I need hundreds of each. I cannot think of anyone else who would either. 

In summary, the Triton is now becoming quite useful and will be staying for the near future. However, I cannot recommend it to anyone. When it comes to ROMpler synthesizers; the more recent the better.

Disappointed by a legend

In the last week, I made a new addition to my studio. I placed an ill-calculated bid on a Korg Triton Rack module/sampler expecting to be outbid and accidentally won the auction. As I already own several ‘ROMpler” type instruments I was keen to find out how the equally loathed and revered Triton stood up to its Roland and Yamaha counterparts. It is an expensive way of finding out I will grant you, but find out I did.

As I unpacked the box, I could not help but notice the Triton had a floppy drive. My experiences with Akai samplers and their floppy drives led me to feel a deep sense foreboding. Having wired up the Triton I let it play through its nasty demo tracks and perused the thick instruction manuals. There were some nice sounds but nothing my Fantom or even my JV-1080 could not conjure up.

On delving into the various menu’s and editing pages, I became increasingly disorientated and bemused by the Triton (even with manual to hand). Whilst I do not consider myself as a dedicated enthusiast of any one particular manufacturer, it became obvious that the Triton was neither as easy to set up or as flexible as similar Roland products I own. This is in part due to the fact that the Triton was produced in 2000 and my workhorse Fantom X has only just been superseded. Similarly, the Triton is a damn sight better than my old Yamaha SY85. Yet the Triton is still convoluted and restrictive with no discernable sonic advantage. When I realised that the Triton will not even store settings for its “Multi” mode in non-volatile memory I gave up tinkering.

So the Triton is about as popular as a ginger step child in this studio. Its only hope of redemption are the expansion boards which I am awaiting. A brief scan of the instruction manual suggests I may have to load the program data for the sounds on the boards from a floppy each time I boot up (surely this can't be true?). Roland expansion boards are simple 'plug in and play' affairs which require little or no tinkering, naively I expected every manufacturer to be able to make ROM expansions this easy to use.

This experience has taught me to treasure the flexibility and ease of use of my Fantom X8 and confirmed my long held belief that Korg haven't produced a decent synth since the M1. The long awaited Korg expansion boards will decide the Tritons fate next week.