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From: dmt@mtgzz.UUCP (d.m.tutelman)
Newsgroups: net.music.synth
Subject: Korg DW-6000 vs Roland Juno 106 (LONG)
Message-ID: <945@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 02:04:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.945
Posted: Wed Jul 24 02:04:27 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Jul-85 02:47:36 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 107

From the response to my posting on "Buying a first synthesizer",
I'm not the only one who spent time torn between the 
Korg DW-6000 (hereinafter "Korg") and the Roland Juno 106
(hereinafter "Juno").  Because of the interest, here's a bit more
detail on the differences I noticed, and why I picked the Juno.


SOUND:

OK, let's start where the rubber meets the road.  The Korg is a
brand new digital (partly) design, the Juno a fairly standard
analog machine.  The Korg has eight digital waveforms to select
from, desgined to imitate certain instruments.  Moreover, the Korg
assigns two of those digital oscillators to each of its six voices
(truly multi-timbral).  The Juno has the usual triangle and
square/pulse waves.  The Korg has 36 parameters for each preset;
the Juno has under 20.

Obviously, the Korg must be capable of better sound than the Juno.
Right?

Well, we had trouble agreeing with that conclusion, logical as it
seems.  We did A-B tests in two different stores that had both
instruments.  In each case, the Juno sounded fuller and richer
(the technical term seems to be "fatter").  Even after I twiddled
the store's mixing board to beef up the Korg's volume, that
conclusion remained.  On specific types of sounds:
   -	Sustained sounds (brass, string, organ) were considerably
	fatter on the Juno.
   -	The bell sounds (xylophone, vibraphone) were probably
	truer on the Korg (as we ought to expect).  However, my
	boys found the Juno sounds more pleasing esthetically;
	if you're getting a synthesizer rather than an electronic
	xylophone, the Juno is the choice.
   -	The piano sounds weren't really good on either instrument.
	I wouldn't buy either if I wanted a portable electronic piano.
	Therefore the Korg's superiority here was a don't-care in
	the purchase decision.

I'd like to try one thing sometime that didn't occur to me in
the showroom.  The Korg uses "Chorus" as a preset parameter;
"chorus" is a state of the machine in the Juno.  I didn't check to
see whether the Korg's presets had "chorus" set OFF, but we like
it ON for the Juno (for all the presets we've tried both ways).
If it's OFF in the Korg's presets, turning it ON might improve the sound.

Summary of sound: the Korg is a little more accurate in percussive sounds,
but less full and pleasing in all sounds.  Juno a slight winner.


RECOMMENDATIONS:

I heard the following stories from [some obviously biased] sources:

-	"The Korg has the greatest sound in its price range" - from
	a salesman who sells Korg and not Roland.

-	"The Juno is much easier to adjust for a beginner, or for
	anyone in live performance" - from (1) a teenage neighbor
	who makes her spending money playing her Juno with a band,
	(2 & 3) two salesmen in shops that carry both instruments.

Summary of recommendations: Juno has more recommendations from more
credible sources, in this statistically insignificant sample.


OTHER:

The similarity of price is as striking as the difference in almost everything
else.  Both instruments go for about $800, with the Juno about $30 more
expensive in each store that carried both.  Both have a full five octaves
of full-size, unweighted keys, with neither pressure nor velocity
sensitivity.*  Both have equally rich MIDI interfaces.  Both have equally
useless portamento (it's a slide all right, but hardly from the
previous melody note.)  Here the similarity ends.
(*  The Korg-only salesman said that they're about to come out with
a pressure-sensitive keyboard, that they will offer to retrofit for
existing owners.  I found that an unlikely story, and could find no
confirmation of it elsewhere.)

The only place where Korg exceeds Juno is that it has a catalog of presets
printed right on it. This is a convenience the Juno missed.  In fact,
the Juno doesn't even have the presets listed in the manual.  They give
you a blank sheet, so you can fill in what YOU think the preset sound like.

The advantages of the Juno that decided it (apart from the sound):
   -	Much easier to set parameters in real-time, to match
	room|band|request.  That's because there are fewer parameters
	and a slide control for each.  (Also makes it better for teaching
	a novice what the various controls do to the sound.)
   -	128 presets, as opposed to 64 for the Korg.
   -	Transpose control.


POSTSCRIPT:

We "decided" to buy the Juno, and the shop where we'd buy it.  I still
wanted to try out the chorus on the Korg,  but only because I found
it so hard to accept the non-intuitive (to me) conclusions about
the sound.  Then we saw a classified ad for a hardly-used Juno 106
at a hard-used price.  End of search!

			Dave Tutelman
			Physical - AT&T Information Systems
				   Holmdel, NJ 07733
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