Korg minilogue-XD

The evolution of Korg

The original Korg Minilogue was one of the most balanced, feature-rich and cool-sounding synthesizers in the sub-$700 category. It met the needs of a wide variety of musicians, being a powerful all-in-one instrument with an arpeggiator, built-in effects unit, flexible modulation options, and a powerful polyphonic sequencer that supports step modulation.

Container for digital effects

In an update called XD, Korg engineers pulled off an ingenious trick: in addition to two analogue oscillators, they added one digital sound generator. The genius is that you can load different digital engines (FM, waveshaper, wavefolder, etc.) into it as if they were separate VST plugins. The same goes for the effects block, where you can also load new engines. Well, the best part is that Korg has opened up the SDK to third-party virtual synthesizer developers and enthusiasts on GitHub, so this collection should grow big over time. Right now, for the Korg Logue platform, we found an excellent Corrosion multi-torsion from Sinevibes and a pack of interesting oscillators from Tim Shawbridge.

Perfect balance

Other than that, it's a damned well-balanced and moderately advanced analogue synth that takes all the best from the Korg Prologue and Minilogue. It is equipped with 37 keys, a small display with oscilloscope function, a set of knobs, buttons and switches to control settings, and a joystick that can control various parameters. An interesting feature of the synthesizer is the presence of a micro-tuning function that adjusts the pitch of each of the keys. Oh yes, the synthesizer itself can also be transferred from polyphonic mode to corder mode or turned into a monofinic synthesizer, where each oscillator plays in unison. There are four such modes.