So where's that NEW Fantom?

I see it your way, too. And agreed with you on that ' other ' forum

I have also said ' no Oasys LE ' no new Triton Rack ( for crying out loud, this is obvious)

I think its way to soon for Korg to strip down the Oasys ( I would like to see it , but I think the timing is a year away or 2008)

I could be wrong - I don't think a new Korg Workstation ( so called Triton replacement) will happen this NAMM

My gut feel is there will be a new board ( not small cheapie) in the $2k
price range this NAMM. I also think Korg should let out some info now instead of showing that sappy countdown gimmick

GregC

maybe greg, but there's deffinitely a new board with Karma incorporated in it coming at NAMM. I posted the link in another thread. This is bound to have partial oasys technology/development in it.

Korg must be losing money at an alarming rate on the Oasys, so far according to stephen kay's web site, only 2400 boards (both 76 and 88 keys) have been sold - if you work that back in terms of revenue to the costs incurred and OUCH. I don't think they can leave it too long before they must start recouping some money on the development.

Steve

your math does sound about right

Lets give this a try, by backing into a few #'s

So Korg has genenerated ( their revenue, not street retail) about
12.5 million USD (at $5000 per unit) in their revenue

Out of pocket production cost per unit is $3000. Profit without original development , $2000 per unit, lets say $5 million

Any gut feel on all the development costs ? I would say easily $2-3 million

GregC

Korg is quite a small company, relatively speaking, dont you think? I have no clue, but 2-3 mil for RnD sounds kinda high.



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If at first you dont succeed, then skydiving is definitively not for you.

Small or large, development costs remain unreasonably high - korg have put everything into this to spin the technology off in lower priced but high profit products since the development has been done. It's the only way the Oasys would have been given the go ahead- produce a loss leader and then make (loadsa!) money later spinning off the technology (on closed bespoke hardware). Roland are masters at this.

The cost of just putting the unit together with all those electronics and bespoke packaging (case, knobs, faders, etc. etc.) in low volumes makes my eyes water!

I suppose you could argue that the Oasys has really been in development since the first PCI card. I would have thought that development costs over the years would be measured in the tens of ($)millions. I would love to know for sure.

Steve

Korg is a private co, so financial info is very sketchy

They are considered mid sized. I recall there FY sales were around 125-150 million

Roland is 3 times larger

Yamaha, of course, is a mega corp

GregC

Just for info.: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Dec02/articles/korganniversary.asp

Looks like its been in development since the early 90's!!

Steve

Wow! What a great article...Thanks!

Poor Z-1...I had no idea that it did not sell worth beans.

Now that we know about the MV-8800 and V-Synth II, I would venture to guess that those will be the two major new pieces shown by Roland next week. Maybe there will be another "Fantom-Lite" type of board or even a MIDI module of some sort. Maybe a virtual-Fantom or something. But most likely, due to the MV-8800 and V-Synth II, there will be no new workstation to supercede the Fantom.

Over the past year I have seen more and more groups and musicians using Fantom-Xs on television than ever before. I guess it was a slow start (2004 until now), but the Fantom-X seems to be gaining critical mass. (Of course we all knew this from the start) So maybe Roland will ride this mini-wave of success for another year. That's fine with me. I own the rack and now have a bunch of new "proper" synthesizers to look forward to next week, including the V-Synth and the stuff from Waldorf.

Oasys is only the flagship of Korg,it only contains the maximun specs and technology devoloped in her modules of synthesis.
One of this modules is KARMA 2 and Kay ON it's forum has announced new ,and also been said here some posts ago,
presum'bly from Korg,Karma 2 products...
http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8447
maybe not the Oasys LE but maybe a KAYkEyboard 2....
i hope in some racks too...
then,...Fantom X needs a successor but maybe not so soon...
just 4 days then we will know....

work in progress

From what i have been seeing
roland have being moving backward with the fantom releasing downgrade version rather than upgrade versions

I dont thing there is a lost more that could be added to make it a significant change.

i think the most significant would be the Vsynth II with a 32 track midi
16 track mono/8 stereo

proper file system

external usb storange (proper file sytem required)

however the fantom as hardware goes i cant see it going anywhere
software could do a lot more and especialy the fantom X editor, which i feel lacks alot of features like
giving you everything the fx has but eiditable externaly and so on.


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