VST Review: Korg Trinity

Two months since my last blog post, but happy to report some minor site overhauls first, including the rolling out of comment support here.

Anyway, the gist of this update: the oldest hardware synthesizer I have in my possession is a Korg TR-Rack which I’ve had since I started getting serious with music. Been considering making the painful decision of parting with it due to finances, and it appears that now there’s an additional reason for such an idea: after 30 years, Korg has finally made a VST clone of the Trinity series!

The VST advertises complete support of all of the presets and waveforms from both the Trinity keyboards and the aforementioned TR-Rack, with an additional bonus: the complete KSF/KMP sample library that the TR-Rack additions were loosely based on, and as far as I can tell, it has not fallen short on this promise!

Upon first visit of the VST in my Logic Pro DAW, I was caught off guard by the large UI, but fortunately, the size can be reduced afterwards. The only caveat there is that some of the text, particularly the filter EG settings, were already pretty hard to read at 100%, so hopefully Korg will roll out an update for that much. It also appears that the drumkits featured in some presets can not be rewritten at this time, though knowing the normal patches, and the earlier Triton VST, I expect this to be rolled out later anyway as well.

Now for the big question people are wondering: the sound. From what I’ve found, I’ve failed to notice any obvious differences in sound quality between this VST and my TR-Rack, though the VST also includes an optional DAC simulation in the global settings for the perfectionists out there. Listening to presets like “Tsunami Warning” effectively assures me that the multifilters that were scrapped in the Triton are indeed back and better than ever: various 12dB/b high pass, lowpass, and bandpass filters that can be run either serially or even parallel to each other per multisample! I also appreciate that the included multisamples aren’t necessarily focused on hiphop or dance music: I got addicted to the slit drum as soon as I heard it used in the 1997 Riven. As touched on earlier, the VST has several banks of presets, and while there is some overlap between the TR-Rack and the KSF banks for obvious reasons, I’m still fairly confident it’ll take me some time to go through them all, to give you an idea of how generous Korg is being with providing starting points!

Below is a brief audio demo I made that I may or may not use for a final song:

My overall rating: 9/10. Sound and editability is most of the way there, but the main obstacle to me is the disconnect between the large UI and some small text within.

The Trinity VST is part of the also-newly-released Korg Collection 6, but can also be bought separately on Korg’s website, with an introductory offer of $149 instead of $199!