Korg Kronos vs Yamaha Motif vs Roland Fantom vs Nord Stage Pianos

Comparison of the major workstations / stage pianos:

Korg Kronos vs Yamaha Motif vs Roland Fantom vs Nord Stage Pianos.

When buying such keyboards it’s always best to lay your hands on them, spend some time with them, and checkout the various sounds and features by yourself. It would be a good idea to take a good pair of headphones along.

In case you are looking for specific features that probably only one of these offer, then I guess it becomes much easier to select.

Kronos 61-key $2999 – 27.56 lbs
Kronos weighted 73-key $3499 – 44.75 lbs
Kronos weighted 88-key $3799 – 50.71 lbs

Nord Stage 73-key $3599 – 21 lbs
Nord Stage weighted 76-key $3999 – 36 lbs
Nord Stage weighted 88-key $4299 – 41 lbs

Roland Fantom 88-Key $3999 – 74.13 lbs

Yamaha Motif 61-Key $2499 – 33.3 lbs
Yamaha Motif 88-Key $3599 – 63.7 lbs

User Comments…
I guess it is more of personal preference as well. I prefer the Korg, but then I have always played a Korg.

Here’s more on the Kronos.

Huge sound Library
The Kronos comes with 1664 user memory programs and 1792 user memory combinations with 480 of those preloaded.

A series of drum kits including 78 preloaded and user-defined kits for a total of 152 combinations.

Expressions / Effects
Want to add expressions such as damper resonance, damper noise, mechanical noise, and note release, you can easily do it using the several oscillators.

In addition you have a range of effects to choose from. In fact, you can use up to 16 effects at once to produce super-rich sounds.

The KRONOS has 9 different effects processors including small and orange phase, clack phase, vintage chorus, black chorus, EP chorus, vintage flanger, red comp, VOX wah.

Multiple Sound Engines
The Korg Kronos keyboard has nine different tone generation engines:

SGX-1 is really a premium acoustic piano type with 100 voices.
EP-1 is focused on generating electric piano sounds with 104 voices
HD-1 is a high end high definition synthesizer using PCM virtual memory technology with 140 voices
AL-1 is an analog synthesizer that does analog modeling
CX-3 is basically a tone wheel organ using tone wheel organ modeling with 200 voices
STR-1 is a synthesizer that replicates plucked strings with 40 voices
MOD-7 is a wave shaping VPM synthesizer with 52 152 voices
MS-20EX and PolysixEX are both analog modeling synthesizers with 40 and 180 voices respectively – Arp