Korg Mini-KP KAOSS Pad

OVERVIEW

They aren’t kidding when they say “mini.” The Mini-KP is about twice the width of an iPod, so it’s super easy to grab for the gig. A black touchpad roughly the size of a laptop’s track pad dominates the front panel. It doesn’t have the neato light show of the larger Kaoss models, but this saves battery power. A “clicky” endless encoder knob selects effects and other parameters, and three buttons control a two-program memory and tap tempo. I would rather have seen 1/4" jacks instead of the RCA ins and outs, but their presence is a result of the RCA-dominated DJ world.

EFFECTS

The mini-KP comes with 100 presets which run the gamut from filters to delays, flangers, phasers, reverbs, and pitch shifters, to more exotic fare such as ring modulation, decimators, grain shifters, slicers, and some basic synths with pitch control from the pad. On presets that employ a single effect, the pad’s X and Y directions control two parameters of that effect — delay time and depth, for example. On dual-effect presets, they control one parameter of each effect. You can’t create your own dual-effect configurations, though. Compared to larger Kaoss pads, the only area where the Mini-KP falls short is sampling. Though the Mini-KP employs a form of sampling for its looper and grain shifter presets, it lacks its larger siblings’ ability to trigger one-shot samples. Korg tells us that having enough memory for this would have raised the price.

IN USE

I found that the quickest way to get a feel for the Mini-KP was to hook up my iPod and pick something with a snappy beat on which to wreak havoc. The Mini-KP defaults to bypass mode if you’re not touching the pad; as soon as you do, the selected effects engage. Press the handy Hold button on the front edge of the unit, and the effect remains on if you take your finger off the pad. The effects mix defaults to fully wet, but the wet/dry balance is adjustable. It always jumps back to fully wet as soon as you change programs, and given the nature of the effects, this usually isn’t an issue. Korg also includes a global setting that lets you set up the Mini-KP as an insert-type effect (i.e. wet and dry signals are mixed internally) or as a bus-type effect that’s always 100 percent wet with no dry signal. There are “A” and “B” memory slots for storing custom presets; these let you save the wet/dry mix, the touchpad position, and the Hold button state. More than two memories would’ve been nice, but in its defense, the Mini-KP really is meant for you to dial up a preset and tweak it live.
As I found out, doing so gives you no shortage of sonic mayhem and diversity. The Mini-KP’s effects are not subtle; work that touchpad and things really happen. The lowpass filters were impressively meaty for a digital box, and the highpass filters had plenty of the familiar Triton “sheen.” Almost all the effects have bpm sync built in. Just tap the tempo button and the display instantly shows the bpm. Twisting the knob fine tunes the bpm . . . nice.

The variety of effects is pretty wide, so I’ll touch on some of the really inspiring ones. The “jet” flanger offers some pretty extreme feedback, and at lower delay times, makes super-cool motor noises that you can “play” in key with the song. Two-octave pitch-shifting on the touchpad can make a mess of things, in a very good way. The slicer algorithms might be the coolest thing on board. Once you’ve tapped in the tempo, these impart a rhythmic pulse whose timing depends on your finger position. Korg has very intuitively placed the sixteenth-note pulse in the middle of the pad with higher values to the right and lower ones to the left. Combine this with different filter types on the Y axis, and there isn’t a dance floor you couldn’t blow up. The grain shifter and looper effects offer a similar but more extreme version of this effect. The loopers actually sample a chunk of music and repeatedly play back varying lengths of it, again depending on finger position. It’s a great effect for “remixing” on the fly; you can even pause playback of the source music while you mess with the running loop on Mini-KP. The Mini-KP also adds a beat-synced delay to smooth changes between effects, but you can bypass this if desired. While we’re at it, there’s a ton of delays and reverbs — forwards, backwards, tape and dub delays, you name it. Reverb quality was certainly good, though you probably wouldn’t use the Mini-KP as a dedicated reverb for, say, a lead vocal. Most unique among the Mini-KP’s effects are those that split the frequency range into two or more bands, then process only one with effects; for example, “48 Mid Slicer” chops up the midrange while leaving the low end untouched to stomp the dance floor — cool! There are similarly mid-specific flangers and auto-panners, and “71 3-band Gated Reverb” does just what its name suggests, affecting lows, mids, and highs differently.

The Mini-KP also includes some rudimentary synth sounds with pitch and filters controlled by the touchpad. These aren’t just straight oscillator tones either; they’re full-blown, chorused and delayed techno sounds right out of the box. Some sounds are noise-based, and while these are fun and easy to play, most of the pitched synths are tougher to play with any degree of pitch accuracy on the touchpad. I also found that, unlike with the effects, I often had to bring down the volume of the synth tones, which were louder than the incoming music signal, by adjusting the effects balance.

CONCLUSIONS

I’m hard pressed to think of another electronic music gadget with this kind of bang for so few bucks. The audio fidelity is solid, and the super-compact packaging feels sturdy. About the only niggle I had was that the touchpad surface feels a little bumpy. It’s not distracting, but it isn’t perfectly smooth like my laptop’s track pad. Unlike its bigger siblings, the Mini-KP lacks MIDI I/O, but this is easily forgivable given its size and price point. In fact, the Mini-KP is so unique, addictive, and affordable that it’s a Key Buy-winning value.

CLAIM CHECK

Korg USA product chief Jerry Kovarsky says, “We’ve had huge acceptance of our Kaoss approach to realtime effects processing across three generations of product. With the Mini-KP, we wanted to bring that addictive, fun approach to the broadest range of users and applications. We did that by making it as portable as possible, both in size and through battery-powered operation. This allows musicians, DJs and even casual music listeners to be able to afford and to fit a Mini-KP into their rigs and lifestyle. Yet we didn’t cut any corners regarding sound quality — it has the same effects algorithms as the more upscale KP-3. Plus, we kept advanced features like pad hold, tap tempo, and effects depth and release parameters. We see the Mini-KP as unique in the marketplace: Nothing else offers this intuitive and fun a way to manipulate sounds and effects, whether you use an iPod, laptop, keyboard, or DJ rig.”

IT SLICES, IT DICES, IT JULIENNES

Go to check out the MP3s to the upper-right to hear the cool, twisted audio examples below:

14 Isolator & Distortion:
Here, I’m rhythmically tapping different sections of the touchpad while the Mini-KP applies some radical filtering followed by distortion. Mean!

23 Pitch Shifter & Delay:
Radical pitch-changing transforms the music into bell overtone sounds reminiscent of ring modulation and frequency shifters.

49 Slicer:
By tapping the tempo, the slicer adds filtered, chopped-up rhythmic madness. Here, I’m using triplet and sixteenth-note divisions, and this is one of the tamer slicing effects in the Mini-KP’s arsenal!

73 Mid Grain Shifter:
By manipulating small, sampled chunks (or “grains”) of audio, the Mini-KP brews up a glitchy rhythm stew.

82 Looper & Flanger:
Here, small regions of sampled audio are “trapped” inside the Mini-KP, then looped and flanged in various ways by moving your finger around the touchpad. Hours of fun!

VITAL STATS

NUMBER OF EFFECTS
100.

AUDIO RESOLUTION
24-bit/48kHz.

AUDIO INPUTS
L and R RCA analog inputs.

AUDIO OUTPUTS
L and R RCA analog outputs, 1/8" stereo headphone jack.

POWER SUPPLY
4 AA batteries (included) or external 4.5 VDC adapter (not included).

OPTIONAL ACCESSORIES
Korg KA-193 power adaptor, $11.20.

DIMENSIONS/ WEIGHT
4.17" W x 5.08" D x 1.14" H; 5.43 oz.