Korg unveil Prologue polysynth

New flagship poly builds on the Minilogue design with digital oscillators, DSP effects and more voices

Given the roaring popularity of Korg’s four-voice analogue Minilogue, it’s little surprise that the Japanese synth titans are keen to grow the ‘logue’ brand. We’ve already seen one addition to the range with 2016’s Monologue, a smaller, monophonic version which was well received but faced tougher competition in the crowded monosynth market.

Now we have a new member of the family pitched at the other end of the spectrum. The Prologue is a fullsized, flagship polysynth available in 8-voice/49-key and 16-voice/61-key varieties. It effectively keeps the same basic structure of the Minilogue, but expands upon it with a number of interesting, pro-level features.

The most interesting of these is the new multi-mode digital oscillator, which joins the two analogue oscillators of the Minilogue to create a flexible, hybrid synth engine. There’s a new digital effects section with reverb and delay along with a multifunctional modulation effect.

The Prologue is bi-timbral, and also features a variety of voice modes, for creating mono, poly, unison and stacked chord patches. It packs an onboard arpeggiator too.

Interestingly, for those who really want to personalise their Prologue experience, there’s an open API that enables you to customise and extend the capabilities of the multi-engine and digital effects. Korg are making a SDK available to help developers create programs for the synth too. Using the dedicated librarian software, you’ll be able to create your own oscillators and effect programs and load them into the Prologue. You’ll also be able to share your programs and code with other users. The librarian will also allow users to organise and save patches for the synth.

Korg are promising a high level of expressivity when playing the Prologue; it features the same ‘natural touch’ keyboard as you’ll find on the company’s workstations. It also gets proper pitch and mod wheels – instead of the level design used on the Minilogue – which are place above the keyboard. The mod wheel can be assigned to a variety of patch parameters for performance, including filter control, LFO speed and oscillator blend.

Other than the extra keys and increased voice count, the two versions are pretty much identical. The only feature exclusive to the 16-voice version is a master compressor/booster effect complete with a smart VU meter. The Prologue 16 and Prologue 8 are scheduled to ship in March/April 2018 priced at £1739 and £1299 respectively.

We get hands-on with the Prologue over the page…