Mac Version 1.0.4 1.0.1 10 Apr 12. Mono/Poly: Monster Analog Power Originally part of the Korg Legacy Collection: Analog Edition 2007; the Mono/Poly is now.

Korg revisit their classic Mono/Poly synth in the Legacy Collection Analogue Edition 2007 - but how does it measure up to the original? I reviewed the original Korg Legacy Collection in April 2004, and I was impressed. Up to that time, many soft synths had been little more than pretty pictures draped over fairly standard digital signal processing, but Korg and a handful of other manufacturers, notably Arturia and Gmedia, have been in the process of raising the bar considerably, releasing soft synths that, for some uses, are indistinguishable from the instruments on which they are modelled. Foremost among these are Korg's recreations of their own MS20 and Polysix. OK, if you raise the resonance to maximum and make the MS20EX go 'thwipp', you can hear differences between the soft synth and its hardware inspiration, but claims by analogue anoraks that digital recreations 'sound nothing like the original' are untrue, and can safely be ignored. Since then, Korg have extended and repositioned the Legacy Collection, by removing the Wavestation from the original configuration and combining it with a recreation of the M1 to form the Legacy Digital Edition.

Happily, the faux-analogue side of things has not been allowed to flounder, and to the MS20, Polysix and effects that comprised the bulk of the original collection, Korg have now added a Mono/Poly soft synth to create the Legacy Collection Analogue Edition 2007. Since we have already covered the MS20 and Polysix emulations ( SOS July and August 2004), this review will focus on the Mono/Poly emulation. Korg released the original MP4 'Mono/Poly' analogue synth in 1981.

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The world didn't go bananas for it, although it sold moderately well. In stark contrast to the reverence in which it is now held, the Mono/Poly made hardly a ripple in a world that was still dominated by powerful American polysynths. Many players (myself included) tried it, and wondered why we should be interested in a monosynth with four reasonable oscillators and a high-quality filter when there were Odysseys and Minimoogs available, both of which offered gorgeous oscillators and legendary filters. Or, for that matter, why we should be interested in a 'paraphonic' four-voice polysynth when there were truly polyphonic six-voice Polysixes and Juno 60s to be had (see the 'Polyphonic Vs Paraphonic' box for more on the difference between these terms). It seemed that the Mono/Poly failed to excel at anything. Of course, new forms of music create new perspectives on existing instruments. Nowhere is this more apparent than for the Roland TB303, which was transformed almost overnight from an annoying, whiney little box into a classic of the acid-house revolution.

Whereas, in 1985, things that went squelch were naff, in 1995, they were cool and desirable. So maybe it was inevitable that the Mono/Poly would be re-evaluated, and that it would eventually become one of the most desirable of all Japanese monosynths. When Korg announced that the new Legacy Collection would contain the Mono/Poly soft synth, I heard several people ask, 'given that the Polysix is already in there, what's the point?' But, underneath their control panels, the Mono/Poly and the Polysix have little in common apart from their SSM2044 filter chips. For example, the oscillators in the Mono/Poly are SSM2033s, while those in the Polysix are Korg's own. Elsewhere, the envelope generators in the Mono/Poly are Korg's own discrete designs, whereas those in the Polysix are based on SSM2056 chips. And then there are the effects: modular-style sync and cross-modulation on the Mono/Poly, and a chorus ensemble on the Polysix.