So, when I first started acquiring software synths and Korg came out with a software bundle that included the M1 plus the Korg Wavestation, even at an initial price of $200 and requirement for a hardware dongle, I jumped on it. The M3R cost maybe $1800 (again, in today’s inflation adjusted dollars). In fact, I owned three of them and five expansion cards, since I was so into what they could do at the time. I never owned an M1, but I did own the M3R, a baby brother rack-mount version of the M1. For Korg to be able to sell a quarter of a million of these keyboards is a testament to how great they sounded in comparison to the competition of the time. The cards went for maybe a 100 bucks apiece (street price) and a software editor would probably set you back another 150 dollars (again, in todays dollars). And like all complex MIDI instruments of the time, one needed a MIDI-attached computer running an editing program to accomplish anything but the most rudimentary of sound creation or tweaking.īy my guess, an M1 cost around $5000 in today’s dollars. These offerings included three synth sound expansion cards, an orchestral sound collection, a dedicated piano card, and more. The M1 also had slots into which expansion cards could be inserted to increase the sound palette. It was also a testament to the sound engineers that they could cram so much good-to-even-great sound into such a tight space. Although we would scoff at such stingy storage allocations by today’s standards, it was a marvel for its time. It sported 4M of onboard ROM memory, in which approximately 100 multi-sampled instruments and half that many drum/percussion hits were to be found. The M1 was actually much more of a sample playback device than an actual synthesizer, although it had the filters and modulation one would expect in a synth.
It was the instrument that dethroned the then-ubiquitous Yamaha DX7, and the reason it was able to do so was, for its time, the breathtaking advances in sound production technology it had to offer. Some experts have speculated that there was one quarter of a million of these keyboards sold during the six years it was in production. It was destined to become the best-selling piece of synth hardware of all time. Want a piece of electronic keyboard history for a miniscule fraction of the original price? Then maybe Korg’s software recreation of the storied M1 will satisfy that nostalgic craving.
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