Korg Kaos Pad Quad

It’s not often that you can say that something is truly innovative but the Korg Kaos Pad Quad is one such product. Before getting into it if you really see want to see what this product can do check out the video on the ‘Video’ tab above; 5 minutes 22 seconds well spent.

The Korg Kaos Pad Quad allows you to control; yep you guessed it, four effects, simultaneously with just the use of buttons and, central to all of the Kaoss series, the X-Y touchpad. Any audio source can be put through the unit: an instrument, MP3 player, another product in the Kaoss series, there’s even a mic input to add effects to your vocals. It’s that simple to use, making it highly accessible for casual users and more involved for professionals.

Touchpad

Built on the success of the Kaoss series the Korg Kaos Pad Quad features the same intuitive X-Y Touchpad. The movement of your finger on the pad with expressive taps, slides and other movements changes effect parameters in real time. This version of Korgs Touchpad also lights up in a variety of colours depending on the state of the effects, BPM setting, and your movements while performing.

Four Effects, Five Options, 1,295 Combinations!

The Korg Kaos Pad Quad is divided into four quadrants, one for each effect: Looper, Modulation, Filter, and Delay/Reverb. With five options under each effect type (plus an off position) you have a total 1,295 possible combinations. It’s this ability to layer effects, along with the responsiveness of the Touchpad that almost turn the Korg Kaos Pad Quad into an instrument in its own right, and make it so addictive to boost. A single beat from an MP3 player can be changed into so much more by simply rhythmically adding and switching effects.

Here’s a quick look at the effects on offer:

• Looper Module: Looper, Rev Looper, Loop Slicer, Grain Shifter, Vinyl Break
• Mod Module: Dist, Decimator, Ducking Comp, Flanger, Phaser
• Filter Module: LPF, HPF, BPF+, Jet, Pitch Shifter
• Delay/Rev Module: 1Delay, Delay, Tape Echo, Reverb, Delay Reverb

Along with the traditional effects the Korg Kaos Pad Quad has few new effects up its sleeve:

Loop, Loop, Loop

With the number of beats controlled by the location where you touched the Touchpad, you can easy loop parts of a track. Three types of loop are available to you with the Korg Kaos Pad Quad: standard Looper, Reverse Looper (plays the phrase backwards) and Loop Slicer (divides the phrase and loops a portion of it).

Vinyl Break

The Korg Kaos Pad Quad features a realistic Vinyl Break effect that is divided into two functions. Sliding your finger back and forth on the Touchpad lets you ‘scratch’ the track. Leaving your finger on the Touchpad will produce the effect of slowing down a record on a turntable; to a full stop if you leave you finger down.

Ducking Compression

The Ducking Comp effect boosts the sound level during off-beats. This effect brings extra emphasis to particular parts of your track, bringing them into the limelight.

Freeze!

Each effect quadrant features its own Freeze button. The point of this is to set up that effect with all the options you want and, when your happy, pressing the Freeze button will hold the effect as it is with no further interaction needed. Now when you use the Touchpad the only effects that will change are those that are not frozen.

Synched Effects

Keeping everything in sync, essential when using the delay effect, the Korg Kaos Pad Quad has an Auto BPM that detects the tempo of the incoming audio source. When the BPM is hard for the device to fathom you can set the tempo manually with the use of Tap Tempo and a BPM knob for finer adjustment.