Korg M3 (p)review - Korg Komponent System
Author: Vedran Dakic
Date: 19 Jan 2007

One of the most inovative things about M3 and actually - RADIAS keyboards is actually their physical design and the layout possibilities with these two keyboards. This is something that Korg calls the Komponent System (I guess it sounds a bit more "serious" or "pro" with this "K" instead of using "C"), and this is actually a small framework for (at this time) two of their products - the M3 and RADIAS. Komponent System might include some other products in the future, but this is beyond the scope of this article. So, here are some "pointers" about various options available when hooking up RADIAS module and M3-M module on 73 and 88-key M3 keyboard.

You can actually hook up one RADIAS-R and M3-M and this combination will fit in the 73-key version. Keep in mind that the M3-M module is a bit wider then RADIAS-R. So, that's the reason why you can't connect two M3 modules to 73-key version. But what's interesting, you can actually hook up two M3-M's, two RADIAS-R's or the combination of the two (so, M3-M and RADIAS-R) on the 88-key version. I got some questions about this so I just wanted to do some exploration on the subject. The M3 "brain" on the M3 keyboard is actually connected to the keyboard via cable that's much alike PS/2 cable for computer keyboards and mouses (it just has a couple of more pins). You can easily disconnect this cable both from the brain (this connector is actually on the bottom of the "brain") and the keyboard (the connector is at the rear part of the keyboard on the left, just below and a bit behind the L/R connectors on the "brain"). Many of you are probably wondering how you're gonna be able to connect M3-M's and RADIAS-R's on the 73 and 88-key version. From what I could find out, the 73 and 88-key versions actually have TWO physical connectors (61-key version has one) so you can directly connect the modules to a keyboard. This is really quality stuff, because you could easily do that with MIDI, but you'd probably get some latency. So, as it stands, the Komponent System is as good as it can be right now, very versatile and usable.