Korg Trinity

Yes it is old today, but it has so wonderful synth pads and sounds. I'm not a fan of acoustic sounds (I get them from other sources) so I only focus on synth sounds, pads, textures when it comes to hardware synthesizers and romplers.

The Trinity has such a nice and comfy keyboard. The world's first synth with a touch screen which is bright and clear.

This was my first professional synthesizer I got in 1996.... I spent a lot of time with it as my primary synth and explored deeply all its features. Excellent keybed with aftertouch and the left hand controllers (joystick+ribbon+sw buttons) support expressive playing style. It is surprising how many sounds stacked in just 32 MB of PCM ROM. The "plus" version has a built in monophonic synth (KORG prophecy) engine, which I did not use a lot as I had external VAs for this purpose. Today it might look dated - especially the slow B/W LCD touch screen.. but still, you can get very professional sound by tweaking the parameters, and understanding the way its constructed. I recommend to replace the floppy drive with an USB emulator. Strength of Trinity in my opinion: digital synhts/drums/basses; multi-effetcs engine (better than in the later TR or Triton-LE series!), sequencer; sub-outputs; joystick+ribbon - very expressive! Professional keybed. Space-ship look design :) I think the most beautiful digital synth ever made.

I acquired a fully decked out Trinity Plus back in late April 2019 and haven't been able to put it down since. Korg ABSOLUTELY struck gold with this one! The 24-bit/48khz sounds are rich and vibrant, the keybed is very fun to play, and the built-in patches are top notch. Even the somewhat dated acoustic sounds are usable now with some treatment, depending on how you apply them. Highly recommended.

It´s 20 years old now, but still rocks. I use it mainly for synth sounds: it can get fat or it can sparkle, always with an impressive audio clarity. The Prophecy expansion board is outstanding: it´s basses and dirty leads are HEAVY. Overall, Trinity is extremely well built, with well laid controls and an excellent semi-weighted Yamaha keybed (mine is 61 keys).

Korg Kronos' little brother..? If not, it's still the funniest synth I've ever had.