From the dawn of synthesizers to the 2010s, KORG has been a leader in analog synthesizer technology. From the digital synthesizer pioneer M1 that defined an era to the KRONOS that changed existing notions, KORG has been cutting-edge for decades. Since the development of the KORG Legacy Collection series in 2004, Component Modeling Technology (CMT) has become one of KORG’s most important technologies. Combining the passions of these two fields, it is a clever reproduction of analog circuits in the digital domain.

In other words, CMT does not simply simulate the output sound like previous modeling techniques. It leverages digital models of the components used in the analog products like transistors, capacitors, and resistors. Using CMT, we have been able to completely capture the sound and behavior of the original analog synthesizers.

With a wealth of knowledge and experience in the digital field, KORG understands that digital audio has a fundamentally different aspect from analog, so copying the analog circuits to the letter does not always produce the best result. The most essential reason why this is so is that although the range of frequencies in analog audio is theoretically infinite, in the case of digital it becomes limited to half the sampling rate. This is the problem. There is a portion in various analog layouts that relies on an infinite frequency range. For example, the keen edge of an analog oscillating circuit produces tremendously high frequencies. This is no problem for the analog circuits, but in the digital realm it will bring about aliasing and the sound quality will be destroyed by unwanted side band and distortions that are clearly not analog-like.