History, Disk, and File Format
Korg has attempted samplers at various times. The first was the DSS-1, which was fairly popular in the 12-bit days. After that, Korg emphasized other keyboards, such as the M-1, and the T-Series, which were all sophisticated sample-playback machines.

Then, the Korg Trinity caused a stir (and still does) with its marvelous sounds. The Trinity is actually a sample-playback unit, but not only plays onboard ROM sounds, but has an option FlashROM kit and can read .WAV, AIFF files - and Akai files through its optional SCSI port.

Finally Korg put sampling back into their gear - the Triton is essentially a Trinity with additional features, onboard sampling, and the ability to save samples onto disk, which makes it credible enough for us to support.

The Triton is actually the main focus of Translator, but the Trinity is included because it can load the Triton sounds off SCSI, and save them in it's FlashROM. For the remainder of this article, both will be referred to as simply Triton.

Architecture Description
Generally, the main Instrument unit in a Korg is a Program. This can reference up to 4 RAM waves, or 4 KeyMaps (.kmp, see below) files, depending on the setup and velocity settings. More specifically, there are 2 "Oscillators" per Program. Combi's can hold up to 8 Programs.

As with the Roland XV-5080 (and less so the Kurzweil), the Triton is a synth and sampler combined into one - in other words, it can access sounds off internal ROM and samples loaded into it's RAM.

File Format
Both the Trinity and Triton store their files the same way, in DOS disk format that can be read by a computer. The main file in a Triton is a .pcg file, which stores some or all Combis, Programs, and other settings.

When loading a PCG, you have the option of loading also the same-named .ksc file too. This is the standard way of loading a whole instrument into the Triton.

Native Import Formats
.WAV, AIFF, and Akai S-1000 and S-3000 programs through it’s SCSI port. None of the program parameters are imported, and the Korg only creates the .ksc/.kmp/.ksf combination - it's up to you to create the .pcg, which can be difficult.

Korg also documents many of their file formats in the manual. That's cool! (For us... makes our job easier.)

Translation Comments
Translator uses a complex algorithm that figures out how the destination object should be translated. Since a Triton Program only can hold 4 (or sometimes less) layers of sound, Translator calculates whether it will fit in one Program (preferred), or if several Programs will have to be made and put together as one Combi. If the latter is the case, the Programs will be named "*[combi name] A", then "*[combi name] B", etc.

Some incoming formats can be so complex sometimes, it is completely possible to overwhelm the Triton's capacity, since Combi's can only reference 8 different Programs. This is can be scaled down by using Parameter Tolerance (see this article in Special Features).

Since the Triton has effects, a simple non-instrusive Reverb is automatically programmed in. Future versions of Translator may allow programming of effects, ability to program the translated settings, and translation of incoming objects that have effects attached to them.

Comments
The Korg's are nice pieces of gear. They sound great! We hope that they would improve the architecture in the future (better loading system, less restrictive sample structure) to really take advantage of their great internal voicing architecture.