If one product was responsible for toppling the monopoly held by the DX7 and D50 during the early eighties, it was the legendary Korg M1 and its successsors.

With a tiny (by today's standards) ROM of just 4MB, Korg squeezed a fantastic (for the time) range of sounds in there which, combined with COMBIS, drum programs, a multitrack sequencer and built in multi-FX meant we had the first hardware DAW - a self contained music keyboard which could be used stand alone to make complete pieces of music - a glimpse of the future.

And indeed it was because pretty much every keyboard 'workstation' since owes much to the Korg M1, we simply have more ROM, more voices, more outputs, more facilities, more functions, more effects, bigger screens but also with a hook up to Mac/PC editors for programming and sound library management, etc.. But break all that down and they all owe their design and architecture to the M1 in one way or another and few manufacturers have strayed far from that winning formula.

The M1 was - rightly - a massive success and Korg sold a massive amount. It's hard to say how many exactly as much of it is wrapped up in urban myth but a common estimate is in excess of 100,000. This might not seem a lot but when you consider that most manufacturers are happy if a product sells 10,000 units, it puts the figure into some perspective!

On the subject of urban myths, another is that Korg were after a successor and someone at Korg proposed the M10 but at R+D's product planning meeting, it is said that the head of product plannng saw the cover of the proposal from the other side of the desk upside down. Hence, allegedly, the OIW was born! How true this is will probably never be known however!

What is known is that these products made some great sounds which have inspired thousands of musicians across the world.

The Hollow Sun M/01 Collection has a broad collection of (mostly) stereo sounds from the classic M1 and 01 series of synths and workstations and their various modular offshoots.

Each sound has been extensively multi-sampled and seamlessly looped (where appropriate) and most of the samples are long and detailed to capture the lush, rich character that these Korg masterpieces are known for.

The M/01 collection includes a wide range of pads, strings, electric pianos, atmospheres and layers sampled with effects to enhance the broad stereo image. Some of them may be 20 years old but they still sound as good today as they ever did.

The M/01 comes with a fully scripted panel that brings useful functionality for quick tweaking.

The CONTROL PANEL gives access to level and three fixed formant filters for a broad range of tone control plus an amplitude envelope ADSR to shape the sound.

The EFFECTS section provides a phase shifter, chorus, delay and reverb in series to build complex multi-FX chains to augment the already rich sounds.

The MASTER section allows you to tailor the overall response of the instrument to your personal preferences with variable velocity curves, tuning, transpose and pitch bend ranges.

NOTE : It will work with the Kontakt Player but only in 'demo' mode and the session will be time limited.