My NS5R on my desk the day I got it
The NS5R (and its sibling the NX5R) is KORG’s only half-rack rompler dedicated to General MIDI playback. But it is so much more than a General MIDI module.
I purchased one in late 2025 as my first hardware synth. It works perfectly, except for a bit of sketchiness from one of the output jacks, and one broken backlight LED (meaning it glows a scary red rather than orange, and cannot become green). Setting it up to work via MIDI on Linux is painless, as long as I don’t care too much about using any of the Windows tools it’s supposed to come with.
A screenshot of the plugin
In my pursuit of finding a comfortable workflow using this thing, I wrote my own CLAP plugin to make perusing its presets, as well as a few other things, easier. You can find it and its source code here.
Truthfully, it was not that hard to write. Only took…a week.
Below are several demos featuring the NS5R by itself, using its multichannel MIDI mode, with only some loudness normalization and mild compression+limiting applied. You can use these to judge the sound for yourself, if you’re considering buying one. It’s worth noting most of these are not GM, GS, or XG compatible. They use presets from all sorts of banks, and even some custom patches. The entries are in chronological order.
Not So Lively Town
Composition by CHUNSOFT from Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon. Arrangement by DaforLynx.
A simple and quick bossa nova-ish arrangement of Lively Town.
Five Ring Mountain
Composition and arrangement by DaforLynx.
A theme to accompany a mountain-delving adventure. It uses a custom horn patch that I unfortunately accidentally overwrote later on.
To a Distant Place
Composition and arrangement by Akira Kaida & Yoshino Aoki from Breath of Fire III.
A MIDI rip of the second map theme from BoF3 courtesy of the VGMTrans software. Some volume adjustment was needed, and I didn’t quite get the release editing on the flute right. Worth noting that this one uses entirely the GM bank.
Route 203
Composition and arrangement by Go Ichinose from Pokémon Diamond & Pearl.
For this one, I really tested a lot of presets to get the right sound. I also used a custom drumset which tries to accurately reproduce the one from the game. I’ll say it gets dang close.
Central City
Composition and arrangement by DaforLynx.
A swingy big band theme for a bustling city. Quite proud of this one, but it exposes some potential timing issues with the unit. It’s odd they were never apparent before, and I’m not convinced they exist outside of my imagination.