PowerGrand Demo (Yamaha Motif Rack) recorded with a Yamaha Motif ES6 and dealing with bad cables

[Analog & Digital]

The MP3 at the link is a demo of the Yamaha Motif ES and Yamaha Motif Rack. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0f4r0ihhhwyznjs/PowerGrand.mp3

I used an inexpensive cable and ran from the headphone jack on my Motif Rack and used the "PowerGrand" piano patch. I ran in stereo with all effects off into my Motif ES6 and recorded it to
show the sample quality of the Motif ES and the quality of the PowerGrand patch in the Motif Rack. 

Each newer Motif's piano got better and better. I think this patch still sounds really good and it was from the first Motif which was released in 2001.

Bear with my playing....I was playing a cheap 61 key keyboard to record it and I'm more used to theweighted keys of my Yamaha P-70 piano right now, and I recorded it on my first try.

I then ran out of the headphone jack on my Motif ES into my Sony CD recorder and that's all the gearI used.

With the Motif ES, you have 16 tracks and each can record MIDI or sample depending on your needs.  The Sony is more to master all the tracks at once (although I just used one track for this). The Motif ES can take up to 1 GB of RAM for sampling or loading voice libraries with sample data.  I think the manual says it takes up to 512 MB but it can take 1 GB.

I noticed this MP3 played on my computer sounded slightly "bubbly" but when I played the same MP3 through our stereo on a DVD player that can play MP3's, it was perfect. I've noticed that when I play MP3's through browsers on this computer, they sound bubbly too.

The sample data in the Motif ES disappears and needs to be re-loaded when you turn it off.  You mustrecord in "sample + note" mode which records a silent note to trigger the sample when you play it back.

When I play the MP3 using Windows Media Player instead of Winamp, it sounds perfect on my computer.

Listening to this with headphones, I realize I that the "inexpensive" cables add a ton of hum (poor shielding). I'm going to buy the best cables of the same type that I can as the inexpensive cables were the weakness to making a really high quality recording. It's not any fault of the equipment.

Monster cables are way too expensive (some of their cables are over $200 !!!) and Hosatech are high quality cables for not much more than the cheap cables.

The cables I bought today are exactly what you need to run from the headphone jack of any synthesizer into the Motif ES and also what you need to master all the tracks at once to an external CD recorder.

I use a Sony CD recorder, model Sony RCD-W500C. They try to make money off you with this CD recorder by forcing you to record on the more expensive

[Ghostpaw]

I listened and you are right. The buzz in your recording is terrible. I'm not sure what you are looking for. Are you asking for advice on getting a better recording? I'd start with not using the signal from the headphone jack. Your source, the MOTIF rack has better options in the back for output.

[Analog & Digital]

I think it was a really bad cable.