Yamaha Motif XS, XF as a synth?

[tangerine]

How good is Motif XS, XF as a synthesizer?

 

What about the filter quality against Virus and Nord Lead synths? warm, cold, hard compared?

 

The filters in a synth is most important for the character in my opinion.

 

I have tried the ES and XS but it is quite hard to get the sound quality of the filter just testing for a few hours.

 

It sounds really good when going through the presets but not as good as Virus or Nord.

 

It may be the sound designer at Yamaha is not really good to make deep programming or that they are told just to make simple bread and butter presets.

 

The dance, Trance presets does not sound that good in my ears.

 

I have listened to many Youtube clips, almost all sound banks, but I have not heard that FAT sounding Bass, plucks or stabs that I hear on trance records.

 

Is it possible to make good synth stabs, plucks, trance pads, bass on a Motif XS?

 

Hope you can help me out with my questions?

[AJP]

Well, I went from a Motif 7 "Classic" to the XS7 about a year ago, after having owned a workstation from each of the "big 3" (Roland, Korg, Yamaha) over the years. While I can't speak that intelligently to dance and trance presets -- becuase that stuff's just not my bag -- I will say that I think the Motif line is in my opinion, hands down, the best of the bunch for analog sound character emulation. Its filter is warm to me, I've never heard any audible stepping, and I was able to do some really cool authentic stuff with it in an 80s cover band (think the sweeping stuff in the middle break of "Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring). And the analog waveforms are of outstanding quality.

 

I'd recommend checking out motifator.com for their sound libraries, some of which I'm sure address dance/trance/techno... the classic keys set I bought from them is stellar.

 

On a side note, Yamaha's CS6X synth (came out in '99) I believe, was marketed as THE trance/dance synth. Going for about $500 these days, I think.

[kpatz]

The XF/XS is probably one of the best romplers for doing analog synth sounds out there. The waveforms are excellent and the synth architecture is flexible. The filters are warm, but there is a certain "color" to them (especially in the resonance) that gives the patches a certain "sameness" to them. But then that's true for a lot of synths.

[asynchro_nous]

 

It sounds really good when going through the presets but not as good as Virus or Nord. It may be the sound designer at Yamaha is not really good to make deep programming or that they are told just to make simple bread and butter presets.

 

 

Like all keyboards in the "workstation" category the presets are very basically programmed -- with the XS/XF there's an enormous amount of further programming you can do to give sounds more depth and dimension, but you really wouldn't know it from listening to most of the presets.

[mcmurray]

 

The XF/XS is probably one of the best romplers for doing analog synth sounds out there. The waveforms are excellent and the synth architecture is flexible. The filters are warm, but there is a certain "color" to them (especially in the resonance) that gives the patches a certain "sameness" to them. But then that's true for a lot of synths.

 

 

Excuse my complete ignorance, but how do you get the XS to do analogue synth sounds? Are you referring to presets only? Or actual synthesis from raw waveforms?

 

Can the latter even be done on the XS? This is one area that I really don't know anything about.

[Thorhead]

Well it has some samples.

 

The engine is quite limited, I do probably give it worst rating of the workstations myself, but I have only played one a little bit, so I maybe wrong.

 

Still, for what I know, it is good rompler, but crappy synth.

 

And I am like 100% sure that it indeed has only samples, no synth engine for osc.

[evildragon]

Still, for what I know, it is good rompler, but crappy synth.

 

This.

 

 

All Motifs come off very sterile sounding to my ears.

 

 

Here's a very informative blogpost: http://pc3nerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-pc3.html

[Conbrio]

I wasn't overwhelmed with the Motif XS at first, but after spending time programming it, I discovered it can do a decent job emulating analog synthesizers. Check out some YouTube videos and you'll see what various owners have come up with.

 

It's not the best workstation out there for this type of application though. The Motif does a much better job emulating acoustic instruments.

[Meatball Fulton]

I own both the Motif ES and XF.

 

I owned a Virus Snow and no, the Motifs do not sound as fat as a Virus. They do hold their own against other digital synths, both sample based and VA. The filters are excellent but not Moog-thick.

 

The real weakness in the synth engine is common to most sample-based synths, oscillator modulations are limited. No PWM, ring mod, hard sync, FM/crossmod. The workaround is factory (or your own) samples created with those techniques. Layering techniques can fatten patches up at the cost of polyphony.

 

There is no modulation matrix, the EGs and LFOs can only modulate pitch, filter cutoff (but not resonance) and the amp stage. You can route external audio through the FX processor but not the synth engine.

 

Real time control options are good. The XS and XF have eight knobs which have three functions each. One function controls basic synth functions: filter cutoff and resonance, ADSR of the amp stage and two per patch user assignable knobs (the other two functions control the arpeggiator and effects/EQ). In addition to the mod wheel (assigned per patch) there is a ribbon controller (assigned per patch) and two globally assignable expression pedal inputs. There are two "assignable function" switches you can program to provide up to four variations on a patch for instant recall.

 

The best analog synth emulations I have heard on the Motif used third-party samples of real analog synth VCOs. The engine has more than enough features for the usual vintage sounds but falls short compared to synths like the Virus and Evolver that have extensive mod routings.

 

As far as dance/trance sounds, check out the libraries at easysounds. These sound much better than the factory presets to my ears. Then again, I'm not into trance so maybe I'm just easily impressed :poke:

[NuSkoolTone]

Even though I know how to program, I haven't had to much with the XS because there's so many presets I can find one pretty close to what I want and then just do a few tweaks. I do lots of covers of modern dance music, and the XS cops ALL those sounds EASILY! To the point I almost wonder if they're using an XS to record this stuff. I'd say the XS does sort of a "Hi-Fi Analog" sound. It never sounds blurry and cloudy. It's got a ton of waveforms, and I can get just about any sound I can think of. There's LOTS of flexibility in the engine. My ONLY complaint from a programming point of view is it doesn't do True Hard Sync for Oscillators. Samples of it just isn't the same!