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Yamaha - Wake-Up Call!!!!


mildbill

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I'm only bashing on Yamaha a little. :lol:

The economy is crappy, and putting out any board from any company is probably a bit risky in that sense.

It just seems a shame these fine technologies aren't being used in current boards. :(

 

But ya - I do think the bar has been raised, for that market. While I haven't seen the manual yet, I'm pretty sure Kronos won't ever be on my 'to get' list.

What I expect from a board isn't overly demanding, but it is pretty specific. None of the big 3 provide what I buy.

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I'm planning to upgrade my "main-rompler" at next summer, if I can afford to. ATM I have good ol' Motif 7 and it's good enough for my needs, but I think it's time to upgrade. Kurzweil PC3 is interesting but Kronos really amazed me. If I sell one of my kidneys or testicles I think I'm going to get one... UNLESS Yamaha comes up with something great before it. PC3(k) and Kronos are both waaaaay ahead of XF in this competition. If you don't need flash rom, XF is nothing special. Okay, I miss tap tempo on my Motif but it is'nt worth of almost 3000EUR. XF is just upgrade of upgrade of upgrade of original Motif. New EX-5/7-workstation would be awesome.

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IIRC Yam own a significant share of Korg, they therefore benefit from Korgs success. I get the feeling they are happy for Korg to be the leader in synthesis while they focus on the other stuff the do. I suspect they will never try to go much beyond sample playback...

 

The KRONOS is the 'OASYS plus' for the masses. No one comes close... Roland have taken a different approach and they have quite a few synth engines that sound good that they could bring together as one, but I doubt we will see that for a long time, they are barking up different trees and making lots more focused gear for specialists...

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IIRC Yam own a significant share of Korg, they therefore benefit from Korgs success. I get the feeling they are happy for Korg to be the leader in synthesis while they focus on the other stuff the do. I suspect they will never try to go much beyond sample playback...


 

 

Probably right about that. I've still got my EX5R, and a Motif ES rack with AN and DX plg boards. But the EX5 is way underpowered (it is pretty old, after all), and the plg boards are pretty clunky to use, and don't feel very well integrated at all.

Now that Korg is blazing the trail, I hope it'll embolden Yamaha a little to give it another try.

If they don't want to risk another hardware board, I think it'd be cool if they at least released a little of their technologies as softsynths.

 

(ducks). :lol:

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You've got FM, AN, VL, and FDSP developed and waiting to be integrated into a next gen boad???? Can you educated the uneducated, new to the party, what do these acronyms stand for a new technology board?? Introducted at NAMM? Ya mean my Yami S90 XS is obsolete allready?

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S90XS is a nice board, but compared to the leap Kronos made at the pricetag it is as obsolete as a brontosaurus. So is all the other stuff, so no need to get worried :thu:

 

I for sure aint getting rid of my PC3 anytime soon and I suspect that your S90XS will get you through years of gigs and earn a Kronos or two.

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You've got FM, AN, VL, and FDSP developed and waiting to be integrated into a next gen boad???? Can you educated the uneducated, new to the party, what do these acronyms stand for a new technology board?? Introducted at NAMM? Ya mean my Yami S90 XS is obsolete allready?

 

 

They're stuff that Yamaha has developed and used in boards in the past: FM = traditional FM synthesis, like used in the Yamaha DX7. AN = virtual analog, like used in the AN1X, AN200 and others. VL = physical modeling of things like string and wind instruments. I think you can still get the VL70m as a module.

FDSP is unique to the EX5 range and consists of fx applied at the note level, instead of the voice level.

They may have been introduced at namm shows in the past. :idk:

 

And no, your S90XS isn't obsolete, and won't be for as long as you use it. ;)

IMO - if it still works, it's not obsolete.

Things only get overshadowed, or surpassed by new developments. All that really matters for boards, is that you like and use something for what it does.

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Wikipedia says that Korg bought back most of Yamaha's investment in them back in '93, so Yamaha has little or no financial benefit from Korg.

 

 

Thanks for the info... the vibe I get is that Korg and Yamaha have closer links (or did have in the past) but Roland is more of a direct competitor.. I could be wrong ;-)

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Thanks for the education on the acronyms. So if Yamaha had developed or worked on these technologies I guess they did not deem them worthwhile at the time or like many innovations had not fully developed them as others that followed. This has happened many times with various technology leaps.

 

I'm just glad I came back and dumped Roland at this point happy with my S90, see my recent posting. Surprised no Roland fans are slammin me, maybe I should keep my head down!

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Well, FM was fully developed by Yamaha for sure. I don't think you could keep track of all the Yamaha FM stuff.

Other manufacturers have been doing it for quite a while too now though.

 

Yamaha's AN system is nice and was used in several products -AN1X, AN 200, PLG-AN, EX5, and so on.

 

The only real competition for Yamaha's VL system when it came out was the Korg Z1. Physical modeling mainly seems to have gone softsynth till the Kronos came out.

 

FDSP was pretty cool, and I think unique. Of those 4, I think it's the one that could have been developed quite a bit further.

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I'm only bashing on Yamaha a
little
.
:lol:
The economy is crappy, and putting out
any
board from any company is probably a bit risky in that sense.

I want to digress on this because I have read multiple times here that the economy is crappy. I don't disagree that the economy is crappy, but I think we are poised at the start of recovery and the time for working and introducing new technology and products is now and possibly even past slightly if you want to get in early on things.

 

The job market in the USA is crappy, but growth has supposedly started to happen already. Conservative (fiscally) companies like the one for which I work prepared for and felt the blast of the recession first, but also our diversification, excellent balance sheet, worldwide customer base, placement in key industries receiving funds from world governments for economic recovery, etc. have made us one of the first to bounce back. The time for buying 3M stock at a low in order to take advantage of a future recovery is long gone. We *raised* the dividend per share 3% all the way back in Feb 2010. Much of the rest of the stock market has recovered or is trending towards its pre-recession level as well. Looking around my lab and the company in general there have been many new hires as permanent employees and also a pretty large wave of contract engineer employees. Our lab recently pushed three new technologies out to an operating division to go into product introduction phase, along with all the people on the projects (about 15) and rehired new people to fill their shoes but in many cases working on totally new stuff. The net is a gain in number of employees at the company. Also I subscribe to our internal job opening service and there are many every week - like order ten or more technical jobs - so internal mobility for technical employees is back way up again too. The wave of contract employees is a new and disturbing trend, but at least these highly educated people have good and high-paying jobs and a foot in the door. My big question is why do I have the impression that other big companies in the market, e.g. the Dow Jones Industrial companies, are doing okay and in many cases very profitable but are not hiring people and/or rebuilding their base and/or passing profits along to shareholders? Where is the money going? Executives? Bankers? Foreign investors?

 

Anyway I feel very, very fortunate to be able to work for such a good company. Others are not so lucky.

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I agree. From this point forward, a rompler isn't good enough. THANK YOU Korg! Yamaha has been hording it's technologies for years. Same for Roland! Maybe now this will give them some incentive to stop milking it and put all their tech in one board. I'm sure Yamaha is cooking up SOMETHING, it's Obvious the XF is a transitional board.

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Well a simple comment on the economy. Gribs you sound like one of the economists or obama trying to present an unconvincing positive spin on the economy. When your out there looking from the outside in and trying to find a job you know otherwise. I am not sure I am even a statistic anymore but have found part time jobs that pay two peanuts and a fish head. Lets see will my powerboat get me over to China?

 

As to the main discussion here. I think keyboard manufacturers are of course motivated by money, yes if they were smart then they would invest in technology now to reap the rewards when the economy does come back but in reality when people aren't buying then they have to no doubt cut corners on R&D and technolgy research. As Jessie Ventura says it all comes down to money or follow the money trail!

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