New Yamaha Motif XF

[zzzxtreme]

Xpanded Articulation(motif XS)/Super Articulation(Tyros) is an innovation itself. They came up with new CP pianos which combines samples and modeling. It'll be interesting to see if they could come up with a real XS successor (not XF) which combines XA, VL and some other modeling. (I'm sure it will at least have piano modeling like CP1). realistic solo strings, woodwinds, guitar. I can dream.......

[goldphinga]

They can come up with as many new technologies as they want but its all about the sounds and my exp with yammy boards of late has been totally underwhelming..:poke:

[Gaul]

The funny thing is that the picture of XF is actually a screen capture. You can see a little circle with "plus" sign in it above second and third octave, which draws me to conclusion that:

 

- someone from those that got early information...

- ...did screen capture in hurry...

- ... and posted in without consent from Yamaha (cause they will not let the picture have that "plus" sign).

 

Or I am wrong again somewhere.

[Bernard]

The funny thing is that the picture of XF is actually a screen capture. You can see a little circle with "plus" sign in it above second and third octave, which draws me to conclusion that: - someone from those that got early information... - ...did screen capture in hurry... - ... and posted in without consent from Yamaha (cause they will not let the picture have that "plus" sign). Or I am wrong again somewhere.

 

I did notice that before and also spotted the symbol on the motifvator web page...

 

All very strange

[evildragon]

Xpanded Articulation(motif XS)/Super Articulation(Tyros) is an innovation itself.

 

How is simple keyswitching with (supposedly) a little bit of internal scripting an innovation? Software samples did it way before.

[xanderbeanz]

yeah, things like having sampled runs/portamentos triggered by holding down more than one key is old stuff, early kontakt/gigasampler patches had stuff like that in.

 

the big 3 charge so much for their (max) 256meg sample roms in a box, where software can give you so much more. i guess the positive thing is that adding flash memory is gonna start to devalue manufacturer's samples (coz you can easily put your own in and have them available with no extra loading times) so they're gonna have to actually raise their game in the coming years else they're gonna be swallowed up by software competition.this may lead to some more exciting products!

[NuSkoolTone]

Since it appears Largely to be an XS, perhaps there will be an opportunity to do an upgrade? One can dream! Even so, if the only change is the addition of Flash ROM (Which I doubt) this makes me VERY happy for a few reasons:

 

1.) It will keep my board relevant on the used market.

 

2.) It will extend support for the OS of the current machine, giving more possibility to new features via software.

 

3.) Being that my board isn't even 2 years old (I waited) I'm not ready to go through another upgrade cycle.

[ChristianRock]

 

http://www.alesis.com/fusion6hd "....Save and load programs off of a hard disk (or the removable Compact Flash memory);...." EDIT: the memory expansion was described as flash memory - thus the expense. I never installed extra memory in my Fusion, so I'm just going by hearsay.

 

 

No, it's not talking about the extra memory. The Fusion does have a CF card input at the back. That's how I upgraded my OS to the latest version. But I haven't used it to save programs, I've always used the hard drive. Still, it had flash memory to use for samples and presets.

[NickD101]

 

the big 3 charge so much for their (max) 256meg sample roms in a box, where software can give you so much more. i guess the positive thing is that adding flash memory is gonna start to devalue manufacturer's samples (coz you can easily put your own in and have them available with no extra loading times) so they're gonna have to actually raise their game in the coming years else they're gonna be swallowed up by software competition.this may lead to some more exciting products!

 

 

That's an interesting point... you could imagine that if there's a big enough market for it (Motif XF owners, PC3K etc), then there'll be lots of cheap, good third party samples set up for easy loading (i.e. programmed already).

 

Then what's to stop someone else launching a cheap master keyboard with no built-in sounds but flash memory, that will load all these third-party sounds but be much cheaper than a Motif XF or whatever?

[Meatball Fulton]

If they didn't do any improvements to the thing other than flash memory, then it's even more disappointing than I thought!

 

If it means all samples stay on board when powered down, that is a very significant upgrade.

 

As an ES owner I'll say right now slow sample loads are my #1 problem. I currently use about 128MB of samples in my user patches and I have to wait over five minutes for them to load when I power up! If fill up all 512MB, it takes 45 minutes to load Being able to use lots of sample-based voices is a huge incentive for me

[evildragon]

And how much more $$$ are you willing to pay for that incentive? :/

[Meatball Fulton]

 

And how much more $$$ are you willing to pay for that incentive? :/

 

 

Assuming it comes in around $2500 and it will load ES files, I can get about $1000 for my ES, I have other gear I could dump to raise another $800 then I'm in for about $700 which seems reasonable to me.

 

I wasn't at all interested in spending that kind of money to go from ES to XS, even with the recent price reductions. The real alternative for an upgrade is to abandon hardware altogether :poke:

 

BTW, there are two new third party "sample librarian" software packages for the Motif XS announced this week that significantly improve dealing with sampled-based voices in patch banks. I had been curious about their announcement dates being so close together, now I know why!

 

Still if they announce next week, then how long before it's actually in stores to check out, etc. I can't imagine pulling the trigger until the end of the year.

[piano39]

 

If it means all samples stay on board when powered down, that is a very significant upgrade. As an ES owner I'll say right now slow sample loads are my #1 problem. I currently use about 128MB of samples in my user patches and I have to wait over five minutes for them to load when I power up! If fill up all 512MB, it takes 45 minutes to load Being able to use lots of sample-based voices is a huge incentive for me

 

 

Meatball- wow- that's a long time. Do you have the 1.08 version of the OS installed? I just got my ES a few months ago and have been blown away by the sounds, etc on this thing. I have a lot of soft synths, but I have hardly touched them since I got the ES. Very top end instrument.

 

BTW, although it is not advertised, you can load 1GB of memory in the ES. I did this and it works fine. I haven't developed enough samples, though, to use anywhere near this. Maybe if you max out to the 1GB memory, you can enjoy a 90 minute load time (ha ha).

[Miket156]

The XF is primarily targeted to ES owners. A lot of us, including me, have not pulled the trigger on an XS. There are certainly improvements over the ES, but not enough for me to spend the money to get the XS generation. Its logical that Yamaha is trying to entice ES owners to retire or sell off their ES and buy another NEW Yamaha KB.

 

 

Mike T.

[Bernard]

If it means all samples stay on board when powered down, that is a very significant upgrade. As an ES owner I'll say right now slow sample loads are my #1 problem. I currently use about 128MB of samples in my user patches and I have to wait over five minutes for them to load when I power up! If fill up all 512MB, it takes 45 minutes to load Being able to use lots of sample-based voices is a huge incentive for me

 

slow

 

I guess this is all part of the quick as a flash slogan on the new board to woo you

[Meatball Fulton]

Meatball- wow- that's a long time. Do you have the 1.08 version of the OS installed?

 

The OS updates don't help the load time, it's the nature of the USB 1.1 interface. The XS has USB 2 and loads about 4x faster, which is better but still a long time if you use 2GB RAM. A workaround for home use is to never shut it off At gigs (where getting suddenly unplugged is pretty common) slow loads are a disaster.

 

It's not just the Motif...most workstations lose sample memory when powered down. Yamaha just lets you stuff in way more RAM. As long as you don't actually use much of it you're OK

[Miket156]

As Meatball Fulton has posted, the slow load times on the ES has always been its nemesis. Primarily its the fault of USB 1.0 as what was available at the time. The OS could address 1GB of sample memory, but if you think about it, Yamaha was saying the max was 512MB, obviously aware of how long that would take to load with USB 1.0.

 

I spent quite a bit of time reviewing sounds in Yamaha's library that were not resident in the ROM of the ES. After takiing all the sounds I would have like to have loaded into memory, saving them, and reloading them, it was obvious that I would have to pick out the sounds I HAD to have and get rid of the others that would have been a nice option but wasn't practical to load before a gig.

 

Yamaha incorporated USB 1.1 on the XS series which helped, but if incorporating flash memory makes load times much quicker, its worth taking a lot at. One thing for sure, the natives are restless and a lot of players are talking about the new rendition of Motif. Monday is not too far off.

 

Cheers,

 

 

Mike T.

[Bernard]

OK Korg M3 has a non user serviceable (except for McHale) flash inside.

 

The M50 has flash but not for adding waves

 

I am not aware of any keyboard that actually have it's primary wave ROM actually stored in Flash (user changeable).

 

My Roland sampler came with waves on a flash card but that not the same.

 

What I suspect Yamaha will do is allow user to download complete patches (including wave data) from the Internet.

 

They have a portal so it is a logical progression.

 

No reason why they don't stuff some waves on ROM too in any case.

 

The interesting things will be if polyphony has been improved.

 

Sequencer improved.

 

Patch tweaking etc.

 

Obviously a speed improvement on loading will help.

 

If they can integrate VA into the flash as a program to run in the synth that would be cool too.

 

If they make it that open that could be part of the future proof hints.

 

If they did open it to any 3rd party that would be cool but I suspect it will be like the korg flash in a special code with basic lossless compression. Samples can still be saved as normal on the same card.

 

But wait,,, whats that pic of a red PCB with four chips.... Could it be a return of expansion board or is that how the flash will come

 

Lets hold our breath and see what happens next

 

[VanZea]

The Yamaha EX5 had the possibility to install up to 16 mb of flash memory to store your own samples.

[Megakazbek]

 

I am not aware of any keyboard that actually have it's primary wave ROM actually stored in Flash (user changeable).

 

Nords!

[ChristianRock]

Doesn't the M3 have the ROM also in Flash?

[Meatball Fulton]

Addendum: I did a look around the netz and found a statistic that claimed the Fantom X (not G) took 25 minutes to load 500MB of samples. Compared to the Motif ES, that's 2x as fast as using USB and on par using Smart Media (though that is limited to 128MB per card)...but still a real long time. Anyone got statistics for load times on Tritons, M3, Kurzweil, MPCs, etc.?

 

Miket156's comment about being forced to choose which samples to load rather than just loading all the ones you want is the exact issue I've been dealing with for 5 years. Let me put it this way: I'm spoiled in the sense that not that long ago sampler memories were measured in tens of MB.

 

Once you've heard samples where there's one per key so no stretching or short loops needed...for instance I have a library of mellotron samples with the full 7 second tape loop for each of the 35 keys and it sounds amazing but it's huge. Do the math: for each sound that's about 4 minutes sample time, I have five sounds (violin, cello, choir, flute, brass) so that's roughly 20 minutes/128 MB of samples and it takes about five minutes to load up. But the payoff is it does sound like a mellotron with each note different and sustaining any key for seven seconds you hear the sound slowly vary.

 

I also have some vintage analog patches that use actual Moog and Jup8 osc samples...that's another 128MB but boy do they sound sweet. I've been looking into the same developer's B3 library that comes with another 128MB of samples (every drawbar and key click sampled for 61 keys).

 

To have all those sounds available after I power on means I'd have to wait about half an hour to start playing

 

What the hell do other workstation users do about sample loads? How did anyone put up with loading back in the floppy days?

 

Sorry if this is starting to rathole

[Bernard]

Doesn't the M3 have the ROM also in Flash?

 

''ROM also in Flash ''

 

It has a flash card, but it is a Korg service item. Unless your name is Mchale

 

Mchale will one day unsolder a rom chip on an old synth and replace it with Mchale flash

[Bernard]

Nords!

 

Which Nord please

[DmitryKo]

Well, flash memory looks intriguing. I suppose user programs (voices in Yamahaspeak) can use samples from the flash memory which should be preloaded from the external media, just like with RAM expansion on current Motifs.

 

I believe the current tone generator chip used in the Motif XS, designated SWP51 (see this blog post) can address up to 4 GB of memory, both RAM and ROM (ROM probably uses flash memory as well).

 

I don't think Yamaha needed to redesign the memory controller (hey tend to re-use the technology as long as possible), so they probably have 2 GBytes of address space reserved for both RAM modules and flash memory modules, since you need to install DIMM modules in pairs.

 

 

Hopefully Yamaha won't use proprietary flash ROM expansion and the flash storage would be internal, most preferably with all 2GB of address space dedicated to internal flash memory storage and there are no RAM expansion slots anymore. Flash ROM modules are so 1990s... for those who can remember it, E-mu E-IV, E-64/E6400/E-Synth, and E4 Ultra had 8 and 16 MByte flash ROM expansion module options sold at crazy prices (part numbers 6825 and 6826) - way before Kurzweil or Yamaha EX5. I don't think they were terribly popular at the time, simply because the E4 Ultra was quite fast with loading the samples from the internal hard disk.

 

 

BTW my friend still has a fully loaded E-mu E4XT Ultra rack in his setup alongside the Motif ES, and he uses the E4XT for all his sampling work, although he now uses some softsynths on his MacBook. E-mu has discontinued their hardware sampler line in 2002, but in many regard this board still can do things modern software is not capable of.

 

 

Overall, I don't think flash memory is a good replacement for fast disk access, which is where Motif line doesn't shine at all. I'd rather see Yamaha include internal SATA ports and an internal bay for a 2.5 inch hard disk or SSD drive, and improve loading speeds to say 100 Mbytes per second from the internal drive. This way you could have tens gibabytes of samples and load them as needed, just like you do on the PC and Mac.