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New Yamaha Motif XF


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Yamaha has kept the XF prices the same as the XS prices, NO PRICE INCREASE! I was expecting something of an increase and this one time I am very happy to have been WRONG.

Yamaha stated on Motifator.com that "off the shelf" memory is not fast enough so that's why their made their own flash memory boards. I don't think buyers would be getting over-charged either. Up to 2GB of flash memory on board at power up in addition to the ROM, which in itself is 4 times more than what came with my Motif ES8.

Impressive, very impressive. :thu:


Mike T.

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''An improved User Interface with many user requested features like Tap Tempo, Drum Editing in Mix Mode, and Auto Mapping of samples* plus a new customizable UI for selecting your choice of color and positioning of key displays.

*Will be available for Motif XF in a future OS update (V1.10).''



Also looks like the FAST FLASH is allowing it to run of directly, I wonder if there is any poly limits to sound held on those or they may have just got the fastest cards to ensure it works to the full capacity of the machine... One for small print readers of the manual...

:wave:

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All I had to hear was the electric guitar 5 seconds into the first sound demo to know that nothing has really changed sound wise. My Roland sound canvas from 1995 does a better electric...

 

Yamaha US admits they've had this keyboard "for months". It makes me chuckle when they came on here and so vehemently denied it's existence behind closed doors at recent trade shows, etc. ;)

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Must admit I'm pretty unexcited by this 'revision'.

 

Checked out the page on YamahaSynth. I know one should never go buy product demos but honestly - how did they make them sound so bad?!

 

I KNOW the sounds in this synth are great - I've been using an S90 for years and some of those sounds still blow me away - but I can't believe the demos for the XF - my Roland XP30 demos blow these out of the water sound-wise.

 

For all the $$ spent on producing and marketing a keyboard like this, one would think that they'd spend a few dollars getting some half-decent demos together.

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From what I can make of the cross platform compatibility, if you own an ES or XS and upgrade to the XF, you can load your existing sounds and store them in the new KB. Personally, I love a lot of the sounds in my ES8 and after playing the XS a few times I really like a lot of the sounds in that board too. I heard some additional good sounds in the demo posted on Keyboard Corner.

My ES8 has 175MB ROM, the XF has 4 times as much and with the additional (up too) 2GB of flash memory boards, that's more than enough of an upgrade just in terms of sounds to keep be occupied until I'm pushing daisies in the cemetery.

Maybe some of the folks on this website that don't care for Yamaha are dissing the XF, but the price did not go up on the new model and the players that buy it will be getting the top workstation on the market.

Flame away guys, but its a nice upgrade with a lot of features players have been asking for quite awhile.


Cheers,



Mike T.

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mildbill:

For me. expanded modulation is a biggie on a synth that you are going to use to program and play synthesizer things either on a studio recording or live gigs. The traditional Oberheims, Moog, Propehts, and more recent subtractive synths fall into that category. One of the things I really like about my Alesis ION is the great number of modulation options.

A rompler is kind of a different animal. The Motif is an all-in-one workstation, not a traditional subtractive synth. Different applications.

I can understand your need for a more capable Master Controller with all the rack modules you own.

I use my Motif ES8 as a stand alone mini recording studio instead of a computer, firewire, software AND keyboards in order to create backing tracks (which is what I use for gigs).

So the Motif line fits my needs very well, and the XF offers even more capability, in particular, a much larger palette of sounds. It would be nice to have more than 16 tracks to work with for my backing tracks at times. But I have managed to use them efficiently by using PC commands to switch sounds and CC for other functions. If I were a bit younger and had quite a bit more money I could see an XF in my future and possibly a laptop with sequencer software as the interface between the Motif and computers has become easier.



Cheers,


Mike T.

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Checked out the page on YamahaSynth. I know one should never go buy product demos but honestly - how did they make them sound so bad?!

They did this by letting you listen to them through crappy speakers/headphones :)

 

For something that is coming directly out of the synth's Main Out, IHMO Yamaha demos are nothing short of great, and have always been since the original Motif-Rack.

 

BTW, Yamaha has been making a point that they consciously do use live audio tracks and do not process the sound in a DAW so that the customers could hear what they can get right out of the synth.

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The sounds/playing in the demos are crap - hardly showcase what the keyboards are capable of.

For me, Yamaha has the best sounding product demos on the market. Could you please provide an example of what constitutes a good synth product demo in your opinion?

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''New Inspiration in a Flash Free Sample Library download
Yamaha will make an approximately 500 MB Inspiration in a Flash free download available at the release of the XF.

This library has been developed so that you can load the individual banks into the 128 MB RAM or the whole file into a Flash board.

Bank 1 is similar to the first bank of the XSpand Your world promotion with the S700 piano, brass, woodwind and vocal samples.

Bank 2 focuses on vintage keyboards and synths with samples from Easy Sounds Organ Sessions and Phat Analog as well as Voices and samples from DCP productions Vintage Keys and B

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Not so free sounding ;)

''New Sample Libraries from Third Party Developers

Yamaha has worked with sound developers from around the world to develop new libraries that are both XS and XF compatible. This is just a partial list of what to expect to be available very soon.

Sonic Reality

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In reply they said/added:

''The 500MB of wave data that will be available for free down load is more wave data than you have in the current Motif XS wave ROM (355). It is more than an original Motif (84MB) + a Motif ES (175). It is certainly more than you get in any competing workstation synthesizer. ''

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