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Summer NAMM next week

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 12:57 am
by RKfan
I've been hearing rumours.....

Why have Yamaha got such a big booth in Nashville?

Might be nothing (unless its really really cool).

Re: Summer NAMM next week

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:20 am
by jeebustrain
RKfan wrote:I've been hearing rumours.....

Why have Yamaha got such a big booth in Nashville?

Might be nothing (unless its really really cool).
For the Motif XF2 of course! Same thing as before except a neat new color (pink) and glow in the dark keys!

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:24 am
by Sharp
Why have Yamaha got such a big booth in Nashville?
Image

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:40 am
by AnthonyB
Yamaha recycle et al,

However consider:

Roland Fantom, Fantom X, Fantom G, Fantom XR

Korg: Triton Classic, Triton Studio, Triton Rack, Triton Extreme, pa1X pa2X pa3X.....

All parties Guilty?

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:55 am
by Sharp
All parties Guilty?
Not quite even remotely in the same light in my opinion.

Yamaha have milked, beaten, whipped, abused, and recycled AWM2 more times than I care to even bother complimenting at this stage.

How old is this technology at this stage. Must be in around 17 years ?

Regards
Sharp

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 3:25 am
by Chriskk
Yamaha have milked, beaten, whipped, abused, and recycled AWM2 more times than I care to even bother complimenting at this stage.
Yamaha could have created a new acronym in every 4 years but they didn't (Maybe their marketing guys are not too creative).

AI --> AI2 --> ACCESS --> HI --> EDS --> HD1

What are the major differences except that the AI & AI2 didn't even have resonant filters?

Let's face it. When Kurzweil invented the VAST in 1991, the advancement of sample play back synthesis was over.

I don't see anything wrong with using an old technology. The piano still sounds like the king of musical instrument and the (primitive) analog subtractive synthesis still sounds fabulous. Tony Banks recorded a lot of classic Genesis solos with an ARP Pro soloist, which was deemed inferior to other synths at that time. However, Tony's solos still sound breathtaking. What matters is how one uses an instrument.

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 10:40 am
by michelkeijzers
Chriskk wrote: AI --> AI2 --> ACCESS --> HI --> EDS --> HD1
I mostly agree but the difference between Motif XS and XF is just some more wave memory (which needs no OS change at all from architectural view and the use of Flash memory which is an improvement but if you compare all the changes with the Oasys and Kronos it's quite a lot and even both have HD1.

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 1:39 pm
by Synthoid
Summer NAMM is usually a snooze.

:D

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:03 pm
by FGTH
Yamaha was, back in 97 on the right path. With the EX5 workstation(mine is still a workhorse), that had 4 synth engines + sampler. But they decided to scale down to do the Motif and sell optional boards up until the Motif ES(to me the last great Motif). Right there they lost the edge...

I think they will come back with something great in the future. It will be interesting to see. With Kronos, Korg raised the level very high. Even Roland has some serious "catch up" to do. :shock:

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:20 pm
by BasariStudios
AnthonyB wrote:Yamaha recycle et al,

However consider:

Roland Fantom, Fantom X, Fantom G, Fantom XR

Korg: Triton Classic, Triton Studio, Triton Rack, Triton Extreme, pa1X pa2X pa3X.....

All parties Guilty?
Are you Nutz?

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 2:44 pm
by jerrythek
At Summer NAMM Yamaha takes a space and brings products from all their divisions, not just keyboards. So it is a tight room filled with all sorts of keyboards, guitars, drums, brass instruments... and so on.

Surprisingly they don't bring any motorcycles or jet skis, though...

:?:

Jerry

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 3:19 pm
by robinkle
A new Yamaha FM monster, Yes please.

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 3:22 pm
by sani
Chriskk wrote:
Yamaha have milked, beaten, whipped, abused, and recycled AWM2 more times than I care to even bother complimenting at this stage.
Yamaha could have created a new acronym in every 4 years but they didn't (Maybe their marketing guys are not too creative).

AI --> AI2 --> ACCESS --> HI --> EDS --> HD1

What are the major differences except that the AI & AI2 didn't even have resonant filters?
This nails it absolutely.
I'm wondering how Sharp still insist on those meaningless acronyms (saying that because a couple of years ago we had the same discussion).
Fact is that Yamaha didn't change the name and Korg does it with almost every new workstation model. What's behind is the same basic structure from the M1 which is expanded with new features and possibilities thru the years up to the Kronos. I don't mean it in a bad way, and it absolutely doesn't mean that a Kronos is a M1 with a few new parameters. It's just that nobody seriously cares how a company calls their sample based synthesis method. What counts is how it sounds and what you can do with the sound in that synthesis. And there I don't see Yamaha lagging behind. Korg excels in one aspect while Yamaha does in another one. At the end they are somewhere equal.

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:07 pm
by Kontrol49
AnthonyB wrote: Korg: Triton Classic, Triton Studio, Triton Rack, Triton Extreme, pa1X pa2X pa3X.....
All parties Guilty?
Hey don't forget,thing like Trinity-Oasys-Radias-M3-Kronos to that list..

I bet you could do a family tree diagram for pretty much every Rompler made,with side chains to other synths(in the case of Korg-Z1/Prophecy/Mossboard/Radias/Electribes as well from the same brand and how they descend

In the workstation sense probably from a very similar PCM with crossover points from every manufacturer and every generation of Rompler,all that seems to change is the Quality of the samples and the names they give the synthesis,if anything it seems the polyphony and Effects block that seem to be enhanced with every generation.

And Roland can perhaps go back even further than Korg,Fantom G has so many D50 presets its unreal....

All parties are guilty of it....

no matter what your brand preference is,most of us who have been brand loyal with a synth maker buying workstations at each generation have essentially been buying the same machine over and over again.

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2011 5:22 pm
by sani
Kontrol49 wrote: And Roland can perhaps go back even further than Korg,Fantom G has so many D50 presets its unreal....
Let's differentiate between synthesis (minus samples) and some popular patches/presets which the company puts in due to a popular demand.
I think that Roland didn't change a lot since the XP series (1995). You'll find the same structure in the Fantom G. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Not so far ago, on a Korg keyboard (until the M3) you couldn't create such a simple patch/program as the famous and so often used piano&string patch, if the piano was stereo (using stereo samples), because you had to use both oscilators to drive the left/right samples. And it was impossible to add a string part to it. Using a combination was the only way.
Further, I don't know if something changed on the Kronos, but on the M3 (and the models before) you can't create a simple crossfade between two oscilators and change between them with a continuous controller. Having a program for an acoustic instrument and wanting to crossfade between different articulation samples requires some heavy workaround. So, those fancy acronyms mean absolutely nothing to me personally. Saying that Yamaha recycle, abuses the "old" AWM2 synthesis is IMO a complete nonsense. The majority of us would certainly agree that Yamaha really knows how to create good sounding patches, especially acoustic ones. That's what matters. Korg struggled for more than twenty years with their piano patch (up to the Kronos), and none of the 6 or 7 different engines could change a single bit about that fact. People raved about the 1-4 Mb piano patch on a Kurzweil and Korg needed to use 4,5 Gb of nonlooped samples until the crowd get finally pleased with the sound. Does it matter how the synthesis is called? Go figure.

And as somebody mentioned, the Kurzweil synthesis is probably one of the oldest ones, it is VAST and even that one on the K2600 (somewhere from 1998) is lightyears ahead compared to any current Yamaha/Roland/Korg workstation synthesis method.