I sold my Tyros 1 about 6 months ago in order to downgrade to something more portable, a PSR3000... It did mostly what the T1 could, but it was easier to move around and suited me fine. So, why am I now going back to a Tyros 2?

Having owned a Tyros 1, the Tyros 2 is more than a few new voices and styles. One of the big changes has been reintroduction of user sampling, this opens a new avenue and at least means I can add new sounds (and not just reshape the presets!). The Hard disk recorder is nice, but not a necessity. The SA voices obviously are a huge plus in terms of their sheer quality, and the life and dynamics of the styles incorporating them is another big plus. I also missed the live drums on the 3000, so having even better drums on T2 is another swing for me.
Support for USB devices is something else that persuaded me, having got used to it from PSR3000. I am also keen to have a better quality key action and improved organ sounds!
I'm sure there's a lot more, better control of registrations, vga output, better foot switch control of parameters, the list goes on!

Perhaps I'm just happy I sold my Tyros 1 when I did, as the marketplace is now swamped with them!

Simon


------------------
__________________________________________________________
SVPworld.com - Creative Multimedia & Music
incorporating PSRworld and Tyrosworld

forum.svpworld.com - No adverts, No spam, No nonsense!
share your music, get help and advice, make new friends! All platforms invited!!

Hi all,

This is an extremely important point.

To be brutally honest, I believe we SHOULD blame Yamaha
A few years ago, I was involved in the marketing of some new items for the Packaging Industry. My company invested, in todays values , the equivalent of perhaps a million dollars in new equipment. I urged the Owners to sell the newly-produced product at a low -low price and capture the market with our product and then adjust the prices. I remember saying "just as the Japanese do ". Unfortunately, the Owners decided to RAISE the prices and sell on "Quality????". Needless to say, nobody bought the product at the high prices and we lost a lot of money.
Take a look at what the Chinese are doing now. Most consumers buy those products imported from China because they are extremely competitively priced against all others, regardless of the 'supposed' inferiority in quality, which is not at all true!!!
So what happened to the Japanese Marketing strategy?
I believe that the quality of Yamaha products is just about the best nowadays and they should seriously consider kicking the competition into touch by REDUCING the prices NOW.
Anyone with any knowledge of Sales and Marketing out there to agree or disagree with my comments?
cheers


------------------
Eddie from Rotherham
Skype:eddiefromrotherham
www.yamahakeyboards.info

Hi Frank,
they were spread over a period of nearly 20 years, I really only had a couple of keyboards at a time the latest synth or samplers.
I never kept anything longer than 6 months
( except for my kn's).
Early 90's I helped out in a music store taking phone calls on midi/keyboard related problems backing up the keyboard salesman ( who was a guitarist not a keyboardist) and doing one on one tutorials on workstations, keyboards, etc. Boss wouldn't let me be a salesperson as a 40 year old mother didn't quite fit the young "ROCK" image of the store. ( haa haa).. Anyway, I couldn't complain. I was able to buy for just over cost , lost little on resale met some interesting musicians, beat sitting at home watching "the soapies".
Never became much of a musician, ( I think you really have to be born one??) but it was great being able to help musicians sort out their gear.
We take it a bit for granted nowadays, some workstations & top of the line keyboards can pretty much do the lot. Sequencing, sampling, loads polyphony, great sounds etc

Having been involved with synths prior to midi, and having gone thru the various stages, I suppose some of excitement has gone out of it for me. Computers & software arrangers is a bit of a new challenge, but maybe I'm just past it. haa haa.

best wishes
Rikki

The Tyros 3 will have more than a half-gigabyte of sound ROM (maybe compressed to something smaller). Included among the new sounds will be the biggest piano sample ever in an arranger, probably over 100MB. I think these extrapolations are pretty safe.

An interesting new feature would be to host software plug-ins, maybe VSTs or maybe Yamaha proprietary software plugins. But I would think this would show up on the workstations first. Another possibility is the appearance of physical modeling of some instruments components, such as piano soundboards.

Cliff.....Your ideas sound great in theory...But I was thinking that the average player might be detered with so much future High Tech technology....let alone just Playing one of these new arrangers KB's as it is now. Not Everyone is HI-TECH Savy ....& besides that just playing is difficult enough to worry about for some...I believe these companies need to somehow keep improving features... BUT, they really need to keep it VERY "USER FRIENDY" if they want to sell to the masses.....remember the more people understand what they are doing .....the more they will buy......

Yamaha is tickling our fancy with each Board they introduce. The T2 has "just enough" enhancements over the Tyros that it makes the Tyros owner (me anyway ) "consider" getting the T2. And I probably would get a T2 if it had 76 keys. I know I can sell my Tyros to offset the price of a T2 but since the T2 doesn't have 76 keys I see no reason to upgrade. Others who don't want or need 76 keys will obviously have a stronger reasoning and desire to upgrade.

I feel Yamaha does listen to us to an extent because they did give us the "Repeat Self To Fill" feature for the Tyros and also those that had the USB problems were given replacement USB circuit boards if they wanted without charge as long as their Tyros was under warranty. In fact from what I understand Yamaha will replace the faulty USB boards to those whose Tyros' are out of warranty as long as it can be verified that the USB is indeed faulty. How long that offer is good for I'm not sure.

OTOH for owners of the current Tyros, Yamaha could "easily" provide the software enhancements such as the Music Finder fixes on the T2 to Tyros owners as well. It would just take a simple software update. In fact all of the other OS enhancements on the T2 could theoretically be implemented as well to the current Tyros I would think.

But will Yamaha give us Tyros owners those enhancements that are on the T2? Quite simply I doubt it. Then there would be even less of a reason to upgrade to the T2. Yamaha is most likely thinking of their bottom line first and foremost and their customers have no choice but to be at their mercy. And sorry to say it but Yamaha has a tendency in my opinion to give up supporting a product once it has been either discontinued or a newer model is released, or even if a product hasn't been discontinued or a newer model hasn't been released. For example when was the last time the Tyros had an update and/or an enhancement feature was given to it? ... Well over a year ago to be precise. I do give Yamaha credit though for providing PSR 3000 owners the ability to update their keyboards but I still have a bitter taste in my mouth over the PSR 2000 fiasco. And although Yamaha did provide a "hardware" chip replacement for the PSR 2000 there were no improvements to speak of and it was a major hassle to have it replaced besides. And they went against their word too by saying it could be updated over the internet then suddenly changing their minds and making them without a Flash ROM chip. Oh well... yes it is water over the dam, but it makes me even more leery of Yamaha especially now that they have let the Tyros fall by the way side and essentially stopped supporting it in any way shape or form. And will that be the case with the Tyros2? Well if the Tyros is any indication then it most likely will be unfortunately.

So the question to me is one of priority.

Does it have what I want, or better yet what I require in a keyboard? Does it blow my current keyboard out of the water? To answer that question - not really in my opinion, but I give Yamaha kudos for developing the SAV technology, which btw is not a new technology but builds on existing technology in a new way.

Will it make me play better? Difinitely NOT. But with the SA voices some of the sounds will be a notch better (from what I've heard from the SA demos anyway), which is always a bonus.

But in the meantime I will bide my time and wait for the Board that meets my high and meticulous standards.

I may be in for a looonnnggggg wait btw..

Or possibly a short wait if Yamaha does indeed decide to make a reasonably light 76 key Tyros2.

Best regards,
Mike

[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 10-24-2005).]

Why cant yamaha make Arranger KB's with newupgradable OS so that we can just load them via USB from our PC's.......without having to buy a whole new KB with just a few new features....somthing like Ketron does with the SD-1 etc etc ...?

To get YAMAHA to listen, I think it's important to have a point person, a main person to sound off our demands. Or maybe several respected individuals that are respected by YAMAHA. People like George Kaye actually will affect YAMAHA keyboard designs. We all should appoint a point person maybe Scott Yee and then write that suggestions to George Kaye/others with Yammy connections in a formalized letter so that he can talk to the Yamaha guys to get them implemented. What do you guys think ?

Lets get this want list started and start designing our next keyboard !! Scott, what da' ya think ?

The idea of communicating with Yamaha has come up before, and it's pretty unrealistic. You can read more as to the reasons why in the thread about the Japanese culture clash . Even the US reps for Yamaha privately complain about the one-way communication that exists in Yamaha from the corporate office to it's employees, and the previous posts here about trying to get feature/bug fixes confirms much of that.

If you really want to leap ahead past the Tyros 2 I think that time and money could be better spent by looking into the products of smaller companies like Ketron (their MidJay is a good model of where arrangers could be going in the future), the latest models of the Neko from Open Labs for those who want to go into softsynths, and even the ideas that we've come up with for using laptops live in our FLR threads . We've definitely got to look beyond Yamaha for the future of arrangers.

Tyros 2 is not just a software update, it is a major hardware update as well, in fact if you have a close look at the chipsets used you will find hardly anything that relates to the Tyros 1.
As for getting Yamaha to listen outside of Japan, please bear in mind that there was heavy involvement from the UK on Tyros 2, (Both operational and voicing) which proves that Yamaha will listen, if you have something to say.

Bill