Can anyone comment on the quality and quantity of voices available on these machines ?

I have both the Tyros and the Motif ES 88.

The voice quality, and especially the acoustic voices, of these machines clearly sets them as leaders in thier respective product lines.

The Tyros voice choices are many, but very manageable. There is a signature voice in most categories, but some categories are stronger than others. The overwhelming theme with the Tyros is compromise. The compromise between cost, voice quality, number of voices, color LCD display, display of music/lyrics on screen, the vocal harmonizer, quality of keys, quantity of keys, weight of the unit, ergonomics, style playback and recording all sum up to provide the user with a good balance of features and cost in a very easy to use package.

The Motif clearly is designed for the professional. The quantity and quality of the voices is almost overwhelming. I personally have discarded many voices in the Motif in order to use the voices that are applicable to the type of music that I play. The quality of the voices are very similar to the Tyros. Some of the Mega voices sound identical. Although the Motif does not have virtual drawbars like the Tyros, you can tweak a voice with unlimited parameters and potential then save those voices to the user area. The keybed and size of the keys in the MO ES 88 are wonderful and a joy to play.

These are only my personal opinions and your mileage may vary, but purchasing either and or both of these boards is a very safe and sound investment that will give you years of joy in your music making.

Al

My personal experience with these two keyboards is that both have excellent sounds. The Tyros has more "sweet" sounds and 300 styles while the MoES has very good sounds and 1700 arpeggios, which can be strung together to make something similar to styles.

I took the MoES6 I had back and traded for a Tyros because the Operating System on the MoES is not very user friendly whereas the one on the Tyros is very much so. You can certainly learn the MoES but it will be a lot more work because it is NOT intuitive; you will have to "learn" (ie, memorize) how to do things because it does not flow in an understandable manner. If you get a MoES you will need to spend a lot of time at Motifator.com if you want to know any more than how to use it superficially.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

I have both the Tyros and the MoES 8 and agree with both of the previous post, they have both pretty much summed up my feelings as well.
Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

As far as making a song from scratch on the MoES what is your opinions?

I know that the MO is not an arranger per say, but it does lend its self to chord recognition etc.. and I learned that the arps can be recorded to the tracks therefore freeing up the arps again to be used and then recorded all over again.. It may seem abit more of work but for someone that is not going to do presentations or gigs, and just basically build songs, do you thing the MO would be a better choice?

I already own the korg i30 and im thinking of selling it to get a MO someday...

what do you guys think?
OH, I do understand that the MO is not a full fledged arranger, but I would need the arranger only if I wanted to play live. I want to be able to make songs with some kind of help from the keyboard.. Specially when making the drums and bass tracks...

Peace,

Musikman

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I have the Motif Es and a PA80 arranger. For composing my own music, the Motif is easily the choice.

The things I love about it : The overall soundsets ( voices ) are excellent. The arps are very good and very useful. Making your own arps is easy to do. The key feel is very decent. I like having the sliders and assinable knobs to control the midi parameters of my choice. It has a breathe controller option that works very well with the acoustic modeling plug in ( PLG-VL150 ). Editing internal voices seems a bit more intuitive than other board, and the amount and quality of parameters that can be edited is excellent.

Things I don't like: The screen is small. Parts of the OS are a nightmare to work with. I find the sampling function to be as unintuitve as anything I've ever seen or worked with. Ditto some of the sequencer functions ( especially the pattern sequencer). The lack of storage rom bothers me and understanding and working with the disc function ( media / kb data saved / loaded on smart media card ) can be a nightmare.

Editing power / capabilities of the plug in boards from inside of the Motif is very limited. There are software editors available for each plug in that do a much better job, but the software and plug ins don't really integrate all that well with the Motif. I say this because the software editors and plug in's themselves use different file formats than the Motif does. Edited voices can be midi dumped from the software into the Motif, but additional tweaking will be needed because the editors cannot access or alter the Motif's internal effects. These voices will then have to be saved to another location on the board, or they will be lost when powering down. It takes a full 4 page .pdf file available from Motifator.com just to explain this one ( should be ) simple function.

The Motif / ES can be a very good choice for making realistic sounding original music, or as a synth for live .work if you don't need to do a lot of sampling / editing in real time. The acoustic voices are superb. The synth voices overall may or may not be on par with the Triton series, but they are different. I've heard it said often that many who know current music trends and sounds can identify many if not most of the preset Triton patches. You won't likely have that problem with the ES.

If you need something with a very good overall acoustic soundset along with good editability for the presets, this might be your machine. If you want good arps to help you create, and are willing to work with an external sequencer assisting you at least part of the time, this might be your machine.

If dedicated sampling features and / or realistic analog sounds ( via a modeling plug in ) are your thing, this might not be your machine. If you require an intuitve internal pattern sequencer, this might not be your machine. If you need to dig deep into a board's OS to get the most out of it, this might not be your machine.

AJ



[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 02-19-2004).]

I would agree with AJ's assessment. I own the Tyros and Motif ES. The only thing I would say is don't try to convince yourself that the arps are a substitute for the arranger function, they aren't. They are different in the entire concept. When you would get finished recording with the arps several times via overdubbing, it would sound like arps overdubbed, not an auto arrangement.
Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

Motif ES Rack is probably an ideal instrument if it exists and it is priced competitively

There is not an ES rack as of yet. There is Mo classic rack though.
Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html