I love my PSR3000, and I also love my PA1XPRO, and this post is not intended to make any disparaging remarks about any manufacturer.

As great as both boards are, I continually wonder why a manufacturer as great as Yamaha, while creating very robust styles, makes them sound so compressed and over-produced, sacrificing a nice live sound.

And I wonder why a manufacturer as great as Korg, choosses to have many of the Korg styles just sound a little enemic, and have so few of the nice rich Yamaha type EP voices, and why their OS is just so darn clumsy and non-user friendly.

I am looking forward to the T2 replacement, and will likely buy it as soon as it comes out, but I'm wondering, Will Yamaha ever redo their drums to give them a nice LIVE, crisp, seperate and punchy sound, and will Yamaha ever change their styles to make them sound less 'canned' and compressed, less "wall of sound" and more live and dynamic with better instrument seperation.

Is it just me who feels this way about Yamaha and Korg boards?

I love Yamaha boards and their voices, and love their styles and love the OS. I just wish it all sounded more LIVE!!!!!! Why doesn't Yamaha do it? It's not like they can't, so it must be a deliberate corporate decision NOT to make the instrument sound more live, but rather to make this very polished, compressed wall-of-sound.

I just dont get it??? Would love to hear you long-time players opinions.

Thanks, Russ

Who knows ? I always have thought they (Yamaha drum sounds) are just way overdone. Probably some programing engineers idea of what drums sound like.

Also to my knowledge, Yamaha is the only company that sets up drums in such a way that you can't change the volume of the various instruments in a kit. Only thru velocity and channel volume.

Korg arrangers on the other hand,imho, has fantastic sounding drums. They remind me of the way my brother's drums sounded when we played together. I have several fine ample libraies here to use including BFD, DFH and Session drummer but I think only BFD beats the Korg arrangers drums. And that's only because you can vary the close mic and room mics.

RE Korg styles ? They sound great to me. More like 3 or four guys jamming than the highly polished Yamaha styles. I suppose that's why they make different flavors of ice cream, so everyone can get what they want.

Korg os ? Heck I've had a pa80, never moved, sitting in the rack for nearly 5 years and I can barely remember how to select a style. Unuserfrendly would be a real understatement.

Danny


[This message has been edited by pianodano (edited 09-27-2007).]

The drum kits on the Motif XS are outstanding and by far the best drums i have heard on any keybaord so far.

all that yamaha has to do is re sample these to their next arranger and they will have something that will be best of the best.

The reason Yamaha's sounds seem compressed and over produced is because they are. Yamaha wants to yield as many sounds as possible with as little ROM as possible. In order to achieve this they use a compression/companding technique. The end result are sounds that are thin, weak, and many are in fact mono that are touted as being stereo. In fact Yamaha has many sounds that say stereo but are in fact two mono voices stacked and panned left and right to give a stereo effect. This doesn't sound anything like true stereo and the sound suffers when being summed to mono.

In order for companies to achieve a large amount of sounds within a small amount of ROM (a few hundred MB or less), that requires samples that are sampled at lower bit rates, companded, and often with very few multi-samples. Yamaha tends to use most of their ROM for the SA and Live voices, then the other sounds seriously suffer because of this. It's no surprise the SA and Live voices are the better of the bunch, they utilize most of the ROM.

Unlike Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Ketron, and others, companies like Wersi use very high amounts of ROM for their factory sounds. In fact Wersi uses nearly 1 GB of ROM for their OAS 7 instruments. The end result of this are sounds that sound so real, aren't compressed, and have a live feel to them, just like the real instrument would be. Wersi's factory sounds are so good that you'd be hard pressed to find many sounds that don't sound like the real instrument. I don't know of any other arranger or workstation with a set of factory sounds that even comes close to compare to the Wersi. Of course hearing an online demo won't show this, you really need to hear the instrument in person to know. Unfortunately Wersi's price point and small distribution limit those who would purchase it to a very small niche.

I await the day that Yamaha, Roland, or Korg comes up with an arranger that uses large amounts of ROM and can compete with the likes of the Wersi but unfortunately that doesn't appear to be in the near future. Korg could do it if they put arranger features of the PA2X into the Oasys and fixed the OS of the Oasys. The Oasys has some fantastic sounds but the GUI is so poorly laid out and the sequencer is an absolute joke. Wersi is already working on the "Plus" line of their OAS instruments which adds a 10.4 TFT touch screen, more fills/intros, and even more sounds. The advantage of Wersi being the first to utilize an instrument that supports not only large amount of factory ROM, but VST's, is that they've had years to get things right. It's hard to keep up with the Jones' when they are ten years ahead of everyone else.

If you think the likes of a Tyros, PSR, G Series, PA, or Ketron can hold up to the likes of an instrument like Wersi and Lionstracs that can play back very large sound files, give a listen to Giga, Halion, or Kontakt's available sound libraries and see how your instrument compares. I know of no arranger factory sound that can even come close.

Do you know this to be a fact?



Yep, I'm first to acknowledge the horrible summed to mono result. If the reason truly is in fact that it's because these sounds weren't truly stereo to begin with, I'm now wondering if it might be possible to take a true 'stereo sampled' piano and import it into the Tyros2 keyboard as a Yamaha TVN WAV file and achieve more satisfactory results when mixed to mono on output? That said, Orgel-Studio now offers yet another new (Pack #5) TVN WAV sample collection for Tyros2:

TVN Wave sample sounds

Click on 'Pack 5' to see and hear audio clip demos of the most recently released collection.

Scott

Many of the Yam Live voices are comprised of apparently similar samples arranged in pairs- one panned hard left the other hard right. I can't prove they're the same or mono but I wouldn't be surprised if they were as IMO the stereo presence doesn't really seem to be there much- maybe I'm just becoming acclimatised-lol!

Hi Scott - it's possible to get a much better stereo effect using the PC editing facility available with Ty2. Here's a .tvn hot off the press using the Ty2 LiveGrand where hi notes come from right & lo notes come from left. Hopefully it's a general improvement too. It's also possible to adjust brightness/mellow to taste using the mod wheel so it should have wider appeal than the usual "fixed" piano - that is assuming it has any appeal whatsoever- lol!
Any Ty2 users welcome to try.

http://tinyurl.com/34flrr

John

Take the time to tune the keyboard, the registrations and your PA system and you'll find those drums are great. You just need to get into the inner workings of the systems. I personally, love the way the drums sound, and as for mono VS stereo--Nah! I won't go there.

Got to get to work. Music begins at 11:00 a.m. today.

Cheers,

Gary

DITTO!

Sorry but all the tweaking in the world will never turn a good sample (PSR) into a great sample (MOTIF).

Here's one suggested way of "tuning" them:

http://www.yamahapkowner.com/forum/index.php?topic=7403.0


John