I realize it may be slightly off topic, but we talk about it enough here, the Motif ES.. as if it's a quasi arranger of sorts ( it isn't.. believe me ) ...

Weeks of programming work is gone "just like that" because the board apparently did an overwrite to my AN150 plug in user patches when I errantly loaded or changed an all voice file or something to that effect. Nothing stays in rom memory on this board.. nothing..

Terry is right. This thing by far has the most unintuituve OS of anything I've ever seen or dreamed of. OK, admittedly I may not be the brightest guy on the planet, but in the past I've been able to figure out most any function and file storage systems on any other piece of hardware or software I've worked with.

Yet after well over a year and change of working with the OS of the ES and it's "classic" counterpart, I still don't get it... The flash rom voices that I saved load fine into the ES, but the end result, the user voices themselves, are gone. The way you have to load the user voices form the exsternal editor takes so many steps that it is hardly worth it. I'd try to explain it, but it takes Yamaha a 4 page PDf manual just to explain how to do this one thing, that should have been a lot simpler, except that the file formats are different from the external editor to the board, so several steps are needed to convert and save user voices..

It's SO much easier to edit and store patches in my software analog modeled synths, by comparison, that it's almost ridiculous to even bother on the Motif. Basically, I have a nice hardware board with excellent sounds and editing / sampling / sequencing functions that just aren't worth trying to use at all. I could have gotten that lot cheaper with kontakt or gigasttudio and a midi controller.

Breathe controller or not, I've about had it.... I want something different... and yes I still want a hardware rompler. Sigh.. I hope the fantom X is released before Yamaha replaces the ES with a new model, so that at least I'll get some resale value.

AJ

The Fantom X is suppose to hit the shelves in 'limited' numbers sometime in April AJ. I would be very surprised if Yamaha announced any replacement for the Motif ES before 2005. You should get a pretty good resale on your Motif ES if it's in good condition. It's still under warranty plus you have plug-in boards also.

Yamaha has the motifator.com site where a lot of questions can be answered. The only problem is the answers they provide are usually not in a step by step process but from my experience they always seem to omit some part of the procedure which is like giving you electricity but not the switch to turn it on. I never did get the whole procedure on how to Save an Auto Load file on start up even though I repeatedly asked them for a step by step explanation. (The Manual was useless as it did not explain it thoroughly). Plus Bad_Mister must think he really is BAAADDD if you know what I mean. One question I asked him he came back and arrogantly lambasted me for questioning some of Yamaha's procedure on hardware implementation. I wasn't berating him either; just asking a simple question and an explanation as to why Yamaha did it the way they did. After he lambasted me I turned around and scolded him for his attitude and demeaning manner saying to him that the motifator.com site was suppose to be a 'support' site not a put down site where they treat their customers like trash. After that incident he never replied to any of my questions.

Needless to say my Motif ES7 was returned shortly thereafter. Mike Martin and the other two guys were always helpful though.

I guess if they view you as a 'threat' or controversial or whatever they basically shut you out (not out of the site but nip you in the bud by not replying to your questions. At least that was my experience anyway. Maybe that is Yamaha's protocol not necessarily the support staff's protocol. But then again maybe it IS the support staff's protocol, ie., "shut you out by not replying to you if they view you as a threat or whatever."

eBay may be your best bet for getting the price you want for your Motif ES AJ. Although I don't buy and sell on eBay because of some of the security risks and all the fraud that goes on there, some people don't seem to mind all of that and have had good results.

PS: Make sure you demo the Roland X or Triton Extreme firsthand before plunking down your money. And spend inordinate amounts of time doing it. That way you will be better prepared to really know what the Fantom X or Triton Extreme has to offer. And don't be in a hurry. They will always get more in stock if the store only has one or two at the time. Plus they will ALWAYS have the floor model to demo.

Best regards,
Mike

AJ
Well as you know I had probably the longest thread in history at MoTown about the Mo o/s and that it need not be so difficult and unintuitive. So no argument here.It's also why I said when the new Fanotm X hits the shelves adios Mo. Even if the X isn't as powerful, I can work with it.

When I used the Mo software to transfer user files back and forth, that was a 3 day ordeal to get it working correctly. The time involved to load the extra voices from the cd on start up is ludicrious. One of the people timed it having all the pianos and extra voices in autoload.....17 minutes for the Mo to start up. Talk about foreplay

Mike,
You're not alone. I had the same experience and finally had to send Phil a pm and ask, "have I done somethng to offend you that you give me answers like you do on the forum?" I don't think it's about being threatened, I think it's more that people get their panties bunched up if you say anything bad about their baby. I don't even bother with that side of the forum anymore. When there is questioning about a board on a forum people get insecure about that, because it says perhaps it wasn't the right decision to buy the board.

Which brings me back to a statement I made in another thread about this.....after the classic and now the ES, there will have to be an entire reevamp of the Motif before I'll ever buy another one.

The same is going to hold true before I upgrade to other future boards, at these prices I am going to expect and demand more or no sale. The board will have to be ready to go out of the box, not what it will be if they do the o/s upgrades too.

AJ, about being OT....it's all good, it's all about music regardless of the boards arrangers/workstations DAW's and soft synths.
Terry

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

This is as good a place as any to post this thought. First, I fully agree about the OS of the Motif ES, and frankly I haven't done nearly as much with my Mo ES 8 as I would have liked because I just don't have the time to learn my way around it. So far I've used it more as a glorified MIDI controller in my studio for working with softsynths than anything else, and even then I've run into things that fly in the face of logic.

Add to that my long-standing frustrations with my 9000 Pro and we have the recipe for change. And BTW: I switched to Yamaha products years ago because of the severe frustration I had with Roland so I don't think I'm going to be in the market for a Fantom either. In fact, I don't want another manufactured keyboard from anyone.

You may recall the thread I started here some weeks ago about the "Gigstation": a concept keyboard based totally on softsynths. I've taken it a couple of steps further and the rough draft image below is the result. The keyboard is simple: a case that houses an 88-note controller, a computer and two monitors. At first I was going to go with one big dual monitor but I decided that two monitors on either side would work better and would leave open the possibility of a music stand in front. The computer is built into the QWERTY keyboard for live use (http://www.cybernetman.com/), or you could have a regular computer workstation with the CPU underneath or wherever. You could substitute a laptop but my eyesight isn't getting any better and I need large screens closeup (touch screens would be a bonus too). I designed this with live performance in mind but it works just as well for the studio. Ideally I would like to mount the monitors on some sort of swivel so they would swivel & fold down over the keyboard and a lid would cover the entire workstation. Legs could fit into the case lid for transport. Open Labs, the company that makes the overpriced eKo which is similar in concept to the Gigstation, is releasing a new desktop OS especially for working with softsynths/VST's called Karsyn that looks very promising as the desktop for the Gigstation. One other option would be to also use a JLCooper CS-32 mini-mixer so that you'd have sliders that could act as volume controls for the different instruments.



I only bring this up again here because I think that it's time for us to break the mindset that we have about relying on Yamaha, Roland, Korg, etc. The biggest supporter of the Gigstation concept is my wife, who thinks all manufactured keyboards are made to piss me off. She really thinks this is the answer, and that says a lot because justifying a new keyboard to your wife IS the acid test.

Whether we all build Gigstations or not, this is the way we are heading and it's also essentially what my Motif ES 8 has already turned into. While it's still hot I'm thinking of selling my Mo to begin a permanent withdrawal process from Yamaha and begin to build something that is completely customizable, interchangeable, upgradeable, and as user-friendly as I want it to be.

Just a thought...

[This message has been edited by The Pro (edited 02-17-2004).]

Yea, as I said earlier, I had a MoES6 for about two weeks and decided I just was not going to fight that outrageous OS for years and took it back and got a Tyros, which I REALLY LIKE. Is it perfect? ABSOLUTELY NOT, BUT I find it immensley easier to use and work with. The two main drawbacks don't bother me because I record directly to a digital multitrack hard disk so I don't care about the no song position pointer in the sequencer and I don't care that it won't select the DSP setups for a voice when the voice is selected from inside an external sequencer such as Sonar.

I remember that incident with Bad Mister and thinking how he essentially attacked a customer seeking help with a non-intuitive board and if that was their attitude then I probably didn't want to keep the MoES anyway. The Yamaha support people seem to have a problem with anyone who suggests that perhaps there might be something that wasn't well designed in one of their boards. Another one attacked a guy over on the new Awareness Engine Arranger site when he questioned the lack song position pointers in a supposedly Pro keyboard built in sequencer in the Tyros. On the other hand, Korg can be even worse; I have no experience with Roland so I don't know about them personally but what I hear isn't all that good.

AJ, you might want to look into the Yamaha VL-70m sound module which has 256 solo instrument sounds in it. As is it is OK but if you change out the original ROM chip with the Patchman ROM chip it gets REALLY GOOD. It will work with a keyboard controller and a BC3 or with a WX5, WX7, or WX11 wind controller. If you go to the Patchman site you can listen to short mp3 clips of most of the instruments so you can at least get some idea of what they would actually sound like.

Tom

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Bigger is not always better

My wife wants us to buy a new computer and she wants the hardrive split in half, so I can use the other half for my music. She came to this decision on her own without any prompting from me. I support her decision 100%.
There's a softsynth arranger in my future.
Starkeeper

Star,
Why not instead or partitioning the h/d, just get a USB external drive? Reasonable in price and then will not interfere with anything on the main drive and neither will slow down.
Terry

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

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm not totally convinced that I'm going to be a lot happier with the Fantom X, since it's predecessors did nothing for me soundwise, but there seems from the demo's to be some improvement there, and the OS is definitely better for me, so I'll surely give it a good workout when it's released.

Much like Jim says, the Motif ES has basically become a glorified midi controller for me, along with a housing for some excellent sounds ( the internal ones and the Plugins ). The problem of course is that I cannot rely on the ability of saving the edits to the plug in boards inside of the Motif itself, and the external editors do not allow me to access or modify the parameters of the Motif's internal effect units, so I cannot save my finished user voices in the external editor either. Well, actually, maybe I could, but I'd likely have to link the regular Motif ES software voice editor to the AN1x editor.. All that really is though is more steps again...

For this reason, although some great analog sounds can be made with it, The PLG-AN150 is basically useless to me ( not to mention it has a stingy 5 notes of polyphony ). The VL150 plug in has excellent presets, so very little modification is needed for what I do live with the breathe controller.

I already have some of the softsynths I want, and some of the others I've tried sound as good as almost any hardware analog modeling synths I've tried out there, maybe even the V synth. I will be getting a laptop with an aftermarket soundcard, so the softsynths will come with me wherever I go. I'm not sure that I will go the exact route that Jim is going, but something similar is definitely in order.

Tom, thanks for the info. If I do dump the ES, that might be the route I will go. It would have been so much easier though if Yamaha had just added Windows XP support for the SYXG100 software module, which already has the VL technology included. It worked very well on my old Windows ME computer. In fact, it sounded just as good as the PLG-VL150 inside of my Motif ES. I could have just added an external controller unit and have been done with Motif all together.

AJ

AJ
The plg's I don't even want to discuss.........grrrrrrrr I bought the latin Percussion one and have had so much grief jumping through hoops to use it in pattern record, I don't use it at all.

With the Fantom the plgs were selectable like any other voice period.
Terry

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