I was at the demo tonight and am pretty excited, both Baartmans and the T5 where pretty awesome. Everything sounded better then the T4, because of the new effects session. Not only the instruments but also the VH2 ( that didnt change) sounded better then the T4. Personally i think the improved effects session is the single most important change in the T5. It makes styles, songs, sounds and your singing sound better. And even a guitar connected trough the mic input sounds awesome with the lovely guitar amp effects.
The only adition to the style section where the audio styles, which where great. The sound selection got a lot of new sounds however.
There where many many new E piano sounds, and some new accoustic pianos, from the cvp 609 however only the new upright piano made it to the T5, Baartmans admitted the T5 could use a new grand, which only confirmed my suspicion that there might be an accoustic piano sound expansion comming out.
There where also 7 new SA2 voices, which doesnt sound much untill you realise how much work a single new SA2 sound means as it is much. Much more then just a new set of samples.
Organs : B3, allen home organ, Wersi, wurlitzer and a brand new build mercator churchorgan from poland. Espescially the church organ sounded really really majestic.. Sounded great espescially combined with the new organ styles.
I however was most interested in the ensemble section, it sounded great, and however you can not create your own ensembles, you can eddit the excisting ensembles... You can change settings like pitch, attack, decay for each of the individual instruments, this way you can make an ensemble sound more layd back or alive. The good thing is that you have full controll over the ensemble, and every time you playthe same notes it sounds exactly the same unlike sometimes with the Sa2 sounds its much less dependent on timing.. The result of this feature is incredible... And there is no other instrument that has this feature except for tyros 5 ( tough it would be possible to program it yourself in certain vsts) all instruments in the ensemble section are espescially sampled for the section and not usable anywhere else.
There are currently no plans for a bigger memory expansion, and neither Peter nor de Yamaha sales manager could answer the question if it would be technically possible.
Adding a 2nd keybed and peddals works in exactly the same way as on the T4
In february there will not only be a mac version available for the expansion manager, but also several other ipad apps and an ipad stand that can be connected to the T5
Sample size is the same size as on the T4, also the expansions should be the same size for T4 and T5. The only new expansion so far is the Alpen expansion. He could not tell what other exoansions where comming up.
There was a wayting list for Tyros 5, at this dealer in Holland, for a new T5 -76 this could end up for a couple of months, not all pre orders had been delivered yet, the yamaha sales manager could not answer questions about it either.
So was it all shiney and glamorous ? No, as said, the accoustic piano sounds should have had an update and the new SA2 flutes sounded a bit shrill, but nothing that could not be helped out with some edditing and effects ( the effects themselves are all highly edditable) And their choice of instruments names is still not to my liking... A stratocaster should be named a stratocaster and a wersi should be named wersi and not euro organ. Audio styles is only drums.
On top of that many pro features we see on other brands still havent made their way to the Tyros world.
Edited by Bachus (12/10/13 02:27 PM)