Is that it, Is that all the XF has to offer?
Yet again Yamaha are trying to sell us ridiculously over priced memory expansion boards, why didn’t they just add an SSD SATA 1.8 or 2.5” interface to the XF?
The screen, the TFT screen is still chronic viewing and still too small with the worst contrast ratio I’ve seen since my pocket Casio TV I purchased in 1998, and no DVI/HDMI out for an external display or digital audio.
Yamaha have again failed or refused to take advantage of everyday consumer technology.
Yamaha remind me of certain mobile phone companys who only supply mains chargers and PC sync cables to fit their phones.

Oh dear, how disappointing.
I definatley won’t be parting with my hard earnt cash, Yamaha, sorry but you’ll need to do better than that!

The XS remains with me until the above are addressed ~:)

There are a number of people posting that unless Yamaha builds a synthesizer to their specifications, they won’t be buying an XF.

You should check the prices of custom guitars for comparison. You’ll find that the Motif XF is a bargain compared to a $6,000 custom guitar with a shiny finish that has ONE SOUND.

Get real.

Mike T.

miket156 - 04 August 2010 04:10 PM

You should check the prices of custom guitars for comparison. You’ll find that the Motif XF is a bargain compared to a $6,000 custom guitar with a shiny finish that has ONE SOUND.

Get real.


Mike T.

Couldn’t agree more!

synthlogic - 04 August 2010 04:39 PM

miket156 - 04 August 2010 04:10 PM

You should check the prices of custom guitars for comparison. You’ll find that the Motif XF is a bargain compared to a $6,000 custom guitar with a shiny finish that has ONE SOUND.

Get real.


Mike T.

Couldn’t agree more!

that’s absurd . U can’t compare a keyboard with a 6000 $ custom guitar because that guitar is for big studios, big artist.. and a real guitarist with that guitar in his hands, is ten thousand times more useful than Motif guitar patches.

But u can compare Motif with a 500 $ custom guitar...but again the guitar will win because is the real thing and will sound more natural..

The XS remains with me until the above are addressed

And serve you well it will, enjoy it!!! lol…

OUTSTANDING BAD MISTER.

jimandchris - 04 August 2010 06:16 PM

OUTSTANDING BAD MISTER.

Indeed. Have flash prices even been LISTED yet?

If it were legit gripes about what’s “wrong” with the current machine that’d be fine, but whining about using flash instead of a flashdrive (Though an interesting concept) and the screen is kinda silly.

I mean we’re talking 2 GB of flash rom here! Not 8 or 16 MB like in the past. You can effectively create an ENTIRE new synthesizer sound wise. The only thing I personally would have liked in that regard is more user banks to put all the new sounds you could have. 4 Banks will go quick! Someone like myself could REALLY have a ball converting the top AKAI libraries from the past ten years.

EDIT: OK assuming this is right I just saw the price of the flash: FL1024M- $299 So that’s about $600 for 2GB of flash RAM. That’s pretty freakin steep! So if I were an XF buyer, I’d certainly just buy one and see how long it takes to fill one up.

I heard some relevant complaints before but this one has got to be the silliest one yet.

The new XF is gonna be the bomb what the heck you folks are talking about?

Yamaha added 2 gigs of superior flash rom which is better than potential problematic hard drives. Hard drives fail get read and write errors and require much higher maintenance. Flash Rom non of that. Now a usb port for ext drive would solve that problem right?

Now the question to Yamaha is this, does the XF supply a usb port to connect an ext Hard Drive to save and load sounds to because folks wish Yamaha should have made a way that sounds can be saved to a hard drive, totally disregarding that Flash Rom option, but I don’t know if they demand it to be inside the board instead of outside the board. So does it save to hard drives for the customers?

miket156 - 04 August 2010 04:10 PM

There are a number of people posting that unless Yamaha builds a synthesizer to their specifications, they won’t be buying an XF.

You should check the prices of custom guitars for comparison. You’ll find that the Motif XF is a bargain compared to a $6,000 custom guitar with a shiny finish that has ONE SOUND.

Get real.


Mike T.

Haha, i have a bass guitar from Warwick wich is very expansive too.
And i don’t complain.

p.a.
but the deal with guitars is that the wood from time becames more resonant and it become sound better and another thing is that u may use guitar or bass for the rest of ur life, while keyboard won’t sound better over time and u have to replace them awry 5-6 years....

Hard drives would be way too slow, same as over the counter USB flash drives. Anyway, that’s storage, not Flash-non volatile RAM. its also a good idea that Yamaha is controlling what is put in the XF because if Yamaha allowed 3rd party flash memory, the first time it choked or failed, guess who gets the tech support call.

Yeah Chilly I know a little about custom guitars. The bottom line is Yamaha can’t build a synth for everyone that has this idea or wants that feature. You have to decide if you can work with what it has and take it from there.

Cheers,

Mike T.

chilly - 04 August 2010 09:54 PM

p.a.
but the deal with guitars is that the wood from time becames more resonant and it become sound better and another thing is that u may use guitar or bass for the rest of ur life, while keyboard won’t sound better over time and u have to replace them awry 5-6 years....

Really?? How come I’ve not had to replace my SY77 in 21 years?
Clyde

DX7IIFD, SY77, SY99, Hammond C3, Steinway L, etc.

The XS is great, the XF is even better.

Nothing more to see here, let’s move on.

miket156 - 04 August 2010 09:57 PM

Hard drives would be way too slow, same as over the counter USB flash drives.

A modern 64 Gbyte SSD drive should load a 2 GB RAM bank in less than 6 seconds, and will cost 4 times less than two Yamaha 1 GB flash memory options. You won’t get this speed from any kind of USB or FireWire, you need to use internal SATA or external eSATA interface.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=454&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=5
http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/sata-ii/1-8--sata-ii/performance-solid-state-drives/ocz-vertex-2-sata-ii-1-8--ssd.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/24

Just a nice story:
As we were on our way to a gig, I told our guitar player about the new Motif XF. I mentioned the flash-ram and the ability to have your custom samples ready without loading them every time.
I told him I couldn’t see myself yet spending a couple of thousand euros just for gaining this feature, my XS would serve me just right and I could deal with the minimal loading times from a USB device.

As we came to the gig I noticed I left my USB stick with my custom samples at home, bummer...I had to reprogram my sounds quickly.
‘You know’, our guitar player said to me: ‘I just heard that Yamaha released a synth which keeps your samples in memory....’

Touché!

(but I still don’t have a couple of K euro to spend on a new synth :-) )

DmitryKo - 05 August 2010 02:44 AM

miket156 - 04 August 2010 09:57 PM

Hard drives would be way too slow, same as over the counter USB flash drives.

He was talking about 2.5” or 1.8” (Solid State Drive) SATA-600 hard disks, which have a sequential read spead of more than 300 Mbytes/sec. These are basically high-performance flash drives which offer vastly better latency and better read speed, and have no moving parts that can sustain accidental fall damage.

A modern 64 Gbyte SSD drive should load a 2 GB RAM bank in less than 6 seconds, and will cost 4 times less than two Yamaha 1 GB flash memory options. You won’t get this speed from any kind of USB or FireWire, you need to use internal SATA or external eSATA interface.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=454&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=5
http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid-state-drives/sata-ii/1-8--sata-ii/performance-solid-state-drives/ocz-vertex-2-sata-ii-1-8--ssd.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/24

Yup, this is one of those elephants in the room if you know about technology. The general public isn’t hip to these drives though, so maybe that’s why Yamaha chose not to go this route? OR it’s a control/profit thing? OR they’d have to add an SATA controller and support for it (Probably This).

Hmmmmmmm.... I paid $4000 for my SY99 back in 1992.  Still using and loving it today!  Have been looking at competitive keyboards, and the XF seems to have them all beat in sound quality...after all… isn’t THAT what it’s all about in the end?  Sure, some of the others have more bells and whistles, but when I record a song, I want it to SOUND GOOD primarily.  There is give and take with every product.

So by comparison, I can get a new XF7 for nearly a GRAND less than what I paid for my SY99 18 years ago.  That’s pretty cool!