Old Motifator threads are available in the Archive.
GospelMusicians
Total Posts: 336
Joined 08-26-2010 status: Enthusiast |
Hey guys....I haven’t been around here for a while. To be honest after the ES, I’ve been very board with keyboards in general in liue of my newfound love for VSTs. I’m the president of GospelMusicians.com have the ear of thousands of musicians around the world, so let me shed some light on this new XF. 1. Live Backing Tracks and Click Track: Fist let me start off by saying that for us professional musicians who thrive off of NEW sounds and live steming tracks as well as playing with a click track, this thing could actually replace my laptop and I want it to. I have a MacBook pro and I stream my tracks live from Logic, but sometimes, rarely it does crash. As good as Mac’s are, THEY DO CRASH....! Having my live stemming tracks, backing vocals, and click tracks all in one unit....OMG....Dream come true! Remember this XF is for people like myself that do this night in and night out and play with click tracks. ***DISCLAIMER: The 128MB limit is definitely wack! Super wack!!! But as I stated in other posts, companies have to give and take to reduce production costs, reduce price to consumer, and lack of modern technology on the production line. Yamaha like other manufacturers regurgitates the same technology to reduce production costs and we all are aware of the low end processors. 2. New Samples and New Sounds! Do you know how annoyingly slow it is loading my samples every Sunday for church into my Motif ES. So now having all of my sounds and samples ready and there when I get to church....Priceless! 3. Portability - If I’m not mistaken, but just assuming, you can take your Flash chips with you and load them up into another board if you like. Travel to another city and ask them for an XF and take a screwdriver in your gig bag and just plug them in with all of your backing tracks, samples, etc… ***************NOW FOR THE BAD****************** 1. 128MB LIMIT sucks! If I have to explain why it sucks, then Yamaha, you have not yet understood your customers. 2. 128-Note Polyphony! It’s 2010 and time to step it up! When trying to compete with the VSTs which are taking over it’s time to up the Poly. My performances on my Motif ES are stacked and I run out of polyphony fast. But as stated before, this is probably due to the underpowered processor that keeps Yamaha saving money, but limits us as professionals!
3. Live Stemming and Click Tracks maybe???? The concept of putting all of your backing tracks, click tracks, and backing vocals in the Flash is awesome, but there is a technical hurdle when trying to achieve this live:
....Something to consider! |
Bad_Mister
Total Posts: 36620
Joined 07-30-2002 status: Moderator |
Putting all that in red just makes it difficult to read and does not add any strength to your point (lol). If you are playing “what ifs” why not “what if” you stop in the middle and you get booed off the stage. Doesn’t matter where the audio is being played from.
“What if” your computer crashes… that never happens!
“totally useless” we’ll see… |
drpopper1
Total Posts: 57
Joined 08-22-2010 status: Experienced |
One thing I’d have to agree on about ALL workstations not just Yamaha. Roland Fantom G the M3 etc all the same is the Polyphony. It is 2010 and I don’t think these companies realize they are competing directly with VST’s. Older players like myself might very well prefer a stand alone board but the 19yo kids I see are using VST’s almost exclusively.
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GospelMusicians
Total Posts: 336
Joined 08-26-2010 status: Enthusiast |
You are right drpopper1...As a matter of fact MUSE Research just came out with: http://www.museresearch.com/news.php?id=110 for less than a grand that you can load up all of your plugins and it has a 32GB Flash drive that will allow you to load up all of your plugins and presets in a little box. That’s the technology today....Now the dream would be to take the expertise of Yamaha as a hardware company to update their hardware and make Yamaha plugins or VSTs. You can’t fight technology....the sooner you get on board, the longer you stay alive! |
Dreamflight
Total Posts: 2688
Joined 03-07-2008 status: Guru |
Not all flash is equal. You are underestimating the requirement for the flash ROM. It has to be fast enough to handle the hundreds of requests per second (probably tens of thousands or more if you go to the bit level), and low enough latency in response that it’s going to be able to return the wave data stored in it on demand during a live performance of the synth (via fingers or sequencer). Yamaha have already said that they looked at this in detail and put the best compromise between price and performance they could into the XF.
If you had been Yamaha then you would probably have done what they did. They looked at SSD and found it unsuitable for technical reasons. Did you search the forum for ‘SSD’ before assuming they didn’t look into this?
No, those are not the reasons for me not to buy. I have my own reasons, which I did raise (and probably annoy slightly) the good Yamaha folk on this very forum, but we had a good healthy ‘back and forth’ discussion on it and although I don’t find the new XF approach works for me, I understand their perspective and I know for a fact that they know a heck of a lot more than I do about the synthesizer market, so I quit bellyaching about it. Df. |
DavePolich
Total Posts: 6820
Joined 07-27-2002 status: Guru |
Yamaha “doesn’t understand their customers”. Actually, Yamaha understands
Yamaha US and Bad Mister have already answered the question of why there is “only 128MB’ of RAM already included in the stock Motif XF. But to
Could Yamaha build a more “capable” system? Yes, and it would cost them (and ultimately, you, the customer) a lot more money. We’ve seen the
So - any manufacturer has to balance cost of production to profit. If
You can always wish for this and that and complain about the absence
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dereknae
Total Posts: 485
Joined 03-16-2009 status: Enthusiast |
Gospelmusicians,whats up Jamal???? Yeah i own the xs and as a live musican i wish they would of worked on the 128-note polyphony..I hate computers but vst’s is where it’s at..But i wish i could just use my board..Jamal we’re live musicians and therefore don’t need most of the crap these guys look for in a keyboard.. step recording and transpose...I say,learn how to play and you don’t need all of that garbage...Don’t get me wrong,I love yamaha..Many of my friends told me to get a controller keyboard and a mac and go from there but i got the xs anyway..I doubt if I’ll get the xf..My wife asked if i wanted it but I’m leaning towards the tyros..Anyway,the polyphony is my only issue |
GospelMusicians
Total Posts: 336
Joined 08-26-2010 status: Enthusiast |
Hey dereknae.....How you doing man? I knew some of my fellow Gospel Musicans would come to my rescue. Been in talks with Yamaha for years for endorsement since I use their stuff on all of my videos, but nothing every happened. Some people take critism the wrong way. Critism is meant to make someone better not to bash it. Who else loves Yamaha more than I do....Heck I should hide the logo on my DVDs, but I don’t. Over the years I owned a Yamaha SY85, EX5, Motif Classic, and Motif ES. And to be honest nothing has been that inspirational since the EX5, which in my opinion had the biggest potential out of any board Yamaha ever made. To this day....people who see that blue board sitting on top still asks me what in the world is that.....when I play it with the Analog bass, and lead sounds with the VL stuff...people are like oh ma God....where can I get that board. ...So I’m definitely not a Yamaha basher! It’s just that we see how much better it could be! Take a page out of Apple’s book....It’s about innovation and creativity....Not re-hashing the same ol’ technology and putting it in a different frame. The sounds are amazing on the Motif’s....but pretty much the same......Hey to be honest, I’m still thinking of getting the XF just for the FLASH feature....I’m waiting to hear from Yamaha to see if it supports Audio streaming from FLASH and not just sample playback. There is a big, big difference when doing live gigs. Yep....dereknae, no one does live music more than a gospel musician. Every Sunday, all the concerts, seminars, Tuesday services, learning new songs every week. Haha....But no one ever asks us what we want. We are the forgotten bunch....... If you can find a Yamaha EX5 for a good price, get it and don’t look back. Very inspirational to this day and guess what....16MB of flash Ram...haha back in 2001. I’m currently working with the Awave developer to be able to support the EX5 format and I’ll already be able to load my samples in FLASH. |
GospelMusicians
Total Posts: 336
Joined 08-26-2010 status: Enthusiast |
My Realistic Dream Yamaha Synth:
- I would start with the Motif Soundset which is awesome.
All of the technology above has been done already by Yamaha. Nothing new, but very inspirational as they SY99 and EX5 will allow you to create forever. You would almost never need another synth with this combination! |
drpopper1
Total Posts: 57
Joined 08-22-2010 status: Experienced |
This is the problem with their thinking. They are building boards for “their” customers when they should be building boards to attract the people who have grown up using VST’s. I don’t believe for a second that it is going to cost much more to make a board with modern technology. To upgrade the processing from its current antiquated system to a modern system would cost very little. This would allow more polyphony. To upgrade memory flash or otherwise is very cheap. The 2gb flash board is probably about $25 worth of memory. I doubt the entire component cost of a motif hardware is over $400. The cost of developing workstations is in the sound sets and software not in the hardware.
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drpopper1
Total Posts: 57
Joined 08-22-2010 status: Experienced |
Even the most fastest most expensive flash ram modules available on the market are less then $19GB/1000 from the manufacturer.
The “Technical” reasons about SSD do not wash with me. The Tyros 2 which is 5 years old and a Yamaha product offers the ability to install a SSD drive with up to 256GB capacity. SSD drives are fast enough to run HD video processing arrays ...don’t tell me that can’t run a motif which uses less bandwidth then a 15 year old cheap PC.
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sciuriware
Total Posts: 9999
Joined 08-18-2003 status: Guru |
Well, I understand you can easily build your own XF and beat Yamaha.
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drpopper1
Total Posts: 57
Joined 08-22-2010 status: Experienced |
You don’t need to build a board to “beat” Yamaha (or roland or korg) anyone with a laptop, a controller and modern VST’s do that just fine by themselves.
You don’t seem to get it you think I’m picking on Yamaha. I’m not picking on Yamaha ... I’m not picking on Roland or Korg or Nord or any particular board manufacturer.
I’m picking on them ALL for not seeing the tree’s for the forest. They need to wake up and compete. If not their workstations are history.
This will happen to workstations which is sad as I think they can be a better solution but only if they can compete on a technological basis. |
DmitryKo
Total Posts: 1483
Joined 07-25-2002 status: Guru |
You don’t understand the technical difference between local memory bus and external storage bus. CompactFlash, SD Cards and SSDs are block storage devices. It means you can not connect them directly to the processor’s memory bus just like you do with RAM (random access memory) which permits you to address every random byte with the same latency. You need to buffer the requested block of data from external storage to RAM before you can make any use of it. For a 128 voice polyphony, the flash memory should handle 128 simultaneous reads with a total sustained data rate of 60 Mbytes/s (128 * 1 byte (8 bit) * 44100 kHz), with nanosecond latency. No memory card, hard drive, or SSD is able to cope with that; only RAM can sustain this true random access pattern. That’s why Yamaha’s proprietary flash cards are true flash RAM cards, which are connected directly to the memory controller of the tone generator chip. They most likely have a much wider bus and higher operating frequency than most cheap flash memory chips used in memory cards; you can tell it even by the size of the chips on the proprietary board. This way, the flash acts just like regular RAM to the tone generator and is able to cope with the above requirements for the 128 voices. As for 256 or 512 voices, well, as long as worsktations use flash memory for permanent storage of samples, that will not be economically feasible in the near future, as it will require 2-4x increase in bus width or operating frequency, and most likely an exponential increase in costs. Another possibility is to use large amounts of internal RAM and copy sounds to the RAM on startup from a fast memory card or SSD, but that’s costly as well. |
sciuriware
Total Posts: 9999
Joined 08-18-2003 status: Guru |
So drpopper1, what are you doing on this forum?????????? Complaining! |
drpopper1
Total Posts: 57
Joined 08-22-2010 status: Experienced |
Geeze you think ? |