its so sad that yamaha gave up on such a great keyboard such as the motifxs..it took me four years to clean up their sound quality .I wished now that i would have kept up with machine language from the 1990,and onward just think of all the potential this keyboard has,,back in the 1990 they had a program that could reprogram computer chips ,,And just think of all the cleanup they could have done,,To sound quality would be first.Ive i clean up listen to montage the quality sound is no better than what is the motifxs and it has a 24 bit sound quality ..and if you do hear a clean sound from montage there using studio E Q to do it..the Motifxs has a reprogrammable chip inside and they never did anymore to improve it how sad..so let me know what you think?

I can kind understand Yamaha’s position.  First they’re in it to make money.  They’re usually in a market fight with Korg, or Roland, blah, blah to see who gains the market position.

So whatever they think the market wants or what their competitor has telegraphed that the market wants thats what Yamaha focuses on.

Something like getting the most out of the chip for the XS would only have caught fire if Korg and Roland and others were doing something similar, or if there was large consumer demand.

I think we have to look to after market efforts to take advantage of all that these power house workstations can do.  Once Yamaha has sold it, there is nothing stopping the community from taking it to the next level in terms of programming and software extensions.  There are still many thousands of Motifs out there and will be for many many years to come.  There is nothing to stop any of us from making software (or hardware) improvements.  These instruments are so well documented that the sky is the limit.

So, what I would suggest is that if there is something we want to make the ES, XS, or XF do that Yamaha decided not to pursue, then within reason; we should do it.  Of course physically modifying the chip may not be practical, but writing software (or if you have the skills firmware), creating new voices, arpeggios, midi programming, extending the capability of the remote editors all of this is within the grasp of the after market community.

I have a XF8 and will squeeze every ounce out of it.  Every ounce!.  Hell I’m still getting sequencing, and phrase mileage out of my QY100.  The Motif has a virtual endless capacity for new voice creation, and new arpeggios, effect processing ideas, controller ideas, etc.  We haven’t even scratched the surface in those areas.  And I believe the SDK for the Motif can be gotten, and if you have the skills and the balls you can write your own firmware.

Bottom line is just because Yamaha dropped the ball and can’t see past 3rd Fiscal Quarter, doesn’t mean that after market community has to do the same thing.  Now that we have the instruments we can do with them what we please.

Maybe we do it first and let Yamaha catch up....