I am afraid our expectations concerning the new XS os update are much too high. Everything concerning the content of the update has been described in a pdf document posted on Yamaha’s site months ago. The improvements concerning sampling are, as the screen capture shows, a mere matter of display: sampling space will not be increased, neither will loading time improve nor sample conversion be eased, not to talk about the management of samples (my 1992 K2000 was so flexible by comparison, with its macros allowing you to select only these voices in your banks you wanted to load in a batch and eliminating duplicates).
To come back to my point, no radical revision is to be expected from a stand alone product from any company whatsoever. That is a very general statement about commercial products. You get what you pay for in the first place and the rest is just wishful thinking.
Admittedly, the special step that Korg took for their M3 was more reactive, an exceptional measure for exceptional times (and true, a few years ago, Roland added audio recording within the fantom x sequencer - indeed that has nothing to do with the mere addition of a wav files player/recorder of the sort Yamaha proposes to implement in the future os update). But these are precisely exceptions.
So I don’t feel like complaining or blaming Yamaha. I do not even feel I have been let down, because I suppose 90 per cent of the motif users do not care for any such features extending the capabilities of their keyboard. So why should the R&D;bother?
But as an amateur accustomed to designing my own sounds, I am surprised that no one has taken advantage of the existing capabilities of the XS. I have made my own samplebanks, culling samples from the old akai, emu and roland sample cds that sell for practically nothing on ebay and are made of very short multisamples that do not clog the XS RAM memory. I have had impressive results with velocity-layered horns and strings for instance. Now having tried the Emu demo (orchestral strings), for instance, I am completely incredulous: the principles of synthesis, as opposed to plain sampling is to combine short multisamples that add up nicely and recreate the texture of the instrument you try to imitate, programming a different behavior for each layer for maximum expressiveness. The logic behind the huge banks designed for softsamplers such as kontakt is entirely different, and requires a lot of memory. All the demoed banks for XS I have tried recently mostly consist of one layer multisample amounting to 10 M, with basic filtering. In short there is no programming at all. Compare this with the use made of the ROM in the original voices of the XS, listen to the guitar waves for instance, the well defined character of each and how they were thought out with a view to their combination. It’s quite another story.

moloko - 01 April 2009 09:53 AM

To come back to my point, no radical revision is to be expected from a stand alone product from any company whatsoever. That is a very general statement about commercial products. You get what you pay for in the first place and the rest is just wishful thinking.

I stopped to expect anything from XS OS updates long time ago when they introduced USB keyboard addition which nobody asked for whereas crappy files system was not even touched.

delirium - 01 April 2009 10:17 AM

I stopped to expect anything from XS OS updates long time ago when they introduced USB keyboard addition which nobody asked for whereas crappy files system was not even touched.

I couldn’t have said it better.

I do fully agree with that. But what I totally don’t understand is that in pattern or songmode you can not solo more then one track. For me this would be such a great thing. Simply solo the sounds you want to layer. It would save lots of time editing.

But I did fall for the sound.

From the info in the Xpand your world PDF it looks like another weak update.  They have been hyping this so-called sampler update for over a year and it still is not ready for release.  If there is not way more improvements to sampling and sample edit than what was in that PDF then it’s a big let down.  Can’t believe that the only improvement after all this time was the ability to mix down and playback a stereo file from USB.  That is a cool improvement but I hope they can do better than that after all that time and all the detailed feedback of the many much needed sampler improvements.  I thought we would get more info since this is Musikmesse.  The combining of the sample parameter and trim screen is near useless as is the new screen colors.

I really hope there is more on offer after seeing the radical improvements made to the M3, Fantom G and MPC 5000 over the last year.

krisx8 - 01 April 2009 12:56 PM

But what I totally don’t understand is that in pattern or songmode you can not solo more then one track.

are you high? how can you solo more then one track??? can you do it with more then one girl at a time? I don’t think so, but you can mute them…

... while I agree that soloing more than one track is a non sequitur, quite a number of mixing boards (and DAW software packages as well) do support “soloing” multiple channels at once… in that case, the “solo” function behaves as an “un-mute” function… thus to enable two out of sixteen channels you would only have to push two “solo” buttons rather than 14 “mute” buttons. So this isn’t really an unreasonable request.

Regards,

Brad Weber ;^)

I do fully agree with that. But what I totally don’t understand is that in pattern or songmode you can not solo more then one track. For me this would be such a great thing. Simply solo the sounds you want to layer. It would save lots of time editing.

Sorry, I was not clear also not high. I ment when you are playing ‘live’ that you have the possibility in song/pattern mode that you can layer midichannels. For now you can only play on 1 midichannel at a time. I think that it would make the XS much more quicker and userfriendly using it as a keyboard/mastercontroller that songmode becomes as a multimode where you can switch channels on and off. So most evident is that you can put on/off different solobuttons (or mutebuttons it doesn’t matter). So you can combine the sounds you want and switch between the 16 of them. On this way you can use all the channel midi possibilities. Only in song/pattern mode we have no sound cutoff. So for me it looks a very simple solution for a lot of possibilitys.
Naturally ‘the best would be: no cutoff switching voices or performances.

May I please, as a newbie to this forum and ex Motif ES owner, put things in perspective regarding the Fantom G and Korg M3 updates?

Fantom G: the board is far from finished. Sure, multi sampling came in an update as promised, but it was *advertized* from the release date. I don’t see it as extra feature, it was just missing/not ready at the release of the G.

The sequencer with it’s 128 tracks is counter productive, unintuitive and mouse usage is ... basicly worse than on your first 8088 XT in terms of usefulness.

Sound wise the G is great, but updates or any manufacturer response is ABSENT.

Dan Krishner at Roland US and Roland Germany as such do great support, but they can do only that. They have no say on how the G develops. I am an ex Fantom G owner and sold it out of OS waiting game frustration and seeing the results of the Musik Messe regarding the Fantom G news (none!) I have peace in that.

The Korg M3. Great machine, but I didn’t exactly get the feeling that taking the extra step needed to make it a serious workstation was taken seriously. The sequencer for instance had only event list editing and when asked for piano roll editing on the karma labs forum, it was stated by Stephen Kay that the screen was too small for supporting this.

I sold my M3 because of this (a, for me, unusable sequencer)

2 weeks later, M3 expanded update appears, with, you guessed it, piano roll editing via the touchscreen.

With other words. I’ve learned 2 lessons: Don’t buy gear based on promised, but on what it can do NOW and Don’t buy gear based on expectation, but on what it can do NOW.

BTW Lesson 3: never should have sold my motif ES!!! Aaaargh!

Yamaha is no different in Roland or Korg. Sometimes they disappoint and at other times they suprise. Keep that in mind if you plan a switch! ;)

Disclaimer: I am blissfully aware that my not getting on with Fantom’s, M3’s of Motif’s is a shortcoming in me and don’t necessarily are the fault of the machine!

ZITO - 03 April 2009 07:09 AM

With other words. I’ve learned 2 lessons: Don’t buy gear based on promised, but on what it can do NOW and Don’t buy gear based on expectation, but on what it can do NOW.

that maybe a good advise, but having yamaha introducing big color screen or roland even bigger one someone would think that updates and expansions will follow as avalanche because now it is possible to implement completely independent workstation from the computer.
I think roland will be a winner here in the end.

Yes, that maybe true - Roland ending up as the winner that is - but I’m not holding my breath. When and if the Fantom G is the winner then I will look at it again and not before. And in the mean time I will look around… ;-)

I wonder if Roland will survive the crisis.
I bet on Yamaha.

(just returned from the Musik Messe Frankfurt 2009)

;JOOP!

sciuriware - 06 April 2009 11:08 AM

I wonder if Roland will survive the crisis.
I bet on Yamaha.
;JOOP!

big rebates on both side now.

I was enjoying the dialog of this thread until I got to “lesbian’s” post.

This kinda of name and picture (Avatar) may be looked at as “hip” in your world now-a-days, but frankly I was offended!  The picture of what looks like two girls (children) kissing is disgusting and border-line Child Porn.

Your name would suggest you either are gay or support gay activities and I for one do not want or expect this kind of to be displayed on a Music formum web-site!

I would ask that you either change your profile or that the administrator remove you from this site.

Dkeyman

P.S. Also, I’m sick of this “Joop”, whatever the hell that means?  How about trying something more original!

dkeyman - 06 April 2009 12:57 PM

I was enjoying the dialog of this thread until I got to “lesbian’s” post.

This kinda of name and picture (Avatar) may be looked at as “hip” in your world now-a-days, but frankly I was offended!  The picture of what looks like two girls (children) kissing is disgusting and border-line Child Porn.

Your name would suggest you either are gay or support gay activities and I for one do not want or expect this kind of to be displayed on a Music formum web-site!


I would ask that you either change your profile or that the administrator remove you from this site.

Dkeyman

P.S. Also, I’m sick of this “Joop”, whatever the hell that means?  How about trying something more original!

Agreed with you. I would hate any of my children to login here and see this type of gender crap. I respect everyone’s rights… but those type of pictures are not right for this site.

I agree with dkeyman, let’s remove all aberrations.
To begin with The Dukester and The Funk Master,
because they promote BLACK PEOPLE in music.

And that JOOP should have his name changed ...
... although ... a name change will cost money ...
... as it is my real name !?!?!?!

;JOOP!