hi
just like a poll:
could you explain why do you (if) prefer hardware workstation instead of software?

I find that developing ideas on a DAW leads me to a ‘get it perfect’ syndrome in which I spend as much (if not more) time tweaking sounds, editing MIDI, finding patches, than I do developing an idea.

On a hardware workstation (aka XS 8), I hardly bother with any of that, and just focus on the ideas.

It’s far quicker to get an idea down, in short.

It sounds better, you can work with it without booting a computer up, it sounds better, there is no CPU overhead on your DAW, it sounds better, the physical control surface is perfectly matched to the synth and it sounds better.

Oh, and one more thing - it sounds better.

Df.

Simply this: I want to play music, not “play computer.”

I also like the tactile response of a hardware workstation vs. some cheap controller that “almost” interfaces with whatever software I’m using. Actually, the biggest thing is… I like turning on my hardware workstation(s) and playing right away. By the time you boot up a computer and load whatever software you need, inspiration may have already left.

Lastly, I have no desire to play music live with a computer. And if I go to a concert and see the keyboard player is only using a laptop, I’m really disappointed, no matter what software he’s using.

If it’s not all in the box, I don’t want more boxes,
I want another box.

;JOOP!

I’ve long preferred hardware for its supposed simplicity of use, rugged portability, and a user interface that’s custom made for making music- that’s why i bought the XS.

However, after my frustrations with the new samples in the XSpanded give away program, I might look elsewhere. See the thread “Managing User Waveforms” :  Managing User Waveforms,

If I needed more than a small batch of new samples, I would seriously consider something like the Muse Receptor, which you can buy with Native Instrument Komplete 5 pre-installed, with SIXTY GIGABYTES of samples, as well as genuine synth engines (they aren’t all just romplers).

The XS is an admirable board in many ways, but if you’re interested in sounds that require new samples or synthesis beyond sophisticated sample playback, I would advise anyone without the patience of a saint or the natural talents of those geek-inclined, to consider the alternatives that are popping up- we live in the 21st century.  Yeah!

And, this hardware vs. software issue becomes further complicated because of price: I don’t always want to risk taking out a relatively fragile, board that i’ve got over $3,500 invested in- it needs to be a pretty good paying gig.  Korg has come up with an interesting solution: although the under $1,000 Korg M50 doesn’t have all of the features of its bigger brother, the samples on board mirror the flagship Korg M3 samples.  So what some people are doing is keeping the pricey, precious one in the studio, and taking the cheaper board to gigs, where it can load in the patches crafted from the more expensive board.

The Muse Receptor is basically a PC in a different shaped box, running a custom kernel. Software plugins are really making great leaps forward and sound very good but as of now they really don’t sound as good as dedicated top end hardware. A lot of the sound from the XS and other hardware synths is generated using VLSI chips and related technologies, which a general purpose Intel/AMD etc. CPU just can’t match realistically. It is for exactly this reason that hardware graphics cards exist to do stuff like 3D acceleration. Dedicated hardware is simply better. Once software begins to make serious use of hardware such as GPU and FPGA technology then the lines will become more blurred, but you still need a physical keyboard to play softsynths and the basic-but-proven-useful functions in the onboard sequencer on the XS are more than adequate for a whole bunch of functionality.

The Muse receptor looks like a great idea, and I’m sure its representative of a new breed of hardware but it looks like it relies on other peripheral hardware to work, and for an all-in-one music production box at top audio quality the XS (and similar workstations) is still the nearest thing to literally plug and play you’ll get. The Muse also has a fixed set of hardware controllers which by it’s very nature have to be generic to some extent and thus it has to make compromises with the integration between plugins and the control surface. Notice that even in the promo video on Youtube there is at least one shot of a stack of hardware next to it containing a Korg Triton Rack.

Bigger isn’t better. I don’t care if there’s 60Gb or 6Mb of wave data in a synth. If it sounds great, then that’s the cherry right there. Hell, most analogue synths had a handful of simple waveforms only and they are still highly desirable decades later. If you find a softsynth sounds good enough for you, then you’ll have a lot of fun in 60Gb I’m sure. Personally I’d take the XS ROM + VLSI and integrated control surface.

If you are looking for a DAW in a box, then the XS isn’t it. It’s a workstation with sampling included, not a sampler with a workstation included. As a means of getting real-world sounds into the XS, the existing sampling function is basic, but adequate. Management of big libraries of samples isn’t part of its design specification. As Yamaha have said on here several times in the past, the majority of XS owners do not use user samples in any form. They don’t even install DIMMs.

I suspect I fall somewhere in between these days… I use the sample content on the XS, but in conjunction with an external recording system (recently moved to a DAW from a hardware recorder) and when I need a sound on the XS such as the S700 piano, a sampled pad, string or choir etc. then I load the library, record my part and then move onto whatever is next in my to do list. I don’t expect the XS to be a librarian for me, that’s why I have a bunch of ‘ALL’ files which contain libraries as bought/downloaded, and a bunch of ALL files containing various sequenced snippets of this and that (usually one ALL file per project with multiple songs in it representing different sections, and then often an mLAN version of each one as well with edited voices to boost the output levels to max and all the faders pushed up - I find mLAN output rather conservative even with +6db enabled.)

Sounds to me as if you haven’t settled on a workflow that works for you yet, and are blaming the XS for that. It’s just a tool in a range of tools and if you are doing the kind of work that requires such granular organisation of so many banks of sounds then really you should probably figure out what you need to do it instead of laying all your grief at the feet of the XS itself.

Df.

df,
that’s fascinating, i hadn’t heard that before.  i’ve mostly read about how amazingly good some keyboards are compared to intel based streaming samplers, but that the computer based systems were better, esp for longer/bigger sample sets that allow for natural decay, more velocity layers, uncompressed samples, etc; and of course, for synthesis beyond romplers.  And, using general purpose computers for sound generation is not always ideal- the Receptors have the advantage over everyday computers by being setup for this job.

For me it’s not so much an issue of sound quality- it’s already good enough in present form on the XS- it’s about usability, portability, user-friendliness, etc.  From this point of view hardware boards have the advantage, or at least i thought they did.  But if you can get a plug and play system for the same money that expands on your sound set times twenty, gives you nearly unlimited tweak ability if so inclined, and is reliable as a hardware synth, then many of the original arguments are not as strong, and the added sounds on the computer side makes it very attractive.  I would definitely miss the control surface on the XS though (or on any workstation like the XS), ‘cause it has been customized for its job. 

Yes, I’m realizing i got caught up in the hype, and have been learning long, slow, expensive lessons on what i need and don’t need in a board.  I didn’t buy an ES because it was obvious that Yamaha’s reputation for user-unfriendliness was justified in the extreme.  My inclination with any board is to organize the sounds so I know what i’ve got, where i’ve got it.  It pisses me off that I bought into this “mature workstation” that has such a lousy file system for dealing with samples.  Once I stopped worrying about dealing intelligently with the new samples I started liking the XS again, ‘cause it is a fantastic board for the most part.

This conversation will be a bit different in 5 years i’m sure!

Randelph - 08 September 2009 03:24 PM

This conversation will be a bit different in 5 years i’m sure!

Undoubtedly :)

Df.

hardware defintely sounds better than any bright, clear softsynth crap. i wwas playing logic 9 exs sampler the other day - some jupiter sounds on it - and boy it sounded utter crap.

certain software i must admit sometimes gives earth shaking lows but you could get same from hardware by tweaking. the warm sound quality of hardware can never be met with vst or au even if you run it thru a high end interface or muse receptor

most of the modern trance music is made using software and you can hear the cheap softsynth quality in it. in the mid-late 90’s and early 2000 trance music was excellent because it was mostly done using software sequencer and hardware synths. now even the synths are done using software and you can hear that ‘cheaaaap’ quality...it sounds somewhat big but lacks warmth and is bright and crap sounding.

besides that, i like the fact that hardware never clicks or pops unless you change a patch or something...even then only alesis fusion did that...yamaha/korg/roland doesn’t.

gigs and gigs of sample libraries are good for orchestral maybe or for media song creation like broadcast or commercians but real keyboards are best for real songs that include vocals or even instrumentals. its like electric vs gasoline...electric cars have 80 percent efficiency so they squeeze every bit of juice out of less current than gasoline with 20 percent efficiency - most of the energy is lost in heat.

i’d rather have a 6mb motif xs 8 layer sound than a 1gb 24 layer kontakt sound....sorry but its not numbers but the music.

what gives hardware (even digital hardware) its warmth? is it the raw electricity coming out of the wires in the form of audio signal...you decide!

For the last 2 mos I been trying the software way but now i give up Dedicated hardware is just better. Personally I dedicated 25 hours a week to my XS and 2488neo.  When the singers come I dont have time to play with no PC or MAC.  Yes i install DIMM for samples a Big PLUS.

IF you are looking for the software way you dont need the XS.

When i record with the XS I’m sure what to do.

Echoing the above comments, it’s worth reinforcing the point that you can include a good softsynth or two in most reasonably complex mixes without it noticing too much, but if you build a whole track from them, then it becomes a really obvious difference.

I’ve often used softsynths to compose and sketch out ideas but time spent reproducing the sounds I like onto real hardware and re-recording the parts using that makes an immense difference. For clarity, solidity, stereo image and general fidelity there is absolutely no contest.

These days with the popularity of MP3 and the loudness wars (ie: compress everything so that the dynamic range of a mix is entirely sitting within the 0 to -2db range) true fidelity is often overlooked. Commercial CDs often have distortions caused by this insane obsession with ‘loud’, (and glitches caused by time stretching) which you can really hear on proper monitors (I use Yamaha MSP7s). Softsynths are good in that they provide affordable creativity to people who would otherwise be unable to explore the wonderful world of producing your own material, but I remain firmly of the belief that the quality of the engineering and the output is just as important as the music itself.

Compare any MP3 (of anything!) to a decent CD recording of a classical orchestra on a high quality system and you’ll be hit between the eyes by a world of difference. Nature gave us amazing ears, it seems crazy not to make the most of that. Personally I even cringe a little when my 24 bit mixes get compromised by the very act of putting them on CD.

Df.

Show up, plug in, turn on, and in 30 seconds, im ready to play!

As an added bonus, if we have to setup before the gig, and come back after dinner, I can just leave the keyboard there.  No need to shut down, and grab the laptop.

i work with computers, for almost 10 years.
computer is the last thing I want to see in my house
i don’t mind using an intel computer if it looks like a synth, but to look like a typical computer or laptop? no way !

Hardware keyboard makes me feel like I’m a musician, not an engineer, and I like that feeling so much I’m ready to cope with my so many ways handicapped XS. It’s still the best there is.

Machines like the MOTIF-series help me make music. I sit down and do all the tracks in it… use the sounds within it. I guess it feels like a “totally integrated environment” - to coin a technical phrase. I get inspired.

Yamaha has always found great ways to enhance there workstations and keep them evolving. There hardware is always on my “highly desired” list. :-)

Cheers
Brian
CUNKA - Motif -