Hello Motifator!  New member today. 

I’ve owned many PSR models, the original motif and have had an S90ES (which I am playing it at church now) since they first released them (6 years ago?).

When I took my S90es to chuch (man, does it sound awesome there too!) - I needed to fill an empty keyboard stand at home.
Logical replacement/upgrade - S90XS

Here is where my adventure begins.

Confident in my many years of Yamaha ownership, and Bert’s and Bad Mister’s youtube demos - I mail ordered the S90XS.

My first day or so was gleefully exploring the new board and all its glorious sounds, bells and whistles…

After this I crack my knuckles and sit down and get back into what I do most - play the piano. So I select Pre1 A1 - Natural S6
My initial reaction to the S6 was - Wow! What an expressive piano.

Then it happened… I’m playing a slow soft song (my main playstyle) in the key of D. Hitting the first note - D2 (key #18) and nearly fall backwards off the bench!

WHAT WAS THAT NOISE?  I hit it again.  Soft, Medium, Loud… It’s just… uhg, this can’t be right.  Then I start poking on keys around this range and discover it is only the D and it’s neighboring sharp and flat.  All other notes on the piano sound perfect.

I start playing other voices and find that they are all just fine, EXCEPT for anything that has “S6” on it.

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Now, to me… this isn’t something I would EVER think would be a normal sounding sample.  I’ve been playing my S90ES for nearly 6 years and the S700 on it is flawless on all 88 keys… well, as flawless as the original piano they sampled it from anyhow.

So after a few hours of “trying” to play this thing - and continually getting the feeling someone standing behind me scratching a chalkboard with their finger nails every time I hit the note - I said, “That’s it.  I’ve had it.  This keyboard is faulty and it’s going back.”

The company I ordered it from was very nice about it and issued an RMA and they exchanged it - no charge.

A week later, my new board comes.

WHEW! Glad that’s behind me - NOW I can get back to my piano playing!

The first note I hit when I hooked it up - D2.  (BONK!!!!! Riiiiiing!)

At this point, my heart sank.

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Now the horror begins.

The online store I purchased from suggested I contact Yamaha.  OK, no problem.

WOW! I would have never expected what came next.  This guy at Yamaha (yea Isaac Hawkins, I’m calling you out on this!) was the rudest customer service person I have ever dealt with in life.

OK, Yamaha customer service rating. -1 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Moving on.  Searching the internet I find several discussions on this (because it is obvious to me now that this is the intended sample from Yamaha)

A few links.  Although I don’t understand why some are calling out the D1 key as having the bad harmonic… it’s the D2 (17th, 18th, 19th) keys that suffer the worst..
arrangerworkstation.com
another arrangerworkstation.com
sninety.com
acapella.harmony-central.com (see point #2)

As my second (and last) S90 was returned for a full refund.  My heart began to desire the Motif XF8 (which is what has led me to hear).

After watching many review and demo video’s on YouTube, I’ve decided I’m ready to step back up to the fullness of a synthesizer and get the flagship.

I go to the local GS on my lunchbreak today to play one.  I NEEDED to know that the S6 sample on that board had been corrected from what they put on the S90XS.

NOPE!  Same thing.  ARRRG!

So my question for all you guru’s…

Is THIS WHAT A REAL S6 piano sounds like????

Strike the 17th, 18th, 19th keys on YOUR Motif XF for the S6 piano and tell me this isn’t a bad sample??

My wife - she has absolutly zero ear for music and SHE can hear this aweful harmonic - plain as day.

Now, I’ve played many acoustic pianos and yes, they all have their “flaws” here and there… But this, this is beyond a simple “flaw"… this is a custom built S6.  Pianos like this [DO NOT] have such blatent flaws in them.

Sorry my first post was so dramatic.. lol… but I really would like to hear your “expert” opinions on JUST THESE THREE SPECIFIC KEYS on the S6 samples please.

Yea, I know most of you do not play solo piano - at all… but play multi-voice-tracks all the time… and something like this affects you ZERO.  I know this.  So please don’t reply - “This doesn’t affect me. It’s no big deal. Why are you complaining?”

Lastly, if I were to buy the Motif XF (I’m totally undecided at this point due to this issue), can I download and load the ORIGINAL S700 sample from the S90ES?  And is it a “free” download?

If I do buy this board, I will “HAVE” to have the S700 samples to play for songs where those keys would jump out and kick my head in… (I don’t particually care for the CFIII samples).

Thanks!!!!

I consider myself partly a “solo piano” artist.  I’m currently working on a jazz fusion album (so this doesn’t affect me....HAH!  kidding!)...BUT...my next album is going to be back to solo piano so this DOES affect me.

I shall try to duplicate what you’re speaking of on my XF8 and report back via this forum.  We can also have a discussion offline if you wish.

I’m hoping there will be a satisfactory solution for all of us solo piano folks.  If you listen to my album “At My Father’s Cabin”, you’ll hear plenty of slow dreamy sections of songs (where the sustain and inter-note string resonance DOES matter) as well as choppy percussive sections of songs where the attack (and possible horrid harmonic dissonance you speak of DOES again matter).

Hang in there!

Kevin B. Selby
http://kevinselby.com <-- Peaceful Music
http://facebook.com/BajaDunes <-- Live Performance

Hi Agent707,
Welcome to Motifator Forum.
Sorry about your negative vibe concerning those couple of notes.
Perhaps this is something which could be addressed in a future os update.

Best wishes, enjoy the forum

Chas

Oh...and just to avoid confusion:

NONE of the “acoustic piano” sounds on ANY of my albums (except the track “Bonsai Tree” on the in-progress album “At My Old School") are coming from the Motif XF.  Most, if not all acoustic piano on my albums to date came from a little soundfont called “GP1” (and yes, not the best samples, but consider the timeframe the albums were recorded in).

The acoustic piano on “Bonsai Tree” is like the very first patch on the XF8 (can’t remember the name right now)...but perhaps it’s the CFIII?  Sorry I’m usually extremely OC about specific patches, but for instrumental jazz stuff, the instruments all blend together and there is more “forgiveness” in the mix.

I assure you that after about 1/1/2013 (when, presumably, “At My Old School” is complete and released), when I sit down to start writing/recording the next solo piano album I will most assuredly be listening very intently to ALL the various grand pianos I can get out of the XF (including some of the libraries you can buy and load into the flash board(s)).

Hey there.  Thanks for the replies already.

Kevin, I will certainly listen to your music when I get home (I’m at work still.  shshshshshs) :)

Chas, thanks and nice meeting you.  I’ve read your posts for a long time now. Glad to finally get to say hello.

I can assure you Yamaha isn’t going to do anything about this.  After my knock down drag out with Yamaha support (ok, Isaac did most of the knocking down and dragging… I mostly just stood there with my mouth hanging open), it was more than apparent to him “there isn’t a problem”.

Here, I am just mostly curious at how/if these few notes affected the rest of the yamy community… and what anyone has done to compensate.

Like I said, I was, and still am planning to get the XF8.  I mean hey, I need SOMETHING to play!  ..and the stage pianos just aren’t for me. I’ve always been a synth person.

Do either of you know about the S700 sample?  I want to know where I can get it, and if I have to pay for it… THEN I will pick my board up and put all this behind me.

I found this Yamaha Loyalty Samples (S700 piano, etc) for Motif XS, but I’m not sure if this is the same as what I have with my S90ES.

Thanks again.

p.s. here is a recording of me banging on these keys on the S90XS when I was throwing a fit about it.  lol
Listen to this wave file for a sample of these keys

Depending on your speakers - you can hear to awful harmonics when I hit the 17th, 18th and 19th keys.

I played a little below them and a little above them first, then hit those three keys.  Should be apparent.
The XF8 did this same thing today when I test drove it at GS.

So I played the .wav file “in-air” (over my office speakers) and definitely heard what you’re speaking to.  Then I went out to the car and got my flat (EQ-wise) sony in-ears and listened and heard EXACTLY what you’re speaking to.

It’s like the sample got stretched across 4 keys (for example) and the harmonics (it seems metallic in nature?) or some other weird decay sound gets warped when you move up the keyboard.  The particular metallic ringey sound probably is fine ON THE ORIGINAL NOTE THAT IT REPRESENTS.  But when it gets “stretched”, it detunes somehow and sounds bad.  The sustained notes themselves are probably fine, it’s the sound immediately after the initial attack.  Kind of a bell-like sour-ness.

I’ll check it out on the XF as well just to be sure.

Now...all that aside.  One of the things I’ve noticed about Yamaha grand pianos (and the various instruments that use samples from said Yamaha grand pianos) is that they are very bright and cut through a mix (sparkly almost) and you can almost always notice this weird metallic “hit” after every note.  That’s what usually clues me in that we’re dealing with a Yamaha.  I actually LIKE that aspect of their grand pianos because the sound really does jump out and sparkle your ears.  However, what appears to be happening here is that the “sparkle” isn’t so sparkley when it comes to whatever is going on in the way they architected the samples across the keys (and/or whatever filtering and other “stuff” is going on).

I’ll have to get back to you since I’m not at my keyboard.

Hello Agent707,

As a new owner of Motif XF8 I was curious regards your issue with the bad harmonic of D2 (17th, 18th, 19th) keys.
I am listen to those keys with the Natural S6 sample today, but to me it sound fine. I mean I can’t hear any specific disharmony compare to those keys above or below.
My Motif(on OS v1.30) is connected to Yamaha Studio Monitor HS80M, which have a reputation to give a ‘true’ sound.

Regards the ORIGINAL S700 sample. You can download sound library titled ‘Inspiration In A Flash’. It featuring three banks of new Voices and Waveforms can be downloaded from http://www.motifator.com. Bank 1 includes the S700 Piano from the S90ES.

By the way...between the S6 and the S700 (and the CFIII is yet another?)...all these different “grands” are completely jumbled in my head right now for some reason...HOWEVER, I remember doing the research for my XF8 (and then I even got an XF7 for road use) and I could have sworn that you COULD indeed have all three for free (as long as you had a flash ram board) and I think I downloaded all the free promotional sample packages (there are two of them...I’ll find the URL’s when I have more time) and I THINK the S700 is in one of them and perhaps the S6 is in the other (or are you telling me the S6 is already on my XF??).  See?!  Very jumbled to my mind.  BUT...I will get to the bottom of it and see what I can find.  I have all the free sample download stuff stashed away on my studio desktop PC plus I’m quite confident I can find the URL’s on Motifator to hopefully get you an answer.

I really need to get my own head straight because I am absolutely going to either release a solo album to be a follow-up to “Cabin” or die trying.  And I need to have my pianos straight!

Stay tuned.

Whoops!  Posted too late!  Thanks FoXy8!  I knew the S700 was out there somewhere.

Again...stay tuned (for other stuff...cuz now I need to load the S700 and compare).

Yes I hear that flaw, sounds bad IMHO. I usually prefer the CFIII and for that reason I didn’t noticed this.

It’s a shame that after years having this issue reported, there is no fix available.

For our part, it’s not an easy way to fix this because this WAVEFORM is in ROM… we don’t have access to those WAVEFORMS.

We may try replacing those notes with the CFIII or the S700 waveforms by using key ranges, I don’t know if this replacement would be more noticeable than the original faulty KEYMAPS.

Thanks much FoXy8.  I searched, found and downloaded it. :) Wow.  384 voices! hah! Nice.

Now, I just need something to load them onto.  I think I’m going to Order.  I like Sweetwaters deal with the upgrade to 1024MB flash board.

MarPabl, you make an interesting suggestion.  Making a {custom voice} where I could potentially use the S6 voice and remap the (IMO) flawed keys to say, the S700 samples.  hmmmm..  is this possible with this board?  Interesting.

Kevin, I checked out your website and listened to your music.  Very inspiring and good music.  Thanks for that. I hope to be that good one day.

(I’m a real novice player, just so you know).

Thanks guys.  Heading to get my board ordered.

Agent707 - 20 June 2012 10:46 PM

MarPabl, you make an interesting suggestion.  Making a {custom voice} where I could potentially use the S6 voice and remap the (IMO) flawed keys to say, the S700 samples.  hmmmm..  is this possible with this board?  Interesting..

Yes, this is possible for sure. With AWM2 (also with S90XS I think), you can create a hole on the key range assignment by setting the lower note (E2 for instance) to be higher than the upper note (C2 for instance), then you assign other ELEMENT to fill the gap (from Db2 to D#2 for instance)

With Motif XF, there are lots of variations for the piano WAVEFORMS (stretched, unstretched, remapped, mono, stereo, etc., etc.) so before putting the WAVEFORM of a totally different piano, I would check every single variation of the available S6 WAVEFORMS to see if one of those doesn’t have this ugly issue.

I hope someone can do the actual test and report back results. Currently I don’t have the Motif XF so I can’t test myself.

I just tried it on my XF8, and I definitely hear what you’re talking about with the S6.  The CFIII does not seem to have that problem, which I prefer over the S6.

Ordered the XF8 from Sweetwater this evening, with the FW16E.  Will have it next Tuesday.

Looking forward to loading up the 1GB flash with some cool stuff.... and seeing if I can create me a good custom S6 piano replacing those 3 keys with something.

I’m going to make it a project of mine to get that piano fixed! lol.

Thanks for confirming moxrox. Yes, the CF sounds just fine.

Well, I was playing and comparing the S6 and CFIIIS yesterday and can tell you that I do appreciate the offering of two noticeably different sounding instruments. However, the S6 they have is not impressive and according to your experience poorly sampled or set up prior to sampling. Not to sound arrogant or anything but I have heard many 6’ or so Yamaha grands that sound much better than this sample, one of which is my own C5. I would have heard these sour samples sooner or later but I appreciate your posting of this to save me the aggravation of spending time figuring out what was going on…

I tested this with my XF6 today and yes the problem is clearly there in those three keys.

This is especially noticeable in mezzo piano (mp) and mezzo forte (mf) waveforms that have been used in elements 4 (Note Limit: C-2 to F#5, Velocity Limit: 47 to 81) and 3 (Note Limit: C-2 to F#5, Velocity Limit: 82 to 104) respectively. In the other elements, the ringing noise is less apparent. I also checked the other S6 waveforms (from waveform no. 44 to 145) and the noise is most apparent in mp and mf waveforms only - more in some, less in some.

I don’t think much can done about this issue without changing the character of the Piano sound as a whole unless the waveforms themselves are replaced by Yamaha (and I doubt if that’s feasible).