I am confused by this keyboard.  It has less ROM than the MOX but has 128 polyphony.  It has the voices from XS.

How can it sound as good as the XS or MOX?

Mike

Check this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSYpADuayIg
for a comparison of MX61 and S90XS (Motif).
In my oppinion they sound almost the same except the accoustic guitar slide effect. Of course, there must be fewer waveforms availiable in MX series ROM memory than in MOX and XS (155 MB instead of 355 MB) but the quality of
the existing ones must be the same. The 128 notes polyphony depends on the sound engine and not the availiable ROM and I think it is the same (AWM2)
in all intruments.

To reduce the ROM size some of the samples might be mono rather than stereo or using shorter loops.

There’s plenty of discussion/conjecture about this in other threads in this (MX) forum.

Or they just have a different number of waveforms (with the same quality).
If you see the specs of MOX and XS, there are 2670 waveforms. In MX (I haven’t counted them with JMelas MX tools) I believe there is half of this number and so that’s a reason for half ROM memory. The sound engine must be the same (AWM2 with XA) but the effects section must be different.

Let me just say: This is a fantastic little board! I have owned a Motif ES6 for a number of years, which I still love, but it really is a pain to haul around especially for smaller gigs.  I had resorted to carrying a light controller and using Mainstage – a decent workaround, but there is nothing like hitting the on button and jamming in 3 seconds flat.  Now I can have the Motif sounds on stage. And my MX61 is even lighter than my Axiom 61, which has no on board sounds.

I’ve been eyeing this thing ever since it was first advertised. Last Saturday, I got a father’s day special coupon from GC: $150 off anything $799 or more. Basically, that meant getting an MX61 for the price of an MX49!  I went to GC the next day and auditioned some of the performances and made sure that I could find what I considered essential among its 1000 voices and brought this baby home.

I read through this forum and saw some questioning the quality of the sound. Of course, it’s subjective but to my ears, the MX sounds great. I can’t speak to the number of waveforms, as I haven’t dug that deep yet; I suspect that it probably has fewer waveforms as Kostas said. I do not hear any “shortcuts” in the sounds that it does have. There are quite a few sounds that seem to stem all the way back to the ES, and to me, the MX versions sound just as good. One thing to keep in mind when doing these comparisons: be sure that the insert effect is turned on for the part of interest.

Ok, it does have some limitations (e.g., only 4 insert effects at a time in a performance) as compared to the XS or XF or even the ES.  But, after spending some time with it, I realized it also has some of its own unique strengths. To unlock all of the power, you really do need to use the software editors.  But, I get the design philosophy: create a low cost instrument with high quality sounds that you can immediately use live with 2-part layers/splits (as well as a rhythm section, if you care to), and then if you want to create complex up to 16-part layers, use the editors, then save the patches directly on the board and take them to the gig – no PC needed for live use.

I spent yesterday afternoon setting up my own 4-part layer killer performances (OK, I did create a monster 10-part layer), with the help of the free vycromx performance editor, and this little beast is ready to kick butt at gigs!

I compared the data lists of the MX with the XS and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the MX is actually missing only a few of the core voices of the XS (like maybe 3?).  It looks like it’s missing a total of about 50 voices: most of these are the Mega voices, a few for the vocoder, (see the XS Pre-8 bank, voices 81-128) and 4 drums kits.

What I did was to compare voices names. Now the MX uses shorter, abbreviated voice names due to the 10-character limit, but as you go down both lists, there’s generally a 1:1 correspondence within big blocks of voice categories. Once in a while, it’ll skip around, and that’s because the MX has the GM voices grouped in with the rest within a given category, whereas as the XS has a separate GM bank.

I assume that the MX uses the same waveforms as the XS, since their respective voices sound indistinguishable. I haven’t done an A/B myself, since I don’t have an XS, so I am basing this on the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSYpADuayIg

I suppose that someone who has an XS and MX and the MX voice editor could spot check a few voices to confirm this. To me what this means is that ~50% of the XS waveforms are going to ~50 of the voices. That’s probably not that much of a stretch when you consider that Mega voices probably take up considerably more wave memory due to the dense velocity switched layers, extra articulations etc.  This also means that XS voice libraries would probably port over to the MX fairly well (as long as they don’t rely on Mega voices).

In the end, I think that leaving the Mega voices out of the MX is not that big of deal: I qualify this, as I have not actually played the XS Mega voices. My Motif ES6 has a bunch, and although they sound great, I found that they are difficult to actually play, I mean for mere mortals.  The demos using Mega voices sound fantastic, but I think it took a lot of MIDI editing and tweaking to get there. So, again, for live use where I am positioning the MX, Mega voices won’t be too useful, IMHO.

AlKal - 22 June 2013 10:41 AM

... To me what this means is that ~50% of the XS waveforms are going to ~50 of the voices… quote]

Correction: I meant to say that 50% of the XS waveform memory is going to ~50 voices