Ok, I had an ES and the Whistle Patch was the one I used most for Reggae.  Then I got an XS and noticed the dramatically weaker sound coming out of the XS.  Has anyone done a comparison of this General Midi sound between the Classic and the ES?  How do they compare?

Re: GM Whistle Patch in Classic vs ES vs XS

quote]Then I got an XS and noticed the dramatically weaker sound coming out of the XS.

The Whistle Voice is the same. In the ES the Voice Output is 127, in the XS the Voice Output is 101. The wave data is the same. We will assume you know how to turn it up.

Re: GM Whistle Patch in Classic vs ES vs XS

First of all, Badmister, Maximum Respect to you.  Obviously you are an extremely knowledgeable contributor to this board and have helped hundreds of people.

Sure you can turn it up but if you turn both boards up to the max then the XS is weaker, and turning up the gain obviously will increase the noise floor as well… in a studio context. 

But that is not even my major concern.  The sound is different (on a diet) even at the same volume.  I A/Bed them myself and went in and even edited the XS to try to get a comparable sound.

Yamaha imho, has responded to all these user requests and specs at the expense of sound quality and hardware quality… from the key action to the casing (with the xs)

I will continue to do my own research on this issue because everyone hears things differently anyway. 

Every successive motif has been a completely different keyboard instead of an improvement on the previous.  Call it marketing genius…

Re: GM Whistle Patch in Classic vs ES vs XS

never mind…