Nord User Forum

hey guys
im on to buy a new yamaha keyboard for 2nd keyboard, my main keyboard is a nord stage
and i wanted to ask your opinion because i only try the new motif xf
witch one of these keyboards has the best sounds overall (im interested about sound quality not anything else)
motif es, motif xs, motif xf,yamaha mox, yamaha mx, yamaha s90 xs

thanks

Kronos

pianoman0018 wrote:witch one of these keyboards has the best sounds overall (im interested about sound quality not anything else)
motif es, motif xs, motif xf,yamaha mox, yamaha mx, yamaha s90 xs

Are you asking about sounds or sound quality? I can tell you about the basic sounds (the "voices" as Yamaha calls them)... The Motif ES is the only one there with the pre-XS sound set. All the rest are very similar to each other, they are all based on the XS sound set. Motif XS directly replaced the ES (I'm not sure how many ES sounds are in the XS as well). Motif XF has all the same sounds as the Motif XS, plus a bunch more. MOX has exactly the same sounds as the stock XS, though the XS can also take a number optional extra downloadable sounds that are not available for the MOX. S90XS has exactly the same sounds as the MOX except that it also has an additional high quality piano sound. The MX isn't shipping yet... it has XS sounds, but it it as yet unclear as to whether it has all of them, or simply most of them. It has "over 1000," the full set would be 1217 (" 1,024 Normal Voices + 64 Drum Kits, GM: 128 Normal Voices + 1 Drum Kit")

Yamaha boards also contain "performances" which are combinations of the underlying voices, and those differ among the models... they need to because of other differences, like some boards are capable of more simultaneous voices or more simultaneous effects than others, for example. There are other differences of course... like the feel of the keyboard, whether the keys have aftertouch, what auxiliary controls are available (sliders, pedals, ribbon, etc.), total polyphony, screen... really, a whole lot of other things, apart from the sounds themselves.

In terms of the other thing you said, sound quality, I don't know. I've read where some people feel that the same voice sounds better when played on, for example, an XF rather than a MOX... people have talked about the possibility of higher quality electronics, i.e. better quality DACs, etc., but I don't know about that for a fact.

One thing about the old Motif ES, though, is that it could take PLG expansion cards, which gave it some other sonic capabilities (virtual analog, acoustic instrument modeling, etc.) and those expansion cards are not compatible with the subsequent XS+ series.

anotherscott wrote:The MX isn't shipping yet... it has XS sounds, but it it as yet unclear as to whether it has all of them, or simply most of them. It has "over 1000," the full set would be 1217 (" 1,024 Normal Voices + 64 Drum Kits, GM: 128 Normal Voices + 1 Drum Kit")

The MX definitely doesn't have the full 355 mb XS sound ROM...the Yamaha spec sheet says 166Mb.

smullins wrote:

anotherscott wrote:The MX isn't shipping yet... it has XS sounds, but it it as yet unclear as to whether it has all of them, or simply most of them. It has "over 1000," the full set would be 1217 (" 1,024 Normal Voices + 64 Drum Kits, GM: 128 Normal Voices + 1 Drum Kit")

The MX definitely doesn't have the full 355 mb XS sound ROM...the Yamaha spec sheet says 166Mb.

That's interesting, thanks. That's a much smaller ROM considering that it has "over 1000" of the 1217 voices. You know, they say the sounds are "derived" from the XS... unless they're simply leaving out a number of the largest ones, maybe they are similar, and based on the same samples, but not quite the actual XS voices... i.e. maybe they are truncating samples (i.e. shorter attack portions before loops), or including fewer layers or more stretching, or employing some kind of compression... it will be interesting to see if it really sounds about the same as the other XS-based soundset models, or if it clearly doesn't sound quite as good.

[/quote]
Are you asking about sounds or sound quality?

im asking about sound quality...some people say motif es sounds are warmer than the xs etc....i know that is subjective but i want to hear your opinions.
i only tried and heard the motif xf(and i liked it) so i cant judge from youtube videos witch keyboard has better sound quality

I have a Motif es6, S90 es and a motif rack es. I love my ESs...

My friend have an XS8, it is a very good keyboard but I prefer my es, the sound is warmer.

If I did not have any motif, I'll probably by the motif xf6 for synth and my NS2 for piano.

Dan

freakpower wrote:Kronos

The MX 61 listed price in the net £499 was quite a surprise. Is there a catch? No aftertouch as far as I can see.
Sound quality?

Mr_-G- wrote:The MX 61 listed price in the net £499 was quite a surprise. Is there a catch? No aftertouch as far as I can see.
Sound quality?

I guess no one will be sure about sound quality until it ships. I would have loved a 73-76 key version with AT. Though for me, a really big thing it's missing is MIDI control functionality. I was thinking it could be a great super-lightweight board especially if you could connect it to an iPad to fill in on a few areas where the XS soundset is weak... you know, you could run a clonewheel app on the iPad, or one of the nice VA synth programs, or the BS-16i sample player... but you can't effectively control these from the MX, you can't create presets that call up external sounds and split/layer them with internal ones like you can on a MOX. I had been thinking about replacing my Korg Microstation with an MX49 for my super-portable board, except for this limitation.