Chase wrote:

Hello,
I work for a school and we have several of the S90es keyboard/synthesizers. We have been very happy with them over the years, so we recently bought the s90xs to replace one. We can't seem to get the same quality basic piano sound as we were getting on the es. Is there something in the library or the presets that we might be missing? Or is there a different product that more closely resembles the basic piano sound the es had? Thanks!

Welcome to Yamaha Synth! Thanks for the question.

What many people miss is the fact that the pianos in the Yamaha keyboards are sampled in stereo... And the stereo versions of the pianos suffer particularly if you play them back in mono. There are mono pianos in the S90XS if you are not connected in stereo. The difference should be clear to musicians (in particular). Music is meant to be played through a stereo system. If you are not playing your S90 XS through a stereo system, you should select the Monaural Piano (Preset 1: 010(A10)) - for best results. And never, never, ever sum the Left and Right Outputs through a single speaker (mono) system. This I should mention, first of all. The difference is huge. Stereo is why headphones have a speaker for each ear... Life itself is in stereo!!! And music is better in stereo. Yes, it is more work and effort to setup and play in stereo, but the difference is well worth the effort.

When we replace a model, typically it is because we have enough new and powerful features to warrant the hardware change. We do not put out the exact same product. So yes, much of the S90 XS is different from what was in the S90 ES... (That was a major change). It would make no sense to put the exact same Voices in the replacement model. One of the things we hear a lot is that someone's favorite Voice was not included in the new product. Some of the Voices become serious favorites and are hard to part with... We do try to remain sensitive to this, however.

The Motif-series and the S-series have been close siblings throughout their history... The main difference being the Motif-series is a music production ('workstation') synthesizer that includes a sampler and a recording sequencer. The S-series is generally the same engine without the sampler and recording sequencer.... Thus the major difference in price.

That sampler engine allows the Motif-series to load new Waveforms into memory, thus allowing Motif owners to load their favorites... Customize their own Wave ROM. For example, the ULTIMATE PIANO COLLECTION is a sample library made for the Motif XF - it includes the entire history of Motif and S-series pianos plus some additional pianos. These can be loaded onto the Motif XF's optional FLASH BOARDS. The concept of the Flash Board allows professional musicians to load their own sounds, (their favorite sounds) and make those a semi-permanent part of their internal wave library.

The S80 (1999), the S90 (2002) and the S90 ES (2005) all featured a recreation of a Yamaha S700 hand-crafted acoustic grand piano as its principal piano - it, like the Power Grand from the original Motif (2001), quickly became a favorite Voice among musicians. When the Voice architecture of the engine went from 4 Elements (Waveforms) per Voice to 8 Elements (when we transitioned from the ES series to the XS series) new data was created. The additional Elements allowed for more nuance and detail within each Voice... So all new pianos were done (of course, this means some folks would be disappointed because their favorite Voice might not be included in the next model).

We heard much about this at Yamaha... The solution is the Motif-series and it's customizable Wave ROM... A version of the beloved S700 from the S90 ES was created to be loaded into the Motif XS - enhanced to include the extra nuances now available with 8 Elements. The Motif XS had an option to add sample RAM. You had to load your custom data each time you powered up (samples being in volatile memory). The Motif XF takes this customizable Wave ROM to the next logical point where the Flash Board retains your custom Wave data between power cycles. This allows musicians on tour, for example, to simply take their Flash Boards and a USB stick containing their library with them on the road.

The data can be loaded into a backline rental unit in about one minute... Granted a feature only for top touring professionals but it is how the whole thing evolved. You may have heard the story about Chick Corea and his Rhodes Mark V... Yamaha transferred the Wave data so he can load it into any Motif XF. Point here is, you get 3,977 Waveform in the factory library, the Flash Boards allow the Motif XF owner to add 4,096 of their own hand picked Waveforms from which to build Voices.

The Motif XF currently comes with a Flash Board and the aforementioned "Ultimate Piano Collection" which includes the beloved S700 piano from the S90 ES (among other goodies in the 40th Anniversary Premium Contents Pack).

Thank you so much for the information! We are looking at the Motif but have a few questions. The sx90's already have a lot of features that we don't quite know how to use. We are musician people, not techie people--we are very picky about the sounds that we want, but not so good at the programming side of things. We need to be able to program a show so that we can switch instrument sounds with the push of a button, and if possible, split the keyboard so on half plays one sound and the other half another (not as important as the first point). Is this something that we will be able to program relatively easily/figure out on the Motif? Or, is there someone in the Colorado Springs Area who can help train us on this aspect? Basically we are willing to do the upgrade, but not if we can't figure out how to use it :p Thanks!

We are musician people, not techie people--

I understand this completely. But as words of encouragement... to become the former is much, much more complicated and difficult than mastering the latter. When you play an electronic keyboard be it a Stage Piano or a Stage Synth or a Music Production Synth yes, there is a learning curve. But it pales in comparison to the learning curve to become a musician.

Creating (programming) setups that work for you is a matter of having a musical idea of what you want to accomplish, then the technology can be setup to serve this need. In the keyboards (all of them) a single instrument program is called a VOICE. When you want to create a SPLIT or a LAYER you want to place more than one VOICE on the keyboard for real time play. The modes you need to learn about are VOICE mode and PERFORMANCE mode.

A PERFORMANCE allows you to place as many as four VOICES across the keyboard at one time. You can set a NOTE LIMIT (a range) for each of these sounds. It is not complicated and you already know about this website (where you can get detailed help) - or if you'd rather talk to a Yamaha Application Specialist you can call our customer support desk and receive one-on-one help at your convenience. They will work with you until you are satisfied with accomplishing your particular requirements.

Like your S90 XS you have VOICE mode (1 Instrument Program), PERFORMANCE mode (4 instrument Programs played simultaneously) and Multi/Mixing mode (16 Instrument Programs with assignable MIDI channels) available on your keyboard for real time access.

Hope that helps.

Simple question like this: Does Yamaha have any intentions to build a new S series Synth? like an S90XF or something with the montage sound library

Simple answer: I don't know. We'll have to wait and see!