So when is this YC Mark 2 coming out? I've heard reference to it several times. Is it a double manual or something weird like that or hopefully it's what the YC should have been originally. Was best said that the first waffles get tossed out. If it expands to custom voice creation like SKpro and adds AN or something that would be cool. MUST rework the micro tiny interface for young people only with 20/20 vision. What old people don't play stage boards? Where was that market research? You heard it here first but we all love the largest, most high resolution touch screen you can install. That will always be a fact from now until time ends. SKpro is not that but it's color and considerably larger. Just thinking that as time passes screens should never get smaller. The feedback screens are fine, I like those scattered about. I do hope they don't dumb down the good stuff on YC to force it to fit a price category.

Hi David --

[quotePost id=120893]So when is this YC Mark 2 coming out? [/quotePost]

It's a figment of my imagination. 🙂 No one outside Yamaha knows their product roadmap -- not even YamahaSynth forum members. 😀

[quotePost id=120893]You heard it here first but we all love the largest, most high resolution touch screen you can install. That will always be a fact from now until time ends. [/quotePost]

There must be genuine cost concerns WRT screens that I haven't deep dived. On an intuitive level, choice of screen affects choice of screen interface, which in Yamaha engineering-land may affect choice of host processor, too. The ARM-hosted platforms get the bigger screens and separate LCD receiver IC(s). The SWX-hosted platforms (like YC) get the small screens due to the on-chip, integrated LCD interface.

[quotePost id=120893]I do hope they don't dumb down the good stuff on YC to force it to fit a price category. [/quotePost]

Well, heh. CK fills the mid-range price gap, so I don't think there's a need for "YC lite". At some point, Yamaha will give the YCs a spiff and put out a Mark 2. I hope they pay attention to your suggestions (and mine). 🙂

All the best -- pj

I'm no good at keeping secrets so if I'm working for Yamaha I'd be leaking new product info constantly. This isn't a matter of national security, probably only a competitor would care to know so they could one-up them. I'd turn up "suicided" by the Yamaha KGB top secret Keyboard Guard Board. Don't believe it whatever they tell you. Still each company has their own custom design philosophy or concept concerning what their customers want or expect. Not sure I envisioned the CK toy level board however it does seem to follow the road map from Montage down to MOX+. Proves why MOre is less? Eventually the MOX+2c will be $600. Honey I shrunk the guts or transplanted them and by subtractive design removed everything that wasn't absolutely bare minimum. What will the Montage AF "Analog Falcon" cost I wonder? Oops I let the cat out of the bag again. You remember when they'd start with a base product and double it every few years. Now they just chop it down. Makes me think there isn't another YC coming in the upwards direction. YC61 was the burnt waffle and then came the 73/88. Maybe the YC gets swallowed up by the Analog Falcon.

[quotePost id=120893]You heard it here first but we all love the largest, most high resolution touch screen you can install. That will always be a fact from now until time ends. [/quotePost]

That's not a fact, it's an opinion - and I disagree with it. A big touch screen is quite at home on a workstation or arranger, to facilitate their deep functionality. On a stage keyboard, less really is more, and I think the screen should be big enough to succinctly show the critical information, and nothing more. Anything else introduces clutter.

Even the existing YC screen has redundant information - for example, why reproduce the drawbar settings on the screen, when they are right there on the actual drawbars?

Korg took the idea even further on the SV, having no screen at all - too far, in my view, but I think the YC has it about right. The most important controls take place off-screen, and their values are shown there (drawbar positions, effects levels, LEDs). Often the visuals are not even that important for live playing - for example, I don't increase chorus or reverb until it reaches a certain value, I turn the knob until it sounds right, and then keep playing, and often would hardly even look at the encoder, let alone the screen.

I also have a MODX; its screen is probably 10 times the size of the YC, with colour and touch, and I find the whole thing painful and tedious - I use buttons/knobs/sliders to input data where I can, but many functions can only be accessed via touch. Overall, I find the YC to be a better UX by a long long way.

It's horses for courses, but a bigger screen on the YC is the last thing I would wish for.

Still think they assume wrongly that only young people with good eyesight are going to buy the YC. Most of us are older not with good eyesight and we have the money to buy these expensive boards. Maybe it doesn't require a touch screen but a larger screen that is tilted toward your direct line of vision is a very practical idea for every player because eventually you will need to look at it. The knobs stick way up above the surface what 3/4" so it's not impossible to angle a screen. Makes my neck hurt. I know it's cheaper to keep it flat. Larger is better if you have to or want to look at it. I also know this was inherited from CP to keep it cheaper so they never intended to make it bigger and better. Maybe they will on the next version.

Maybe it doesn't require a touch screen but a larger screen that is tilted toward your direct line of vision is a very practical idea for every player because eventually you will need to look at it.

Why not just add the capability to use a remote screen via a USB port like you can do with the Montage and Modx.

They don't publicize that functionality but it works with those instruments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrrvr8kL088

Disclaimer: This is a unsupported feature use at your own risk.

Only USB 2.0 devices are supported by the Montage / MODX.

What worked for me:
Dell 21.5 inch S2240T Touch Screen Monitor
Hewlett Packard NL571AA USB to VGA adapter
Powered 4 port USB 2.0 Hub.

I think it would be much more practical to be able to use an external display that you could orient however you want.

IMO I don't see a need for enlarging the instrument case, and adding significant weight, for a large display when there are plenty of external displays that could be used.

[quotePost id=120862]The 61 is $999 at Sweetwater which means is was manufactured for $500 or less using the 50% rule. Yamaha has to make $333 if not more and the dealer has to make $300 so maybe it's only $400 to manufacture. That's pretty amazing to get anything great out of this for that little. [/quotePost]
While it is not fixed in stone, my understanding is that it is typical for MI gear to sell for approximately 5x cost to manufacture, which could bring the CK61 down to maybe about $200 to build. That's apparently the kind of margin needed to maintain a company selling this kind of niche product. (Apple probably sells more iPhones in a day than Yamaha will sell CK61/CK88 over the entire life of the product.) Though that's just raw cost of manufacture. That doesn't count things like R&D, initial fabrication, freight, warranty service, general overhead (administrative costs, buildings, etc.). And in the end, yes, they need to make a profit, as does their distributing arm in whatever country, as does the retailer.

[quotePost id=120951]I'm no good at keeping secrets so if I'm working for Yamaha I'd be leaking new product info constantly. This isn't a matter of national security, probably only a competitor would care to know so they could one-up them.[/quotePost]Not letting the competition know what you're doing is one aspect of secrecy. Another is how leaked plans of unavailable products can affect the sales of available products. Famously, Osborne was once a major maker of CP/M computers, and it became known that they were working on coming out with a new line that was IBM compatible, and people stopped buying their CP/M models, and they went out of business.

[quotePost id=120968]I think the screen should be big enough to succinctly show the critical information, and nothing more...Often the visuals are not even that important for live playing[/quotePost]
Yes, and it can really depend on how you're using the board. Coincidentally, I just re-evaluated my use of the YC73. Various interface decisions made it less useful for on-the-fly mixing-and-matching of sounds than I had expected it to be... but as a lower board that is part of a pair, I realized I could use it in a way I've used other boards, using the bottom board almost entirely for preset recall with few exposed other controls, allowing the 2 sets of keys to be kept close together and keeping the overall footprint that much smaller as well. All those other controls are still very useful for pre-gig setup, to assemble the sounds I want, but at the gig, I could often use it in a configuration something like this:

I'm not saying I'd always use it this way, there are times I'd want more navigational ability than this, but sometimes, this is all I need. This gives me quick access to 16 sounds (some of which are sets of multiple sounds), with on-off switches for the different parts (for the ones that are multiple sounds), with drawbar/rotary control for the organs, and even the ability to turn splits on and off (and switch octaves of parts when I do). With my little cheat sheet of sounds you see taped there, I don't need to see the screen at all. (The chart tells me which button gets me which sounds, for the first two banks of 8. Little trick: The first bank has no organs. For the second bank, I always have organ enabled, even if volume is at zero. That way I can tell whether I'm in bank 1 or bank 2 by looking at the indicator light for the organ on-off switch.) I'm not necessarily committed to this approach, but it's an interesting alternate way of looking at ways the board can be used... and seemed relevant to mention here since, indeed, there is no reliance on the screen during performance at all.

[quotePost id=120969]Still think they assume wrongly that only young people with good eyesight are going to buy the YC. [/quotePost]
So along the same lines, and also being aware that sometimes a top board can impede the visibility of a bottom board's screen, or the screen can be hard to read on an outdoor gig, or as David said here, our eyes aren't always entirely cooperative as we age (and for that matter, there are many visually impaired players), I am similarly generally interested in ease of navigation for poor visual circumstances... but again, instead of saying the answer has to be a bigger screen, to me, the I'd be more interested in maximizing usability without always having to rely on the screen. Bigger screens add to the size and cost, and still don't really solve problems like outdoor glare, etc. So if this is of interest, please check out the ideascale idea I posted about thisthe ideascale idea I posted about this and upvote it if you're so inclined. (In short, I think you should be able to navigate banks using absolute button combinations, instead of having to scroll through them on the screen. And this could probably be done through a software update.)

[quotePost id=120970]
Why not just add the capability to use a remote screen via a USB port like you can do with the Montage and Modx.
...
I think it would be much more practical to be able to use an external display that you could orient however you want.

IMO I don't see a need for enlarging the instrument case, and adding significant weight, for a large display when there are plenty of external displays that could be used.
[/quotePost]
I'm not sure how useful that really is, I wonder how many Montage/MODX users have done that. For my own purposes, it wouldn't really accomplish anything, because I'm not going to carry an extra monitor to a gig for this purpose, never mind how I'd mount it. At home, most of what I'd want a bigger screen for, I could probably do by firing up the John Melas tools, where you get, not just the bigger screen to show you more parameters at once, but tools like the keyboard and mouse to move things around and rename them.

I'm not sure how useful that really is,

I'm not sure you understood the point I was making. Not talking about a 2nd display.

The point was to NOT provide a built-in screen but instead to provide the ability to use an external one.

A built-in screen can ONLY be one size but an external one can be almost any size the user wants.

Being able to use an external screen also allows you to use a tablet for the screen and thus you get not only a large screen but readily available DAW and other computing functionality.

I wonder how many Montage/MODX users have done that.

Most, if not ALL, of them would do it if the Modx didn't have a built-in display.

With my little cheat sheet of sounds you see taped there, I don't need to see the screen at all.

That is EXACTLY my point.

The instruments don't need a built-in display if they can use an external one. And that lets you, the user, decide when, and on what instrument, you want to use a display.

You might need, or want, multiple keyboards but you don't necessarily need a screen on all of them.

Do you really want to pay to have the manufacturer add those tiny, tinny, little built-in speakers to everything? I don't.

Oh, I see, an external connector instead of an internal display. Nah, that doesn't work for me. Too many times, it is convenient to have that display, and I don't want to have to hook one up every time. For example, unless I'm ONLY using a board for a handful of sounds, I want a screen to give me the name of the sound(s) i've got set up, or what patches will be recalled with what buttons (if the screen itself is not providing the touchscreen buttons). I don't want to have to connect another piece for that. I'm fine with the small screens for some of these things, but rarely no screen at all. The aforementioned Korg SV2/SV1 and also their Vox Continental are boards where a built-in small display would have been useful.

BTW, getting back to an earlier post (and closer to the main topic of the thread), here's another advantage of the YC over the CK: The YC has totally seamless switching between Live Sets. The CK switching isn't quite as seamless, a sustaining old sound may take on the new sound's effect.

[quotePost id=120978]Being able to use an external screen also allows you to use a tablet for the screen and thus you get not only a large screen but readily available DAW and other computing functionality.

Do you really want to pay to have the manufacturer add those tiny, tinny, little built-in speakers to everything? I don't.
[/quotePost]

I made good use of the Motif/MOX iPad apps back in the day. Had an MOX6 and the apps drastically improved my productivity. There's something to be said for saving base keyboard weight and moving the touch UI to a tablet. Problem for Yamaha is the never-ending API churn in Apple software and the need to support Android as well as IOS.

I'm a little ambivalent about the built-in speakers. Sometimes useful, sometimes dead-weight. Even though my CT-S1000V has built-in speakers, I'll carry and put the output through a Bose Soundlink Color 2.

-- pj

Too many times, it is convenient to have that display, and I don't want to have to hook one up every time.

Wouldn't be necessary to have to hook it up every time.

I have a 2-in-1 where the display can be attached or removed. And when attached it folds and closes over the keyboard just like a standard laptop.

No reason the display can't be mounted and close over the keyboard. So you don't have to remove it if you don't want to.

[quotePost id=120980]
BTW, getting back to an earlier post (and closer to the main topic of the thread), here's another advantage of the YC over the CK: The YC has totally seamless switching between Live Sets. The CK switching isn't quite as seamless, a sustaining old sound may take on the new sound's effect.[/quotePost]

Yeah, I was a bit disappointed there. I guess one should expect some concessions given the lower price, but I'd hoped it might be as seamless as the YC, given it appears to be built on a common foundation.

I had a Roland VR-730 a while back, and one of the main reasons I sold it was the patch switching was just so rough - eg, if you switched from a piano to an overdriven organ or EP, the sustained piano notes would get a dose of overdrive, resulting in an unpleasant jolt of noise. The CK seems more refined than the Roland, but not quite as smooth as the YC (which has seamless switching completely nailed, in my view).

I wouldn't use an external screen generally. On the Montage I've got all of the equipment to do it and have hooked up a monitor to the Montage once or twice to see what that was like. However, I wouldn't ever do this on a gig.

In the studio (since Montage is touch driven for lots of things) - I would connect a touchscreen. That'd make life easier slightly when programming onboard. However, due to the limited support for only a very narrow band of touch interface standards (that some EOL Dell monitor happened to comply with - and hardly anything else - an available-from-China only monitor) - I don't use the external screen in the studio because I'd prefer the touch part too.

I do like that the option for external screens is there - I wish it were more universal, though. Not all displaylink interfaces work, etc. A byproduct of "non-official". But even if more generic - I would be unlikely to use the option in practice (except possibly in the studio as mentioned above).

What I would use more is leveraging a tablet to reinforce the on-board display (and some controls). Something like a stage keyboard you could get away with sending/receiving SysEx for duplicating both the onboard display and a set of controls (buttons, knobs, etc) so you could use either the onboard screen + buttons/knobs or an app on the iPad (for example). The reason why I'd do this is because I already carry the tablet out to my gig. It's a part of my setup either in the studio or on the bandstand. Something like Montage/MODX that has a "traditional" display - that display would lend itself to Port 5900 open-source VNC for the display and receiving touch. It's already ripe for the picking under Linux. I don't think VNC would apply as much to the stage keyboards because I don't think they implement the display this way. Although I could be wrong - and then that'd be fairly easy to do. The iPad and Android already have VNC clients.

For SysEx.- sometimes there are things you cannot access because SysEx doesn't allow for certain operations. Not due to any limitation of SysEx - but more just what Yamaha decides to expose through SysEx. I'm not as familiar with the stage keyboards - but there may be things that would need to be added in order to make the most productive "mirror" of the stage display along with some controls. Certainly if Melas tools are sufficient then this level of SysEx control could be tablet-ized. Not just to redo Melas tools on a tablet - but saying that all of those operations use SysEx so there wouldn't need to be anything added in terms of commands to have the same "reach" as the Melas tools.

BTW: I also think that the resolutions of the screens and color depths wouldn't make wireless communications with a tablet so bad. Of course wired should be supported - but I'd love more wireless options thrown in as well.

Regarding random access of content: the Motif had this pretty well handled with the banks (PRE1, PRE2, USR1, USR2, etc), letters (A-F), and number (1-16). So you could touch USR1, then "E", then "5" and you'd recall whatever object was stored there. I'd write down the bank/alpha-numeric combination for the sounds I used on a gig and that was pretty nice to have random-access button access to anything. There was, however, a high "cost" in terms of interface real-estate, components, and possibly complexity (ease of use - that's subjective) to supporting more random access. What was great about that approach was that it didn't matter if the sun was saturating the display or not. I could still "see" what I was doing easily. I'm not sure if this style of random access works well (transfers well) to the current stage lineup for a variety of reasons. However, there's still probably a way to get closer to random access using the existing buttons.

[quotePost id=120985]Certainly if Melas tools are sufficient then this level of SysEx control could be tablet-ized. Not just to redo Melas tools on a tablet - but saying that all of those operations use SysEx so there wouldn't need to be anything added in terms of commands to have the same "reach" as the Melas tools.[/quotePost]
Heck, you don't have to re-do it. You should be able to run the Melas tools on a Surface Pro tablet as is.

[quotePost id=120985]Regarding random access of content: the Motif had this pretty well handled with the banks (PRE1, PRE2, USR1, USR2, etc), letters (A-F), and number (1-16). So you could touch USR1, then "E", then "5" and you'd recall whatever object was stored there. I'd write down the bank/alpha-numeric combination for the sounds I used on a gig and that was pretty nice to have random-access button access to anything. [/quotePost]
Yes, even the MOX/MOXF (MMODX predecessors) did this kind of thing nicely. Though one thing that bugged me is that, while it was great that you could bring up a screen with a 4x4 grid that showed the 16 sounds currently assigned to the 16 patch recall buttons, the grid was arranged vertically (the first column had 1-4, the next column had 5-8, etc.). whereas the buttons were arranged horizontally, which created some mental gymnastics that were perfectly avoidable if they had given that a bit more thought, i.e if you arranged the same grid horizontally (the first row having 1-4, the next row having 5-8, etc.). There would have been not so much "re-orienting" when you were looking which which button corresponded to which box of the on-screen grid.

[quotePost id=120985]There was, however, a high "cost" in terms of interface real-estate, components, and possibly complexity (ease of use - that's subjective) to supporting more random access. What was great about that approach was that it didn't matter if the sun was saturating the display or not. I could still "see" what I was doing easily. I'm not sure if this style of random access works well (transfers well) to the current stage lineup for a variety of reasons. However, there's still probably a way to get closer to random access using the existing buttons.[/quotePost]
Yes, at my ideascale post, I put forth an easy way to do it by making use of two existing adjacent buttons, without intefering with their current functions at all. Check it out, and maybe upvote it... https://yamahasynth.ideascale.com/c/idea/42438

Heck, you don't have to re-do it. You should be able to run the Melas tools on a Surface Pro tablet as is.

For me, I'd like to have something more performance oriented and less of a programming tool. Presentation of the currently recalled Performance could be bigger. More contrast ("Dark mode" ish). I'm not looking functionally for Melas tools to be transplanted to the iPad. Just saying if the bits and pieces of what Melas represents a bulk of the operations (communication between the keyboard and tablet) then there wouldn't be a need to update anything in the firmware.

The keyboard I came from before Montage was the MO6.

In this generation, I don't remember a screen that showed a grid while using these buttons. If the screen did show anything - I ignored it. I just pressed buttons starting at the top and running down. Most of the time I already had the right bank set so I'd just press A-F followed by 1-16. Press, Press, ready. A lot faster than even using what I do now. That said, the game is a bit different now. There's more presets and Library Performances (although I don't use them on the bandstand) than before. Using live set isn't half bad and with Montage you can get fairly close to the old system by using all of those buttons (that I never use on the bandstand these days).

Still, generally speaking, I think it's important to factor in random/quick access to content as a design goal. There was some regression. I'm sure the designers can come up with an improvement in this department.

I think we're in the same camp on this one.