I had the original Motif and now have the ES. I work as much with software if not more than hardware right now, but the Motif ES is quite useful to me.

I pretty much agree with what Vic 83 said. The OS is a bit of a pain to learn and there is a pretty big learning curve, but once I did learn it, I found it to be intuitive and well laid out. Unlike most other hardware boards I've used, it's sequencer is quite useful and easy to manuever in.

I could also easily be happy with a Fantom X or Triton Extreme. They all have some nice sounds. I think though, value vs dollar, especially on the lower end of the scale ( think Triton Le, Fantom S or original Fantom ), I'd easily choose the original Motif. I just thought the soundset was better than the others at that time.


As much as I have gone toward software for better and more realistic sounds, I find that the VL150 module still provides me better horn and reed ( sax ) sounds than anything available in the software realm. That's kind of amazing too, since the VL technology is at least 10 years old now, and hasn't changed much if at all in that time span.

The AN150 is a very nice analog module. You can interchange patches with the AN1x or AN200 harware synths, and there are many good patch sets out there. The AN emulates the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 very nicely btw, and the P5 is one of the great classic analogs. The drawbacks for me are that I have to edit and then save each patch as a user patch in order for it to be able to work with the internal effects of the ES, and that more detailed patch editing has to be done in a software editor. Of course you can do basic editing and control it with the ES' knobs from inside the board.

You can always add to your analog sound palette by adding a few softsynths, as long as you don't mind working through a computer. This is still the area where I think software shines, although the acoustic sets are getting very good as well. Some of the analog models available today are unmatched for sound palettes. Think V synth, Wavestation, all the old classic analogs, etc, but with maybe even better and more useful selections. Absynth, Pro 53, Arturia's CS80V and Moog emulations, Imposocar, to name a few, but these are just a sampling of what is out there now.

AJ




[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 03-30-2005).]