Well. I've had it a few days now. Mainly been jamming with it and testing some of the functions. When I haven't been playing it, I've managed to convert 3 Band in A Box styles for it, ( thanks to Michael bedesem and his style converter ), add a few new multipads and make up some registrations and custom voices.

Although it's been a few years since I had my last PSR2000, the T2's functions are similar enough that when I remember how the 2k did things... I barely need to open the manual to get anything done.

What I like: Pretty much everything so far.

The voices are phenomenal for a hardware board, and are very inspiring to play. Several groups include some spectacular sounds. No hardware board does guitars that I like better ( Motif ES included ). The Pianos and EP's are well represented, so are the bass, horns, reeds, trumpets and organs and strings. Perhaps some of the drumkits could be better, but OTOH the new kits are a lot better than the ones I rememeber from my PSR days. Maybe some of the synth patches could be a little better, but I'll also admit I'm a bit of an analog freak and someone who is fussy about rompler based synth sounds in the first place. I don't find the Motif ES' synth sounds to among my favorites neither, even compared to other romplers like the Triton series boards.

The styles are more alive than some of the previous Yamaha arrangers I played on, but even the styles from the older boards, particularly the PSR9000, 740, and 2000, sound terrific on the T2 with no additional tweaking needed. One of my favorite old 530 styles sounds better on the T2 than I remember it from the 530. Perhaps one could argue that some of the T2 styles aren't all quite as "live sounding" as the Korg styles from my PA80 are, but the individual style instruments sound much crisper and cleaner, and the fills actually match the variations. The converted non Yamaha styles of course don't sound as good without some tweaking. No surprise there though.

Storage- I don't have a hard drive yet, but even with the USB thumb drives I do have, I am now welcoming myself to the modern world of arrangers after years of using the PA80 and now antiquated floppy disks. On my 512 mb thumb drive, all of my styles and all of my midifiles reside with plenty of room left more more data.

Midi implementation- The T2 has two midi in ports via USB. Like every arranger I had before this one, the first one receives it's data into the sequencer channels, using it's settings. The second receives into the style and panel voice channels. This is HUGE for me. Ok, I know that you can adjust the midi in settings on any other arranger, but it is a bit time consuming. Using the T2 with an external sequencer, I can just switch back and forth between Ports 1 and 2 in almost an instant. This makes it SO much more convenient to edit songs and style parts from an external sequencer, without having to mess with the midi in controls or revoice parts.

The song sequencer is quite functional and very decent for a hardware board. I look forward to the day someone finally decides to include piano roll editing on a hardware synth, but it's of much lesser consequence to me than before because of the way the T2 implements midi in.

Multipads. What can I say ? I love the multipads. They are a surefire way to add new life into old styles in a live play or "one take" recording session. I plan on making plenty of my own. I guess if I wanted to wish for more, I'd like a little more editing power from within the inside of the board's pad creator, ( there are certain "arp" type patterns that NO live player can make in real time ) but really it's no trouble working in an external sequencer either. OK, so it isn't a true arpeggiator, like the one in the Motif ES, yet in some ways, I find it's functionality to be more useful ala the instant gratification of being able to spice up a song with up to four additional minisequences.

Seqencer resolution - outstanding at 1920 ppq. Really allows you to add subtle nuances and slight timing irregularities for a more live feel. Folks will say that 480 is more than enough, and some even think 192 is enough. The other problem is, sequencers have a tendency to "hiccup" a little, especially when they are very busy with a lot of data all at the same time. Hiccuping control or note data one or two ticks at 1920.. noone will ever notice that, but when it happens at 192, it's quite discernable.


Key feel. Very good for me... compared to previous Yamaha arrangers.

Sampling function- Haven't tried it yet, but I'm thinking of yanking the 128 mb ( each ) DIMMs out of My ES, since I never use it's sampler anyway. I figure either way, most of my top sounds will remain in software, but the T2 has enough excellent sounds that I don't feel I'll ever need any more for live play.

When I like a board, I generally keep it a long time. I kept my M1 for nearly 10 years, even though I had a love hate relationship with it because of the eprom / memory issue. I actually still have it, but just in software instead ( it's almost an exact emulation btw ). Even though my PA80 is pretty much old news, I liked it enough that I've had it for over 5 years, and am not planning to get rid of it. When I do shows where I want to feature a lot of synth based sounds, I'll still use it, even though it doesn't really compare to my analog modeled soft synths, but it is very convenient vs my laptop. I guess what I'm getting at is that I like this T2 very much, in the same ways I liked the PA80 when I got it. I think it'll be here with me for quite a while, unless perhaps it's successor is so much more advanced.. then I'll trade up, much as I did with the original Motif for the ES.

AJ