I'm with Donny on this, for the reasons I stated above. It can work great when there is no pressure, if you want to compose or play, but I wouldn't bother in a live setting.

I speak from the experience of having played live with an arranger controlling both a hardware module ( Motif ES ) as well as several different softsynth / module combinations. I've also used One Man Band with the Motif ES as a controller, and actually that was about the best to use, because I can assign the ES knobs to control typical arranger functions. The catch... in that configuration, the best and most reliable sound module was not the internal voices of the ES. Instead it was the freeware soundfont SGM-180.

The reason is that it's GM sounds are far better than the ones on the ES, and while I realize sound is very subjective, I can't in any way imagine the comparison between them being debatable.... ( perhaps the XS has improved GM over the ES ? ). Basically if you don't have the time to setup your module between each style change, your XS is going to default to the GM sounds unless you spend a lot of time pre making scenes that you can readily apply. Or you can modify your styles so that they send out the proper patch and bank data .. but.... that is a ton of work ( I've actually modified a few to correspond to the ES patches )

No fussing around with SGM180 when I assign OMB to send GM sounds, and it includes built in reverb and chorus effects, and in the end, without major tweaking, it plays and sounds better than my soft stuff except for the largest libraries, and I have a LOT of soft synths and modules ... The caveat to using large libraries is that the load up time is not practical to use in a live setup. OMB and the ES is about the best I can do, and I have used it as a my main setup when playing live with good results. Still not as convenient as plugging in the T2 and playing, but easy and reliable enough to be a suitable backup rig.

I'm not sure about the S900 Diki, but I've had several Yamaha arrangers in the past, ( all mid level before the T2 ) and all of them had enough midi capability to pull it off. All that is needed is the ability to turn on and off the midi output of each individual channel coming from the arranger.... however, if you don't have controls / buttons that can turn on / off each arranger part from the main arranger menu ( the T2 does ), then even if you can disable the midi out from the midi menu, it will not be at all practical to do in real time ( too many submenus )

I'm not sure what the ultimate goal in doing this configuration ( S900 and Motif ) would be.. I can only apply it to my way of playing and my workflow, and in the end, it doesn't work out for me. Too complicated for live play, and I don't use style data to compose except sometimes as a scratch pad for the beginning of an idea.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 08-03-2008).]