I own four of the PLG boards and know this is not true. For example, here is Yamaha's statement about the voice editor for the PLG150-PF (acoustic piano board): "Comes with the PF Easy Editor plug-in for XGworks, allowing for easy graphical editing of voices". That's the only software that CAN edit the voices of the PLG150-PF in fact so owning XGWorks is a necessity to tweak the board sounds. The only stand-alone editors for the PLG series I know of are for the DX and AN boards.

BTW: this is an email I got from Steve Deming 6/24/2002:
---------------------------------------------

They are working on the OPT panel for 9000PRO. I will keep your case in research till I hear it's complete, so I can notify you. They've got a lot of panel to work on so it may take a little while.

Regards,

Steve Deming
Yamaha Customer Support
------------------------------------------------

All questions I have sent ever since then about this "9000 Pro OPT" have gone unanswered.

There are several problems associated with XGworks.

1. The biggest market is Japan, followed by Europe. North America is a distant third. XGworks for western countries is handled by the UK. There's no expertise in North America.

2. There's some politics involved. There's a sharp line between the Home and Pro divisions of Yamaha. I don't know which one is reponsible for XGworks but I suspect the Pro division because XGworks is definitely slanted toward stand alone synths like the MU series. Adding stuff for PSRs was an afterthought. Most of the PSR tables actually point to MU synths or CVP tables so you don't get the proper definitions.

3. The PSRs have extended the effects mapping beyond the original XG spec. The effects map in XGworks is only 8 bits wide whereas later PSRs have extended this to 24 bits. This means that the effects menus can't be displayed properly and odd anomalies appear in dialog boxes if you add the extended effects. Also some internal tables limit the number of basic effects so even if you add them the parameters won't display. This requires a major change to the XG Editor to fix these problems. Then you run into backwards compatibility problems. Not only do you have to write the code but also update every table for every synth.

4. At least it's possible to add new instrument definitions if you know what you are doing. Takes a bit of effort though.

5. XGworks was very much on a par with Cakewalk but Sonar is a long way ahead so a complete update of XGworks would be required with no guarantee that it would sell enough to recoup development costs. Much cheaper to write plugins for Sonar which is what they seem to be doing. It's probably the best way to go. Leave XGworks for the older instruments and go with SOnar. Now that Logic is out of the picture for PCs there's only Cubase left so Sonar can only go up.

Bryan

Hmmm, your right about the PF board, but they do have them for all the others (note* the PC and DR boards shipped with a OPT editor). Look at the yamahasynth site for the downloads.

I didn't realize that the PLG150-DR came with an OPT editor... mmmmmm... now that's more like it: the ability to add insertion effects and edit the drums from within Sonar and the drums would reside on their own card thus freeing up even more polyphony for my 9000 Pro's keyboard sounds. 32note/25MB and about $200. Editing drums was what I was doing with XGWorks the most anyway (I despise reverb on the kick). Now this will give me something to chew on. Thanks for giving me the idea...

[This message has been edited by The Pro (edited 05-23-2003).]

Just as a follow-up to my original topic from last month, I just got a reply from Steve Deming of Yamaha (June 23, 2003). My question was whether Yamaha was going to release voice definitions for the 9000 Pro and their XGWorks program, or provide 9000 Pro OPT voice editing panels. It appears that the answer is, as expected, neither:
-----------------------------------------------

Our Product Information Department (part of Customer Support) was renamed Web Planning and given responsibility for the entire Yamaha Corp. of America web presence. The upside is, our website is improving overall, the downside is things like Instrument Definitions are much lower on their priority list. I don't think there's going to be an OPT panel for the 9000 PRO. I've already sent a request to Japan through our liaison, but so far, nothing. I wish I had better news.

Regards,

Steve Deming
----------------------------------------------

I appreciate Steve looking into this, although his message a year ago stated that they were already at work on an OPT voice editing panel for the 9000 Pro. Guess not. I get the feeling that Yamaha is trying to ignore the 9000 Pro and make it just go away.

Pro

As I mentioned in another thread which you don't seem to have read, I have constructed the XGworks definitions for the 9000Pro. If you're interested I can ship them to you. If not, not to worry.

Bryan

Thanks Bryan. I did read your earlier post, but I use Sonar mostly these days and already have the 9000 Pro's definitions for that program. Creating those definitions for XGWorks was a nice thing for you to do though, especially with all the work involved.

Hi Pro

What do you do for XG sysex, assuming that you use the effects via midi? I wouldn't think that Sonar had any XG built into it unless the OPTs have come through. At least XGworks will give you 5 DSPs and multi part as well as reverb and chorus in its current version (3.0.7)

Bryan

Hi,
I've been adding Bryan's definitions for the 9000pro to my xg works. I'm ever so grateful that he's gone to all the trouble.

Had originally started to try and do it myself, but I would have botched it bigtime.
Had no idea how much work he's obviously put into it.
Seems such a pity that they stopped developing the program as I love the fact that it can use the psr styles. I much prefer it, to using Band in a Box.

best wishes
Rikki