Aj, I understand it was an incorrect comparison I made. I think the comparisons should be more like Mo vs TS2 and Pa X to the Tyros or 9K pro.
Terry

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jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

Thanks Mike. I've seen most of that before too. I know what the sales hype says, but the board just didn't seem to have much real "soul" for me.. Just the way I felt about it's predecessor too. I don't know if you understand exactly what I mean, but I suspect if you play keys a lot that you do. 64 poly just won't cut it either. Terry knows well that I love to tweak and I don't mind working for some better sounds, but ya gotta give me stuff that I like right outta the box too. Fantom on a large scale just isn't doing that for me. Motif does do it for me and so apparantly will the TS2. I sample some stuff and I work with some external samples, but that isn't my primary reason for buying a w/s. I'd rather do the detailed sampling on a dedicated sampler.

I wanted to love the original Fantom too, and I kept telling myself that if it added sampling, user arps..etc, that it would be a board that I'd want. The truth is though, unless I could dig some better sounds out of it in a hurry ( or more accurately sounds that please my ear ) , it just doesn;t interest me.

I know what you mean about the expansion cards. The Motif does it too with the add on XG card. If I understand right though, the additional 64 notes allotted when the XG card is plugged in can be used only with the XG voices themselves. Ummm.. no thanks Yamaha.. I just don't like many of the xg voices / samples as much as I do the internal ones.

Terry,

Exactly. I can't really give a fair comparison yet on TS2 vs Motif, but I'll surely spend more time with the TS2. One of the first things I wanna try the next time I play it is to see how easily I can make the notes drop out. It is very easy to do on the Motif ( unfortunately ) when for example, I emulate an acoustic guitar with some sustain.
Also I can't get overly excited about this PAX or whatever they want to call it. Not just yet anyway and not just on specs and sales hype alone... I will judge after I see and play one. Maybe for me it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread, or maybe it won't. The best analogy I can use is that the PA80 has been for me what the G1000 has been for Fran or the I30 has for Boo. Maybe the next person doesn't like it at all, but to me it matters little because it feels like a near perfect fit in my hands. The PA X would have to blow me away ..and hey .. maybe it will and then again maybe not.. we'll see....

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 06-28-2003).]

As far as the Triton sounds go. I play with both a Tyros and a Korg Triton Pro. On stage I use the Triton Piano's, Rhodes, Brass, and especially the Growl Sax. I have the Studio Essentials and the Vintage Piano's ROM's installed in the Korg. In my opinion, these put the Tyros sounds to shame. I use the Drawbars, Flutes, and Strings on the Tyros as they are superior to the Triton, although I could probably tweak them to sound as good as the Korg.

I would never get rid of my Korg, BUT I would upgrade to the newer Triton Studio!

Al

The Tyros flute sound is outstanding Al. So are several of the other sounds. Actually, I like the board a lot but to add another arranger to my setup that already includes the PA80 and PSR2000 is just overkill at this point. I'm really bugged about the poly issue with the Motif. It didn't bother me so much before until I started making custom guitar patches that include 3 or 4 samples. 64 notes poly really becomes only 16 when 4 seperate samples are used. Unacceptable for me. I have several PA80 patches that I've made that use multiple samples and they are often layered with other patches that have multiple samples to form a "performance" voice ( which would be the equivalent of a "combi" patch on a Korg workstation and I rarely if ever notice notes dropping out. On the Motif the notes don't actually drop off, rather, you just can't play the next note at all when the polyphony runs out. The one big drawback for me if I were to give up the Motif for a new w/s would be losing the host for the AN150 and VL1 plug in boards that I really like. Man that T/S 2 sang to me though. I'd have never guessed it..

AJ

AJ,

I'm not familiar with the Motif (although I want to be), but isn't there an add-on board that would extend the amount polyphony? There are boards for everything else, I would think Yammy would have an option available to extend the amount of notes up to 128? hmmmm.

Al,

You can add the XG plug in which allows for another 64 notes of polyphony, but.. I believe that polyphony can only be applied to the XG voices / samples. That isn't going to do much for me, since I prefer the "panel" voices and wouldn't use the xg voices much. ( Steve D jump in any time and correct me if I'm wrong ) This is my only real issue with the Motif, and if I play most of the voices on it, I have no problem, but.. I wanna play ALL the voices without note dropoff.

AJ

IDator: "But it's nice to know the Fantom S has full sound editing capability. Example; Don't like that Pedal Steel guitar? (hypothetical question), then just edit and change it to your liking. "
And then what? Where do you save it? You can't overwrite the same sound, you must save it as a new sound.

The only workstations that let you replace all sounds with your own liking are KORG's. TRITON and PA.

You know what is the most dangerous feature of Fantom S/88???

Imagine this: A song is being played back on stage, sounds very good. You press these 'favorite sounds' button on Fantom. Whithout any confirmation, Fantom changes all sounds on all tracks, with the song being played back live. Wow, the phat drums track suddenly sounds like a woman crying and seaguls quacking.. and than authentic guitar sounds like someone strumming on an agogo.

OR imagine this: You are in song recording mode, you setting up all tracks, effects, record few bars... then you are scrolling through different sounds, and you select one of your favorite sounds.... viola... all your settings are gone... but your recording is still there... and there is no way to undo what just happened.

Fantom has one of the least friendly OS on a workstation...... you will lose a lot of time on it. They put the Performance and Sequencer mode together.... so if you change the performance sound, you destroy your song settings. this is useless.



[This message has been edited by Shakil (edited 06-29-2003).]

You are right Shakil in that after a voice is changed it has to be saved to the Flash Ram. Roland provides 16 Mb of Flash Ram Storage Memory which is a whole heap more than, lets say for instance, the 580 Kb of the PSR 2000. But then again the Fantom S/88 does NOT have the ability to add a Hard Drive to the Keyboard. So yes, there are limitations.

I was able to play the Fantom S/88 again yesterday and although the Fantom S/88's sounds are mostly pretty decent yet MOST of them I would not consider PHAT. There are some PHAT sounds but they are few and far between imo. One compensation to that is the ability to add Expansion Cards to the Keyboard which will give it better and more of the PHAT sounding voices.

And I agree that there are several "quirks" in the Fantom's Operating System and it especially affects those Musicians that do Live Gigs. It is yet to be seen if Roland will provide fixes for these shortcomings but I would hope they will be quick in getting OS updates to the Fantom S/88 owners because there have been several complaints already over these discrepancies. PS: It is too bad that Roland didn't have the foresight to resolve those issues "before" they released the Fantom S/88 to the public. I guess they're using their customers as the guinea pigs to bring the bugs to their attention and then provide the fixes for them hopefully.

And I also played the Triton Studio with the new OS2 and without a doubt the sounds were much better than those on the Fantom S imo. Plus the Triton Studio has an internal Hard Drive. And the Acoustic Grand Piano Voice is much, much, much better than the older Triton Classic. It is a 16 Mb Stereo sample and it blows the Triton Classic's out of the water imo.

But of course you will have to pay upwards of $700 [441 Pounds] more for the Triton Studio than the Fantom S.

Best regards,
Mike

Did you check the hard disk recorder in Triton Studio? It has a 2 track HDR built right in the Sequencer.

You can't fill the whole 16 MB flash ram with sounds. You can only have 1 bank of 128 user sounds on.

With KORG workstations and PA, you can REPLACE the preset with your own sound, so no need to keep the sounds you will never use.

Did you check the hard disk recorder in Triton Studio? It has a 2 track HDR built right in the Sequencer.