Actually its not all that difficult to use. Not anymore than the Motif anyway.

But the Motif is closed to external formats too...

Only single .wav's can be loaded, there's no multisample format other than Yamaha's proprietary one.

Yeah thats right But I really don't see the excitement with the ancient Akai samples. For the past 20 years i hear about Akai Samples...... The S900 has better voices than many of those old Akai sample disks, I must be missing something....

There are sample CD and software that can be sampled that has to be better then old Akai samples. Unless its the Akai FORMAT people are excfited about. Mapping is not all that difficult on the Tyros either. Certainly easier then the old samplers. The XS is a walk in the park in that regard, especially as compared to the Tyros with eight elements to play with across the vertical and horizontal sampling planes. Thats better than my Dimension Pro software sampling

You think..?

Two things... up until Giga Sampler, nearly ALL sampling was done on Akai. Roland had a decent
share of the Hollywood market, Emu were still hanging around, but the #1 selling sampler was Akai.
EVERYONE made disks for it... some very high end stuff (Platinum Drums, Russ Garfield, XSample, Peter Siedlek,
Ilio - all their drum loop libraries were available in Groove control format, ready sliced with MIDI files to
play it back - just what you need for Audya-like drums) the list just goes on.

And secondly, unlike most Giga stuff, the file sizes were kept down to seldom over 32MB (some big stuff
got spread over two loads to get a 64MB piano, for instance) so they are ideal for loading in your
arranger (which are not exactly known for fast loading times!) rather than the GB sized instruments
that streaming allows. You wouldn't want to spend nearly an hour waiting to load your maxed out T2,
now would you?

Trust me on this one... if you haven't heard the TOTL libraries that were produced for Akai in it's heyday
(and can often be found at very reasonable used prices, now), you can't compare it to any of the
internal sounds except the SA ones (and that's more a function of the triggering than the samples).

Hollywood used Akai extensively in the eighties... They sure as hell ain't using T3's now!

Sure, there were duffers around back then. There are still duffers for Giga, too. But the same people
designing TOTL libraries now were the same people working in Akai back then. I still use a fair amount of
legacy Akai stuff ported to my Kurzweil. As good as it's internal ROM is (I've got the expansion ROM's),
the Akai sounds for most things blow it away, and are still making it to the final mix on many projects.

Diki's right. Akai was on top and still is sitting up there. Even those older disks are still being used by a lot of musicians today. Yamaha could really benefit from opening up to that format. It's actually a very common request from Motif users.., but Yamaha won't do it.

It was the norm to hear consumers asking "is that available in Akai format" in those days and they're asking it just as often if not more today. Akai has become an industry standard for a reason. When sample disks were coming out 99.99999999% of the time the first question out of a potential buyers mouth was "is it available in Akai format". No better example of "if it ain't broke.., don't fix it". A tried and true format that has become an industry standard.

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 05-18-2009).]

Getting back to the topic, I just sold a Tyros3 to a 29 tyear old.

That qualifies as "younger", eh?

I also think it is the "coolness" factor (or lack of) that prevents younger players from buying home keyboards, as opposed to workstations...anything with speakers is considered "home" and therefore uncool.

At my age, it doesn't matter, but younger buyers are afraid of peer criticism and want to "look cool" as well as sound cool...and many people hear with their eyes, more than their ears.

Of course, on the other hand,the DJX sold very well and it had speakers.

I really don't think it's a style content issue at all...that is easily fixed by more contemporary style being available...I think it's a perception problem.

Anytime these young people see an arranger being played, it is usually by someone over 30.

I've yet to see a youngster with an E-50/60 either so it ain't just a Yammie problem.

Who buys Casio's arrangers? They are certainly priced for the younger buyer. Are they targeting a younger buyer, perhaps a buyer with a little colour remaining in their follicles or who have anything in their follicles at all, for that matter?


Ian

If the arranger appeals to a targeted youth and the styles match today's hits.., then speakers really aren't an issue.

Yes.., Ian's right. The DXJ sold VERY well. It actually sold TOO well. Yamaha didn't expect it to cut into the upper line as it did. The DJX was a lot of modern bang for very little buck too. I'd still have mine.., but I wore that thing out.

I will say this though..., the plastic body on the DJX was TOUGH. It wasn't built like the typical PSR (as the DJX was part of the PSR line as you often don't see the full model number for it shown). The plastic shell on the DJX was hard as hell.., the paint even seemed to be a little more durable too. I think Yamaha speculated that model would actually see road use and built it for that possibility.

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 05-18-2009).]

Actually, the DJX sold very well, and then the bottom fell out of it as the styles became all too familiar.

The DJX II was actually not as good, and failed to ignite any burning interest.

I know, because I sold them.

Every workstation/synth that came with built in speakers, usually sold poorly.

Could someone name one that did sell well?

Ian

Revolutionary ?

I could do this on my GEM WX2 more then 15 years ago....

I wouldn't say the bottom fell out because of the styles. The styles on the original still would put up a fair fight against some of Yamaha's current modern styles on some of their arrangers.

The DJX line died due to the release of the second version. The DJX-II pissed off a lot of di-hard DJX lovers who were so excited when the word of a second version was released. The bottom of the DJX line fell out because of the second version doing no justice to the original. I will say the look of the DJX-II turned people off before they even played the thing. People were asking for a back-lit LCD.., Yamaha answered that by dropping the LCD all together and replacing that with and old LED dispaly. Then the HUGE kick in the weebles was when people learned that "touch response" was taken away from the keys!

I agree with you that speakers on workstations have always been a turn off.., but speakers packed into the right type of keyboard (such as the DJX) proved to be very popular. Also part to do with the DJX's internal speakers being pretty darn good and having AMAZING low end bass.

Makers flirted with internal speakers on workstations and even synths back in the day. Remember the very popular Juno-106 (with speakers)? I think it was the Juno-106S