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#71786 - 02/10/05 12:02 PM Motif boxy Rhodes sound
Al Keys Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 02/10/05
Posts: 4
Hey guys- new to the forum
My setup:

4 space rack- in rack is:

1) Fuhrman power conditioner
2) Rane SM82 Line mixer
3) TC Electronic D-Two
4) Yamaha Motif Rack

Clavia Nord Lead 2

controller keyboard (Alesis QS7.1-not using onboard sounds),

Pair of Yorkville E160P powered speakers for stereo

I’ve always had a stereo live rig. I used to own a pair of Roland KC500’s but they rattled around too much for me and were too big and heavy. Then I bought a pair of Barbetta Sona 41’s. Had those and they worked well but the sound did break up at times and also the tweeters were excessively loud- meaning the tweeters seemed to generate a lot of noise just on their own without playing anything. So I got rid of them. I also got rid of them because I was on a quest to get something even smaller- kind of obsessed with making my live rig as small and powerful as possible.

Then I bought a pair of Yorkville E160P’s. http://www.yorkville.com/products.asp?id=9&cat=2&type=29

What I like: the company, the build quality, Canadian made, the size, nice low end, loud, low noise

What I’m having a problem with: a really brash mid to upper mid range kind of boxy sound that I can’t seem to get rid of- especially noticeable when playing Rhodes sounds. I didn’t notice this when I had the Sona 41s.

There is no on board EQ on the E160Ps and I’ve used the EQ on my Motif Rack to try to get rid of the sound I don’t like but it seems that more than anything it is just a characteristic of the speakers- maybe of having a single 10” speaker.

Does anyone else have this experience with Yorkville? I am not going to buy an external EQ and it looks like I am on the hunt once again for the perfect powered speakers. I want something small and light without a 15” in it. I am trying to stay away from brands like Mackie, JBL, and Behringer- basically anything made in China. I want something American or Canadian made and somewhat of a high end piece. Should I be looking at stuff like Bag End and what’s that one made in Washington called K2V or something?

Any suggestions on what to buy? What about EV?

I love my Motif Rack
_________________________
Al Keys

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#71787 - 02/14/05 02:50 AM Re: Motif boxy Rhodes sound
Nigel Offline
Admin

Registered: 06/01/98
Posts: 6482
Loc: Ventura CA USA
I have a similar problem with my Motif 6 and the powered Wharfdale box I am using with a 15 inch speaker and horn. The Motif acoustic piano has a nasty upper mid EQ characteristic that is very noticeable in the higher range. I didn't notice it nearly so much when playing through headphones but now I know it's there I can hear it now even then. I am thinking that the horn on my powered box tends to emphasize that frequency range. After reading your post I wonder now if it will always be present to some degree with any speaker system.

But I love my Motif as well. It is just certain patches in the upper ranges that display this characteristic. I try to avoid playing too much in that particular octave but that is restrictive.

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#71788 - 02/14/05 09:26 AM Re: Motif boxy Rhodes sound
Al Keys Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 02/10/05
Posts: 4
Hey thanks for the reply.

Yeah I think it's just Yamaha. Yamaha does have a very bright sound but also, their samples are much higher quality than Roland or Korg. Try listening to a Roland Fantom with headphones- horrible. The samples are all compressed and buzzy- sounds like a toy. All Roland stuff is like that- from the XV series racks and the Fantom series. Its funny because I spent 2 hours this weekend trying to rectify my problem. I programmed some new Rhodes sounds. The funny thing about the Motif is there are like a bunch of different ways to EQ a sound. There's one global EQ in Utility, one EQ in voice edit Common and one EQ in per element in voice edit. Kinda overly confusing. I still think the Motif is best though. There's nothing else on the market that can touch it. Sometimes when I find a voice is too bright if EQ ing doesn't work I'll go into the Element layer for say a hard velocity sample that is bugging me and I'll change it to one that is less annoying or I'll sometimes take the Filter Cutoff down a little bit and use the filter to dull up the sound a bit. Try that on the piano, it might help.
_________________________
Al Keys

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#71789 - 02/14/05 05:03 PM Re: Motif boxy Rhodes sound
Anonymous
Unregistered


I'm not familiar with the Yorkville products. I used to have a Peavey KB-100 and a KB-60. I liked them but they were *heavy* and mono. With my new rig I wanted stereo and lots of power as well. I went with a Carvin KB-1010 amp and RL-210T cabinet. Both cabs are 2x10" with a tweeter. The amp can handle 500 watts per channel into 2 ohms and has seven stereo inputs. The cabinets are much warmer than the Roland and Yamaha cabs which I tried in my search for a new amp rig. The amp also has a 4 band EQ on it so you can trim lows or highs as needed for your situation plus stereo DI's built in! Both the amp and the DI's can be switched to mono with detend buttons right on the face and if you run in mono there is a crossover built in with an adjustable freq. dial on the face. I got the whole rig for about $1000.00 but I've heard the price has come down recently.

Best wishes

[This message has been edited by codevyper (edited 02-14-2005).]

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