Yamaha SA Sax or Korg Pa2x You be the judge

http://www.yamahapkowner.com/go.php?

...S900/SA_Sax.wma " TARGET=_blank>http://www.yamahapkowner.com/Downloads/soundsamples/PSRS900/SA_Sax.wma[/URL]
http://www.korgforums.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=33346



[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 03-22-2008).]

Difficult to choose

The SA Sax is clearly more realistic...although to be fair, the Korg's Sax is drenched in too many effects.

Perhaps it would fair better if recorded a bit drier?

Ian

I don't get it... Do any of you guys actually listen to REAL sax players?

That Korg demo was unbelievable even if bone dry. And I mean unbelievable in a BAD way! I have NEVER heard a sax player sound like that, all air and wooly, and just plain weird at the legato note boundaries. He's after that Stan Getz sound. Go listen to some real Stan Getz, then play that again. Yuck!

Look, Yamaha may not have that particular breathy tenor sound, but what it DOES have is believability when you play a line. One note does not make a sax sound. Any keyboard out there has decent sax sounds, AS LONG AS YOU PLAY DETACHED. But the minute you string a line together, the SA technology stands head and shoulders above everything else. Everybody else can get the attack of the note right, but ONLY Yamaha get the 'ending' of the note right, because legato and detaché playing have totally different note-offs.

Sorry, Korg, but back to the drawing board....

Hi Diki,
I think the sound was actually user created, not Korg.

best wishes
Rikki

Yes, I got that part, Rikki. But it is the TECHNOLOGY of the Korg that lets it down (as do Roland and Ketron, too). Without the SA legato/staccato switching, just about ALL keyboard saxes suck when you try to play a convincing LINE (and who just wants to listen to one note?!)...

There is no contest. The Yamaha 61 note keyboard sax beats the Korg 76 note keyboard sax hands down !! ( Please forgive me i was just playing with you Diki no offense intended honestly)

In all seriousness if we were not comparing that Korg sample to the Yamaha SA voice we would have been pleased with that sax. Its not perfect by a long way but very useable. But i guess the fact that we are holding the SA Sax as the standard to beat says something doesnt it.

No contest. The fact that the Korg had to be drowned in reverb, chorus and delay just shows how desperate this user was to made it sound good. That's what everybody does when they have something to hide...

[This message has been edited by chony (edited 03-23-2008).]

The Korg demo was bad because of a BAD performance. I didn't particularly like the Yamaha performance either.

Like Diki said, no sax player plays a sax like that. I'd like to hear it redone with someone who knows how to play.

The saxes on my 900 and 800 are different, but both very good and useful as lead instruments.

zuki

http://www.4shared.com/file/41660974/6d23f8d7/Sax.html

Sounds like a Wersi Tenor Sax to me...not bad...quite expressive...nice growl.

Ian

Hi Guys, I've played sax in Baltimore clubs for the last 40+ years. No sax player sounds the same. I beleive the sax is the toughest sound to reproduce. There are many variables such as type of mouth piece, type of reed, even the horn manufacturer makes a big differance. For my money the tyros is as close as it gets.

THERE THATS SETTELS IT!!!!

jIM

and please gentlemen i know the guy thatdesigned that sax sound. He didnt do it for any other reason than to add another sound to the Korg library over at the Korg forum. It is a really healthy forum where members help each other and contribute music, styles and sounds ... maybe we should hold back on the critisism . He did not put up his work to be compared with anyone else and certainly has nothing to hide. We could learn and benefit from people who give of themselves like this.

Very wise words. The completely different reactions to the same user created content here at Synthzone and at the other forum clearly demonstrate why many of us would never dare to post anything here.

Kind regards,
Tommy

Many of the same people frequent all these kb forums using many other alias user names...so I dont understand what your getting at Tommy......If someone says something good or bad people take offense.....if people dont comment they get offended...the one thing SZ has is REAL people that Help each other on or off the forum for many years as did you Tommy which I still appreciate to this day as have many others....& as I have tried to return the assistance when I can to whomever asks....it has certainly changed my Musical life......so dont knock a good thing SZ just does it differently..



[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 03-23-2008).]

Donny,

I think it has a lot to do with how you formulate the criticism. Like many others I do value constructive criticism, but try to reread Chony's and Zuki's entries in this thread. They might be right in their criticism but as I see it the sole purpose of these statements are to offend and provoke.

Kind regards,
Tommy

Definitely not. I was comparing the Korg keyboard to the Yamaha keyboard, not the guy who performed on the Korg. (In fact I thought he was pretty good.)

In my opinion the Korg sax sucks compared to the Yamaha. In my opinion as well, the Yamaha drums, pianos, and bass, suck compared to the Korg.

Why do you take personal offense to this? Why should I have to post a disclaimer "I'm not here to offend anyone" / "Just my 2c", etc. We're not in kindergarten...

To sum up: In my opinion Korg is great at certain things, and Yamaha great at others. At the same time Korg sucks at many things, and Yamaha sucks at others. And I do not judge anyone here on their skills and / or preferences. In fact I think that many of the people who I disagree with are better musicians than I am. But I still think the Korg sax sucks...

Could I be clearer?

I wonder how the breath sound is triggered between notes on the Yamaha demo.

Dave,

A footswitch activates the breath sound.

Ian

And, to be honest, the SA sax is NOT the 'best sounding' sax out there...

But it IS the best PLAYING, and the only one with any degree of realism once you actually PLAY a line. Which, in my book, makes it the 'best'.

The degree of legato control you have in your technique can go a LONG way towards making sax emulation with non-SA saxes more believable. But most of the time here at SZ, I hear everybody making the same basic mistake of holding a note fractionally too long while the next one starts. A sax CANNOT make more than one note at a time, but the slightly long release time (to prevent single notes chopping off unnaturally) causes great problems when playing a legato line. VERY fine control of legato can make this less apparent, but it's never totally successful.

The SA saxes are the only thing that change this note off behavior depending on how you play. All automatically, you just play... It's amazing to hear.

One can only hope this isn't patented technology, and eventually Korg and Roland (who we see have something like this in the pipeline on their Atelier organs) can incorporate it on to the already excellent SOUNDING (but not playing!) sax sounds...

BTW, I feel that things get a bit more confrontational at times here compared to other sites because you have owners of more than one brand all talking together... which you do NOT at brand specific sites like Korgforums, YamahaPKOwner, Roland-Arranger.com, etc..

But the dissemination of different viewpoints is a good thing, even if it occasionally gets testy. There's only one way to learn, and that's to listen. And if you only listen to those that agree with you, you never get all the picture.

Hi Spalding,
well said.

Makes one a bit nevous about sharing stuff in general, if it can get hijacked by another forum, & your work gets critized by outsiders.

I certainly wouldn't be happy to have one of my user styles put up for critism against a keyboard Factory style. I know they're not as good, but that's why the companies pay expert programmers to do theirs.

Users share because, maybe, someone else will get some use from what they've created apart from themselves,
you use it , fine, you toss it, the creators none the wiser.

best wishes
Rikki

Please remember that the headline of this thread is: "Yamaha sax or Korg Sax - you be the judge." Nowhere in that post does it say anything about any individual musician - its just a comparison of two keyboards, not a judgement of anyone's performance.

Hi Chony,
I know, but it is still a user created sound being put up against a factory sound.
He's included the sample set, so I doubt he's just tweaked an onboard sax sound.
Some of the Korg users use the sample section of their keyboards an awful lot.

If one needs to do comparison's, between Korg & Yamaha compare a korg sax factory sound to a tyros sax sound. Korg's big enough to withstand critisism. Personally I'm not that big a fan of the korg sax sounds , but this guys sax "sound" doesn't deserve critism. He's sharing his work.
Maybe someone can provide a User created Tyros sample set demo to compare it with.

best wishes
Rikki

'No contest. The fact that the Korg had to be drowned in reverb, chorus and delay just shows how desperate this user was to made it sound good. That's what everybody does when they have something to hide...'

Chony read this to yourself outloud and imagine the guy who made this sound was in front of you. Would you look him in his face and tell him that he was desperately trying to hide the poor sound by drowning it in reverb ?

Be honest with yourself. Lets not dance around clever arguments about critisisms of Korg or Yamaha. What you posted was unnecessarily rude to the creator of the sound.Not Korg or Yamaha. If i did that i would expect to be pulled up about it.

And if you posted some of your work elsewhere and someone were to be unduly harsh to your work i would pull them up about it just as quickly i can assure you.

Excellent point Diki.....I agree...but here on the SZ separate manufacturers forums they are dead....go figure?

The point I was making was to say Yamaha and Korg saxes are very good, but not with the representation given by the demos.

But I seem to get in trouble recently with posts, so see you later......

This is all a moot and pointless thread. The comparison is incorrect. This isn't a comparison of the Yamaha Sax and the Korg Sax. It is a comparison of the Yamaha Sax and a sample that someone created for the Korg PA keyboards. It is NOT from Korg. You could actually load this sample into the Yamaha and then rename this topic:

Yamaha SA Sax compared to the Yamaha non-SA Sample.

I get the biggest kick out of the pissing contest that was generated just by mentioning the comparison of two manufacturers. That was precious! LOL

Spalding and Rikkis,

Now that I've read a few more of the posts on this thread, I can hear where you're coming from. Quite frankly I thought that this was a regular Korg Sax drenched in effects to make it usable. I didn't realize that this was a creation by a Korg user. Obviously in that case its not fair to compare.

Unfortunately the original post made none of this clear.

PS: Btw, even taking into account that I was "criticizing" how he drenched the sax in effects, my criticism wasn't of the user, it was of Korg that made a sax that only sounded good when drenched in effects. When I wrote "... how desparate the user was to make the Korg sax sound good" and that he has "something to hide..." that's what I had in mind, although in retrospect it was a very poor choice of words.

Trust me, I'm the last person on this planet to judge another person or another person's work. When it comes to professional companies and businesses whom I pay for a product however, I do expect the best bang for my buck.

Apologies if I offended the Korg user.
Chony

[This message has been edited by chony (edited 03-23-2008).]

Ye Gods! Such wailing and gnashing of teeth over a few people expressing an OPINION! And a few of them even explaining their opinion... (bastards!)

What effrontery! How DARE we have ANY opinion about anything..? Don't you know that everything is equal, nothing is any better than anything else, and anyone that offers up (no matter where) something to listen to does so in the hope that no-one will comment about it at all (as praise is as bad as criticism if opinion is a bad thing)?

I feel like I'm in kindergarten... Better be careful. We wouldn't want to even SLIGHTLY dent anyone's self esteem, would we..? That plague virus has as much right to life as any one of us...

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 03-23-2008).]

Hi Chony,
I agree the post wasn't terribly clear.
I sometimes misread or take something out of context. Normally I have the good sense not to get involved. haahaa

best wishes
rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by chony:
[B]Spalding and Rikkis,

Now that I've read a few more of the posts on this thread, I can hear where you're coming from.

Diki,

The Super Articulation technology IS patented by Yamaha. You can read the patent here (unfortunately only the abstract is in English):

TIMBRE GENERATION METHOD AND DEVICE

Yamaha has a history of protecting its patents very vigorously - anyone remember FM synthesis? It is not likely that Yamaha will license the Super Articulation technology to any of its major competitors.

The SuperNatural voices in the new Roland Atelier AT-900/AT-900C has nothing to do with Super Articualtion. You have to select the different samples with controllers like velocity, aftertouch and two dedicated foot pedals. There is no automatic analysis of your playing style like on the Tyros 2. You can see a demonstration of Rolands SuperNatural voices in the last part of this video:

Roland Music Atelier: Tones

If you want the ultimate in solo voice technology there is no way around the Tyros 2 or PSR-S900. But in my opinion an arranger keyboard is much more than its solo voices so Roland/Korg/Ketron will still be very relevant in the future.

Kind regards,
Tommy

Different styles for sure ... matter of choice I guess ...
But am I the only one who found the 'breathing noise' annoying ?!? ... I've worked with sax players all my musical life and never heard one breathe like that ...
t.

I didn't like the "breathing noise" either, Tony...I never utilize it when I am playing the S900's SA sax...I find it sounds kinda hokey.

Ian

Ian ... Perhaps even a little 'scary' ... if my sax player ever sounded like that I might be looking to give him CPR !!! ...
t.

To gimmicky at best for sure.....& it ads to the audiences "Look At The Faker" mentality senario, lte just keep it with great sounds & less GIMMICKS!

You'd always hear the breath if a sax player was in front of a mic. That adds to the realism. Without the breath it sounds like a kb player and a sax sample !

Actually, with the mike around the bell area (and usually not too close), a decent volume tenor player rarely gets loud enough with his breath for it to get picked up as much as the SA sax. Sure, it's there, but VERY hard to pick out of the mix, unlike this. Is there an overall volume control for this element, or is it just on/off?