Yamaha supports 1 gig pianos for next Motif. Franky? Michiel?

[Jake Johnson]

After posting my worries about the Motif ES, I ran across this message from Yamaha marketing at http://www.sninety.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=1,3&Board=Plugboard&Number=27449&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=28: (\"http://www.sninety.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=1,3&Board=Plugboard&Number=27449&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=28:\")

\"One of the less obvious features of the ES is that the new chip will load LPC compressed waves. Almost all of the waves inside the Motif and other Yamaha products are compressed by LPC coding which means that you get twice as long a sample in typically half the size.

What does this mean ? If you had 512 MB of sample RAM in ES and we created a 1 GIG piano and compressed it with LPC it would load into the ES. FYI, you can not edit LPC compressed files, they can just be played back.

The biggest real world advantage is loading time in that a file that is 64 MB in length and is then compressed to 32 MB loads as a 32 MB file , that is in half the time of the original uncompressed file.

The final advantage is that since it is compressed in a proprietary format it can only be read by the Motif ES and it can not be exported as .wav or AIFF . We believe third party companies will see this as a defacto copy protection mechanism ( it only plays back on Motif ES) and therefore make lots of libraries.

They can take an exisitng CDROM and easily modify so that it loads in half the time. We wil be working with a number of them to either provide them with the compression tool or havea team of people here to do the compression for them.\"


Sounds better and better. Has anyone been contacted by Yamaha about building these piano libraries?

[Bruce A. Richardson]

I fail to see what sounds good about that. Proprietary formats suck. This is exactly what some people are trying to do to software synthesis/sampling as well, but thankfully, the user base has grown accustomed to the freedoms of standard and transparent formats, and I don\'t think (at least I pray) we\'ll never return to a situation where proprietary formats are the norm.

A friend of mine has a Motif, and frankly, I hate it when he brings it to the gig. The sounds are SO cheeseball, and so \"excited\" that they blend terribly with anything acoustic. I have this secret desire to run over the thing when we\'re loading out...

Yamaha only wants to sell hardware, as much lip service as they gave to becoming a more progressive company. So far, no proof. This announcement of proprietary, non-importable/exportable formats (and motivations) is more evidence that they just don\'t get it.

[Jake Johnson]

I don\'t like hyped synth sounds either. As I understand it, the compression ratio means that this keybboard will let us load a Post\\Vintaudio\\Art Vista piano, and carry that sound around with an onboard sequencer. Not as good as having open standards, or working in a studio with all the pianos available on a hard disk, but not terrible.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Originally posted by Jake Johnson:
I don\'t like hyped synth sounds either. As I understand it, the compression ratio means that this keybboard will let us load a Post\\Vintaudio\\Art Vista piano, and carry that sound around with an onboard sequencer. Not as good as having open standards, or working in a studio with all the pianos available on a hard disk, but not terrible. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">A rackmount Giga-rig is a thing of beauty.

[J. Whaley]

How about a wise company create a giga type rack mount sound module that would have a onboard OS only big enough to run the software, and stream samples nicely from disk. With a HUGE RAM availability. For the purposes of gig-a-bility and basically just sample playback, a small screen the size of your typical Akai s5000 would be just fine. With a video connection in the back so you could connect a full size keyboard and monitor for editing back at the ranch... that would be a good way to go. But I don\'t see a 512M motif taking much of the market share. I want to be able to load more then a 1GB piano that\'s been compressed to 512.....

[Jake Johnson]

Hm..Did some quick research and it looks as though rack systems configured for Giga are in the $2200-3000 range. (About what the next Motif will be.) Anyone know of a good rackmount for less, or care to weigh in with their experiences with rackmounts?

[michael88s]

Hi Jake,

I\'ve got a P3 desktop which cost me $500 new. I run W98SE, have an Audiophile 2496 card which cost $179, and I have Gigasampler.

For different musical needs NOT Giga, I was using my regular desktop in live situations for a couple of years, inside an SKB 4 rackspace case (cost around $200), with an added case cooling fan for ventilation. There\'s no reason this setup couldn\'t work with Giga live as well although I haven\'t tried it.

It worked perfectly and was way economical, the only hassle being connecting and situating a 15\" flat panel monitor. If there were a smaller and easier monitoring solution I\'d be a happy camper. I wonder if anyone knows of one?

So, bottom line, this system (without the monitor) cost around $1000.


Regards,
michael88s

[Mattias Henningson]

Jake,

Another alternative just to confuse you even more... images/icons/wink.gif

I\'m currently using my Shuttle barebone PC as my live rig. It\'s mounted in a rack case along with a 15\" TFT monitor. When not gigging I\'m using it for Giga in the studio, but live I use Brainspawn Forte as my DXi/VSTi host application and different soft synths as sound sources such as Kontakt, B4, Albino and a few other synths. With Forte I also get typical live features like scene memories which basically is snapshots of the entire configuration in Forte including midi routing, active instruments, program changes within these instruments and so on which is great when playing live. Send a program change from your controller to Forte and you have a complete reconfiguration of all your instruments and inserted fx plugins within milliseconds...! Since I\'m using Kontakt, I\'m still able to use for instance Scarbees\' Rhodes and some of the large giga pianos converted to Kontakt live.

One of the large benefits IMHO of going this route instead of a straight Giga route is that you also have access to all your VST and DX fx plugs from within Forte. Some Ozone Trash or Amplitube on the Rhodes doesn\'t hurt just to mention one thing.

I\'m not in the US, but I think you should be able to get this machine including 1GB memory, a 15\" monitor and an ok sound card for around $1000.

This rig beats every hardware synth I\'ve ever tried and it\'s definitely MUCH more flexible when it comes to new sounds and upgrades.

/Mattias

[Bruce A. Richardson]

This is exactly how my rig is set up, except it\'s a rackmount/flat panel combo. I have been using it live for FIVE YEARS in November!! Of course, I have put three or four different mobo/processor combinations in over the years, but I would never waste a cent on a hardware synth. They all sound like total cheese compared to the power of Giga, Reaktor, B4, Absynth, Pro-53, Kontakt, Vokator, FM-7...especially when you can use apps like Forte to control your live playing routines.

It might seem like a pain to use a computer for a live rig, but it is not. My particular \"secret\" is using two Laylas for one machine. One Layla is mounted in the studio, the other in my live rack with my wireless, mixer, and trusty Digitech Studio 400 (which will probably be the next thing to go at this rate).

So, all I do is slide the computer out of the IsoRaxx, grab the rack with the second Layla, load up controllers and stands, pack the computer and monitor in their flight cases, and I\'m out the door. It takes about 20 minutes.

You won\'t be able to build this system for the cost of one hardware keyboard, but you can build it for less than the cost of two...and I\'m talking Anvil Cases, casters, anywhere-in-the-world gig readiness.

This is also the way I deal with external studio use. My room at home is a wonderful mix and voiceover/overdub facility (especially since I had the Auralex consultation and treatment), but sometimes you want to go for a big iso-room or run a large session. A rig like this allows you to hit any studio fully ready to go--whether as a player or as a producer.

Sorry for the slightly off-topic turn. When it comes up, I always encourage people to invest in software solutions based upon my very happy experience. Even when Giga was GigaSampler, I found this rig to be as stable as any I\'d used, just as easy to set up, and infinitely better sounding on stage. GigaStudio made it even better, and all the great soft-synth advances (and increasing CPU capability) have made hardware synths a relic of the 20th century in my practice. I still keep a couple around for sentimental reasons, but they rarely even get turned on any more.

[Austin]

So tell me, all you gigging-PC-riggers...

why wouldn\'t a laptop work in this same situation?

I mean, if you are not streaming 160 notes off of the drive, but maybe 30-50 from GIGA of Kontakt, or whatever, a few soft synths, etc.

If I don\'t mind the quality hit by using the onboard soundcard line out for live use...

then what is the drawback to just loading up a laptop for live use, as opposed to the rack? stability?

comments?

[JonFairhurst]

A laptop will generally work fine. And if you add a firewire drive and a cardbus soundcard, the only compromise is a slower processor and less max RAM.

[Squids]

Hi. Myself and one of my co-workers here at SR did some of the patch programming for this beast. I think some of the sounds in it are really great. Sure, some of them are hyped sounding and so are the sounds of the Korg Triton and the Roland Phantom. It seems like they are competing with each other for \"cutting through the noise at the store keyboard room\" thing. images/icons/wink.gif Well, seriously, they compete with each other and not directly with the software/soundware world. Samplers with larger sounds that aren\'t overly processed tend to \"fit in the mix better\" as one might say.

As to loading a 1 gig piano into this keyboard... well, to be realistic even if it loads like a 512 meg piano it will still take quite a while to load. I mean we are talking about perhaps a half hour or more. So, realistically, this synth is probably not the thing you\'d expect to load 1 gig pianos in all the time. However, if you DID load it in then the quality of it would be great because the sound of the Motif and it\'s DSP is really good. Although, data compression will take some of the quality away. It might sound better with a 1/2 gig piano without the data compression. It all depends.

Anyway, Yamaha make some great technology. We\'ve been one of the few companies to support the Yamaha A4000 natively. It\'s not one of our biggest sellers but it sure sounds good (especially because we programmed them with all of the lush effects in it!). I don\'t know if we\'ll be doing native Motif stuff or not though even with this form of copy protection. For one thing, what is to prevent someone from copying the disc? It will still work in another person\'s Motif.

But, having access to their data compression is still a nice option. Most companies don\'t give you access to that. Kurzweil had a good one that they used on that daughter board piano. I think that was even 16 to 1!!!! It was originally a 64 meg piano that fit into 4 megs or something like that.

Anyway, I have a Motif 8 and I love it. I mainly use it as a controller but occassionally mess around with the patches I\'ve made on it and noodle around with various rhodes and stuff very often. The feel of the keyboard is really nice. The only thing I really miss on it is the three wheels and ribbon controller that was on the EX5. It\'s a shame they stopped doing that because I love my EX5 for this.

Anyway, my advice is to get the Motif ES if you want it for it\'s regular features more than this one in particular. If you want to load 1 gig pianos then a software sampler is going to load a lot faster and no data compression will be necessary. Now controlling that software sampler with the Motif is a nice combination.

Good luck!

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Originally posted by Austin:
So tell me, all you gigging-PC-riggers...

why wouldn\'t a laptop work in this same situation?

I mean, if you are not streaming 160 notes off of the drive, but maybe 30-50 from GIGA of Kontakt, or whatever, a few soft synths, etc.
<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">For me, that\'s the very issue. Full bore piano playing easily hits 160 voices, and it\'s just so nice to have that level of polyphony available.

By the time you\'ve strung up your power supply, laptop, audio interface, firewire drive, etc., for me, it\'s no more convenient than the rackmount--just more money for less capability and about the same hassle-level. So, I really feel good about the rackmount. I like it that I can show up to a gig with five great pianos, or the entire VSL. Opens up some interesting options...

[Jake Johnson]

The more I read here, the more I think the rackmount is the way to go. Two questions, though:

1. Can you fit two hard drives (one for Giga and softsyths and the other for sampler) and a big enough fan and still have room for several RAM slots, all in a rackmount? I guess you can, given what everyone is saying, but it seems like a tight fit.

2. I can\'t help but be curious about the Motif: are any of the piano developers thinking of developing for it? My hope is that they will, and that they\'ll see a large demand for their libraries, sending Yamaha the message that more and more memory is a good thing--once users hear what a good sound can be gotten from 1 gig samples, they\'ll want to be able to load many of them on their keyboards. Maybe one day we can have keyboards with big hard drives and big RAM banks, and not have to carry extra equipment. Nice dream?

[Squids]

A 1 gig piano compressed down to 512 megs would make sense if it was somehow backed up with flash memory or something else that allowed you to painfully load it one time and it stays there even after you turn it off and on again. Otherwise it seems a little unrealistic these days to expect someone to wait over a half hour to load one sound. I haven\'t tried loading one this size to be absolutely sure but considering that previous Motif and A series samplers loaded samples at a rate of almost 1-2 megs per minute from SCSI, I think that even if this was 10 times faster loading from Smart Media or whatever it would still be 25 to 50 minutes. When you can load a gig sized piano on Giga, Kontakt, EXS or Sampletank in less than 1 minute? It\'s kind of hard to think of the Motif as being the best solution for this.

Now, the one thing that is convenient of course is having it in the keyboard for live purposes. But, if your power goes out you are screwed. I had this happen to me in the middle of a gig and there was no sounds until I could load it all back up (took me a few songs time to get it back up). Ever since then I carried around a heavy UPS. But, then if you are going to carry all of that around then you might as well carry a CPU... just some thoughts and just an opinion. I am all for the Motif, it is a great keyboard. But, getting it for this? I don\'t know. Also, developers making 1 gig pianos for it? Well, realistically, how many developers made native Motif sounds at any size before? Don\'t hold your breath on that.

Although you never know. Maybe some developers will. I would in a second if the load time was fast enough... I won\'t even bother to do this for myself because of this though. Perhaps someone will do it just to do it but I really don\'t think it is as useful if it takes forever to load. Just my opinion.

[Jake Johnson]

(Yamaha says samples will stay on the keyboard once you load them in. You can turn it off and back on, and still have the piano, or whatever samples you\'ve loaded. They\'re trying to get the load time down too. They\'re using USB ports.)