Can You Update The Sounds In A S80 Yamaha

Yamaha S80 review

(Paradigm credit: Yamaha)

The S80 is a weighty musical instrument in every sense of the word. This serious synth offers an expandable palette of tone colours, initially based on Yamaha's AWM2 technology; full onboard sound programming with visually satisfying editing software; and a wealth of controller capabilities that are beautifully thought out. Kin to Yamaha's trip the light fantastic toe-oriented CS6x/6R, the S80 uses the same audio engine as the CS but is oriented toward pianists, offering more piano sounds, a weighted action, and a more than conservative await. On the other hand, the S80 lacks the CS's sample-loading Phrase Clip feature-not to mention its techno mental attitude.

The S80 is all well-nigh control. With its 88-annotation weighted keyboard action, this is not an instrument for one-finger sample-stabbers. It's a grown-up'due south synthesizer, meant for someone who tin can actually play-preferably pianoforte-and who won't be intimidated by weight under the fingers. It's also a synth for someone who tin can beget a roadie-or at the very to the lowest degree a decent flight example.

Outer limits

As noted before, at that place's nothing radical well-nigh the synth'southward advent (meet Fig. ane). The S80 is big and black, with a smallish (40 by 2-character) backlit display. A pod of buttons to the correct of the display accesses the modes of functioning: Voice for single patches and Performance for multitimbral patches, plus Utility, Carte du jour, Edit, and Task. Flanked by sundry inc/december, exit and enter, aye/no, and play/stop buttons, information technology's all perfectly plainly and simple to come across and operate.

Farther to the correct comes a larger pod of buttons that access the sound-memory banks and items therein. These are labeled Piano, Organ, Strings, then on-labels that ever business organization the pro player because they scream preset! But fright not. The ROM sounds hither are of a college standard than almost of us will ever program in a lifetime, and there's plenty of infinite for user patches.

Beneath the screen are 7 rotary knobs: 2 greyness, click-stopped Page and Data controls and five assignable knobs for real-time entry and control over the on-screen parameters. Only to the left are 4 assignable sliders and a primary book slider, and way over on the top left-hand side of the control panel are a heart-detented pitch wheel and a modern wheel. The position of the wheels is mayhap a scrap uncomfortable, but to take placed them more conventionally to the left of the keyboard would add several inches onto an already lengthy animal.

At the rear (see Fig. two), you'll find but the principal Fifty/R outputs and two individual audio outs, a configuration that I feel is a little mean for this substantial sound generator. (Even so, the S80 accepts Yamaha's new mLAN bill of fare, which gives you eight channels of digital I/O via IEEE 1394, or FireWire.) Only yous'll find enough of control-device inputs-breath, footswitch, sustain, volume-a To Host figurer terminal, and an A/D input with gain control, the benefits of which I'll deal with subsequently. You too get, of course, the standard MIDI ports, every bit well as a card slot for SmartMedia removable storage.

Yamaha'south construction quality does non need my endorsement. Everything is equally professional and sturdy as ane could ever hope for. At just under 53 pounds, this is no lightweight synth, only it's less than half the weight of a Fender Rhodes. Its fully weighted 88-note keyboard is as good every bit you're going to detect today and indeed is sold by Yamaha to other manufacturers for their piano-action instruments.

Smart or not so smart

The S80 has no disk drive. Yamaha has chosen the toll-constructive SmartMedia cards for external storage and for loading of sound and sequence information.

SmartMedia is a more flexible and forrard-thinking medium, with a greater storage capacity than either floppies or the card slots in nigh synths. Yamaha recommends using the S80's play-merely sequencer with Standard MIDI Files, but I am not enlightened of any commercially bachelor SMFs on SmartMedia notwithstanding.

Fortunately, you lot can transfer files through the reckoner interface using the supplied Card Filer software. Nevertheless, a floppy bulldoze would have been, ahem, smarter than SmartMedia alone, in my opinion, because it's less hassle.

Sound organisation

The S80 organizes itself very conventionally into single-patch sounds (Voices) and multitimbral sounds (Performances). There are 256 "normal" (pitched) preset Voices offered in Preset i and Preset 2 banks, as well as room to store 128 user programs. As well that, you get eight preset drum Voices and room to shop two user drum Voices.

Maximum polyphony is 64 notes, though in this context the word "notation" really should be "Element." An Chemical element is the S80'due south smallest increase of sound, comprising an oscillator-pitch-filter-amplifier chain of command that processes Yamaha AWM2-sampled waveforms. This ways that, every bit with about sample-based synths, if you utilize a sound containing four Elements, the polyphony will be slashed to 16 notes, which is not a lot nowadays. But most sounds employ no more than ii Elements; and equally I'll detail afterward, y'all can increase the polyphony, equally well as the number of sounds, using plug-in boards.

A Performance tin can consist of up to 19 Parts, a somewhat intriguing tally that can include Voices (normal or drum), A/D input Parts, or Plug-in Parts. Performances can be simple vocalization sandwiches or highly customized concoctions of zoned and Velocity-switched Voices, complete with internal and external controller assignments. There are 128 Performances stored in ROM; another 64 user Performances can be stored internally.

Plug and play

Switch on and start playing the luscious Yamaha S700 Grand Piano sample in "StereoGrnd," preset one, and you'll know you're in the presence of greatness. This is a sound you could alive with comfortably for years to come up. It has life, richness, tonal depth, and unlike some of the too-smooth Korg and Roland pianos-plenty of bite and character.

At this indicate, the S80'due south screen offers you lot control of a 3-ring "tone-command" graphic EQ and directly access to the chorus and reverb depths. These v parameters tin be adapted using the v soft knobs below (A, B, C, 1, and ii). You're not sentenced to EQ and effects control alone, though; you can fix each Phonation with instant access to the parameters you want to control. Knobs ane and 2 tin command different parameters for each Vox, while knobs A, B, and C are global and command the same user-selected parameters for all Voices.

Information technology's time to become cruel and actually exam this beast: let'south hitting the handy Furnishings Bypass button (well done, Yamaha) and concur down two depression Cs an octave apart. Time ticks past . . . 10 seconds, 20 seconds. . . . The sound, at kickoff ambitious and rasping, slowly tails off to a warm blur and finally tapers to a pinpoint. You can't fault that. No noticeable loop, no number crunching, no fall-off (or, worse, space sustain).

In the Piano category, the S80 starts with StereoGrnd and goes on to offer a slightly more condensed, apparently close-miked grand piano; a collection of acoustic pianos ranging from dark to "slamming" edgy (for example, Elton John circa 1978); electrics like the Yamaha CP2000 electric k; and a number of "piano-pluses," such as "oohs" and strings.

Before I get too deeply involved in a sound-by-sound analysis, let'south linger on a couple of Yamaha solutions to i of today'southward about irksome keyboard problems: "I've and then many sounds to choose from that half my time is wasted just trying to find them."

S80 solution 1 is a push marked Quick Access; by pressing it, you lot're dialled into what Yamaha considers the 16 "all-time of" sounds inside that category, no matter where in memory (Preset i, Preset 2, or Internal) the sound is actually located.

Solution 2 is Phonation Category Search, with which yous tin can search for all piano-type (PF) voices, all guitar (GT) voices, and then on. By such means, I apace discovered that a standard S80 has more than 60 pianos resident.

Whichever means you lot choose, navigating around the S80 in normal day-to-solar day use is fast and hassle-free. You can instantly access plenty of cool parameters using the assignable sliders, knobs, and pedals. The precise nature of such control is left up to yous. Want some swell arpeggiation in the left hand of a Functioning? How most serious filter tweaking on a pb synth? Delicate Velocity switching on a funk bass? It's your thing; do what you desire to do.

You lot must gear this

AWM2 is one of the core technologies used on Yamaha's EX5 synthesizer. This sample-based synthesis architecture may not be cutting-edge, but Yamaha squeezes every scintilla of sound quality and playability from the S80's 24 MB waveform pool.

Of the unmarried Voices, the aforementioned StereoGrnd piano is stellar, but I also loved some of the electric pianos (Bel Roadz, Erl Fusion). The Clavinets are suitably rubbery and expressive, different the flat and static simulations of Hohner's 1970s masterpiece constitute in about synths.

Brass, too, is well represented, equally yous'd wait from an instrument of EX5 lineage. The generically titled Medium Contumely is the pick of the crop; it plays beautifully, with just the right amount of tonal embellishment under Velocity control. When I practical information technology to previously recorded parts, I establish the sound impressively accommodating, too: parts that had been recorded using other synths simply sprang to life.

Gamelan may not be top of your wish list, but if you're looking for exotic bell tones yous'll exist blown abroad by the S80's airy Gamelan preset. This, similar so many of the natural-instrument presets, seems to exist in a totally natural environment. Information technology'south near spooky.

Only the S80 is not just near replicating real-globe sounds. It is also a fierce, filter-laden monster, offer not simply a dozen or so filter types-including resonant filters-but real-time knob command, also. Check out the richly vocal PhazFilter or, for one of those gentle and inspiring types, Soft Dream. Some presets include rhythmic elements; I particularly liked Rndm Gruv and ShineSeq 1. If yous were a Korg Wavestation fan, you'll be catered to nicely here.

The quality of an instrument is perceived not only in its audio just too in its responsiveness when played. S80 sounds seem to have air in them, a far cry from the often fossilized-sounding world of synthesis. And it's not just a question of judicious use of reverb-it'southward the difference between recording a guitar through a direct box and sticking a $2,000 Neumann mic in front of your trusty Fender Twin. These sounds accept life and breath, right back to the original samples. Moreover, much like myself if I may say and then, they speak properly. Whether information technology's the preciously preserved attack portion of the sound or the subtle employ of Aftertouch to induce an added characteristic, the sounds just feel right under the fingers.

Very live in performances

lxxx multisounds come in several varieties. Near obviously at that place are fat, layered patches for regular playing-including the obligatory brass-based orchestral scene with Velocity-accessed timpani-as well every bit massive string orchestras and enough of fizz-blindside synths. Performances can comprise separately zoned instruments; for example, the S80 has another of today'south obligatory patches that features jazzy piano, bass, and drums. In add-on, Yamaha has almost thoughtfully provided some template Performances, with sounds accessible on separate channels for multitimbral sequencing, and a sit-in Primary Keyboard Performance (H16) that cracks open up the door to a world of Total Control for your entire live keyboard rig.

Multisound patches ever brand ear-catching solo playing, although most, bluntly, are useless exterior the confines of a music shop or your own self-indulgent noodling. The S80'southward multisound Performances, heavy on spectacular arpeggiator work, are top drawer. Normally, making adjustments on a multisound involves dragging yourself back into an instrument's sound-editing pages to tweak the private components from which the multisound has been assembled. Happily the S80'southward use of Parts within a Performance means you can tweak with relative ease. You can, for instance, Quick Edit each layer within a Operation, including its filter, envelope, level, and furnishings.

The general idea that the S80 is non sold as a General MIDI instrument; all the same, as creator of the XG superset of GM, Yamaha is obviously a GM-mindful company. Appropriately, a prepare of what Yamaha calls "Pseudo GM compliant" sounds is available for Internet download. This audio fix can be loaded via SmartMedia card into the External memory location.

If GM is essential to your piece of work (and its convenience is surely beyond question these days), then I'd strongly recommend purchasing the PLG100XG plug-in module. It non only gives you a full complement of 700-plus Voices in full GM/XG layout, but also adds 32 notes of polyphony and sixteen multitimbral Parts.

AWM2 on board

Yamaha'southward AWM2 synthesis technology has been around a while, merely being sample-based information technology is always open up to updating with fresh waveforms. The S80's 24 MB of waveform ROM offers more 500 sound bites to use every bit the kernel of your sound. (The waveforms are compressed, and then this really is the equivalent of near twoscore MB of uncompressed samples.)

A unmarried Voice can be made from upward to four Elements, each of which can apply a separate waveform for its oscillator. Element oscillators can be set in terms of output, pan, pitch, and note range. They also can use a five-stage pitch envelope and pitch scaling, which adjusts the speed of the pitch-envelope command co-ordinate to where y'all are playing on the keyboard. Each Element can use an insertion effect or choose Thru to featherbed the effects-a very detailed and useful facility.

Is this all a piffling likewise detailed? Of course, 99.nine per cent of S80 users will utilise and corruption the presets, pausing only in an emergency to tweak a tone'south brightness or attack. This is admittedly fine. Simply I am pleased to see that Yamaha neither denies the tweakers access to the parameters nor compels them to use external editing software unless they feel and then inclined. Cross-platform editing software is provided on CD-ROM, I hasten to add together, but you won't need it. I must intermission here to praise the S80's conspicuously labelled screens and well-written user transmission.

Dorsum to Sound Central. Filters play a crucial part in whatsoever synthesizer, and the S80 provides a pick of 12 basic filter types, selectable-and this is very important-per Element. Your choices include some blends (12 dB/octave lowpass plus highpass), a bevvy of lowpass types with unlike slopes and extractions (24 dB/octave to 6 dB/octave, digital and analogue), two strengths of highpass, and three selections of bandpass/ring-turn down. This is strong stuff-perfect for creating fierce Moogy sounds, slimmer and trimmer ARP-type tones, raw and gutsy basses, and intricate effects. It's interesting to play around with the digital and analogue lowpass alternatives. Of course, "analogue" here actually means "analogue-similar," but these filters are certainly smoother and less sheer than the digital filters. It's nifty to have options.

Resonance is available throughout, as a harmonics booster for the lowpass filters and as a width adjuster on bandpass. You besides can apply multistage envelope generation and filter scaling. Distressing to harp on about it, but recall, this is all per Element.

Velocity can exist tailed to Mars Pathfinder accuracy (well, perchance at that place'south a more complimentary illustration), and you can control the amplifier stage with a five-stage envelope generator and scaling.

The hardware-based Element LFO is a bit underpowered, with just three waveshapes (sawtooth, triangle, and square), speed and depth controls, and pitch/filter/amplifier modulation. KeySync resets the LFO cycle with each played note. Unfortunately, the LFO cannot sync to MIDI Clock. However, the S80 also has a mutual LFO, created in software, that can exist assigned to whatsoever oscillator. It offers a wider variety of waveforms and parameters and an assail-release envelope, and information technology will sync to MIDI Clock.

The drum planet

A different set of controls is available for drum Voices than for normal Voices. This makes a groovy deal of sense. For drums, you tin can set all way of juicy pan options (nether Velocity or note-club control) and can specify which Voices employ effects, pitch, filtering, EQ, and arpeggiation.

If you've non experimented with pulsate arpeggios, you're in for a care for. A drum arpeggio, of course, quickly becomes a drum pattern, but one with all the quirkiness and unexpected bonuses of pitch arpeggiation in terms of polyrhythms and grooves.

The icing

The range and quality of effects are at a level that only Yamaha could consistently accomplish. The S80 has two stereo furnishings processors for insertion effects and two dedicated to global reverb and chorus. The insertion effects are practical at the Phonation level, and then all Elements inside a Voice use the same insertion effect, but these effects can be bypassed past a particular Element or drum Phonation. In Performance mode, insertion effects can exist applied to Voice Parts or the A/D input Office. In addition, you become a 2nd gear up of insert furnishings that are specifically devoted to the modular-synthesis Plug-in Voices.

Insertion effects include flanger, phaser, baloney, compressor, impact wah, gate, delays, karaoke (oh no!), amp simulators, rotary speaker, and some crazy stuff similar digital turntable (adds click and rumble), digital scratch (to filter and pan a sound-brilliant), and many more than. All can exist tweaked with appropriate parameters.

Reverb and chorus are offered in multiple, editable variations (12 reverbs, 11 choruses) and are applied globally, after the insertion effects, to the summed bespeak (see Fig. three). These organization furnishings are on a bus, and yous get transport-level and effects-return-level controls for each Voice.

Outside in

Before I mentioned the Korg Wavestation, which I believe was the first digital synth to let users procedure outside signals with the internal synthesis components and effects. I'grand happy to report that this feature is live and well, and the S80 has it. Cool? You bet. Plug in a mic or a guitar, and you tin can utilise any of the S80's 100 or more effects within a Performance setting. For instance, you could set up your input level on the Mix Template folio and offset applying vinyl dissonance or scratch effects to your vocals.

Control patrol

Yamaha really ought to make a video about the S80's command options. In print, it'south impossible to make the zillions of options seem equally heady as they actually are. Yous need to hear the effect of decision-making the arpeggiation gate-time charge per unit with a foot pedal or employing unlike levels of Velocity control over specific areas of the keyboard-never heed simply tweaking the filter cutoff with a panel knob. The S80 really deserves the title "control freak."

Starting with the controllers themselves, you lot have 2 wheels, four sliders, v knobs, and room for four pedals. To meridian information technology off, you can apply a Yamaha breath controller with the S80-provided you don't mind looking like an overgrown baby sucking on a pacifier.

Command destinations are not limited to obvious candidates-volume and reverb level, for example-but embrace such minutiae as Chemical element pitch-envelope depth, LFO speed, EQ, arpeggio speed, and gate time. If y'all're a budding Vangelis (who in the '70s used an army of pedals and controls to turn his rig into one living, breathing entity), you'll be in heaven hither.

Groups of command setups can be separately saved as Command Sets. What a not bad thought! You lot can write upward to six Control Sets per Vox, each superimposing a fresh collection of real-time controls over your audio. The do good of separating command settings from a patch will exist instantly obvious to anyone who has laboured nether difficult taskmasters in a live band or studio setting and heard, "Don't change the sound, but I need an arpeggio going likewise" or "Can you fade that string patch in more than?" (and then 20 minutes later, "No, dorsum as you were").

The magic touch

Internal sound control is one thing, but what near principal-keyboard duties? Yamaha's literature is very keen for you to make the connection between the S80 and the company's seminal KX88 controller keyboard. Actually, the ii take almost nothing in common except 88 notes and decent weighted keyboard action. The KX88 is impossibly difficult to prepare (unless you dream in hex) and, being a relatively early on MIDI musical instrument, is very restricted in modern terms. The S80 offers 100 times the ability at a fraction of the complication. I specially similar its Master Keyboard push button, which superimposes a gear up of Principal Keyboard setups onto a Functioning.

Yamaha acknowledges you'll probably accept the odd tone module or sampler in your rig in addition to the S80. Primary Keyboard mode functions as a form of external Performance memory, letting you lot construct complex MIDI and zone combinations over your entire keyboard rig. For each zone, y'all can set different transpose factors, enable or disable any of the controllers, and assign Plan Change and Bank Select messages. This is good, practical stuff designed past someone who has played alive.

Expansionist ideas

"Plug-in," the great buzzword du jour as the old millennium wheezed its last, replaced its immediate predecessor, open-ended architecture. The term plug-in tin be taken literally with the S80. Yamaha currently offers six plug-in expansion boards for the S80, including the PLG150VL (physical-modelling derived from the VL series), PLG150DX (FM synthesis), PLG100VH (vocal harmony processor, peculiarly cute when used with an A/D input vocal microphone), PLG150AN (analogue modelling), PLG150PF (pianos, pianos, and more pianos), and PLG100XG (MU-serial XG tone module).

The crucial affair is that yous are purchasing sound generators, complete with their own CPUs-which means added polyphony too as new sounds. The concrete plug-in is a simple practice-it-yourself functioning, and you lot can load 2 boards at a time.

Affordable luxury

Playing the S80 makes you lot feel like you've made it. The keyboard has weight, say-so, and class, and your chops will probably take a l per cent hike as a outcome. The synth sounds fantastic with or without expansion boards. The effects work great on internal keyboard sounds. I could go on and on.

Yamaha is admittedly right to offer external facilities (plug-ins, A/D, bundled software for editing internal and XG sounds), and it has done so without sacrificing internal features or control. You can all the same edit everything without using a figurer.

Every bit a controller keyboard, the S80 occupies a very select class in both feel and office. If you're working in a circuitous, sample-heavy environment, you can set up command zones, effects applications, and performances that volition exist both what you need and what you lot similar. Though its association with the KX88 is spurious, there's every adventure the S80 will be received too and terminal as long.

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