Voice Processing question

[SeaGtGruff]

At any rate I've raised a few serious points should you decide to go with a Yamaha purchase, not the least of which is asking yourself if you will still be able to find drivers and apps for it should you consider keeping it for a decade or more.

But Yamaha's USB-MIDI drivers aren't keyboard-specific. If Linux takes over the world, I expect Yamaha will release a USB-MIDI driver for Linux. Then Windows-users might need to buy new computers, but they won't need to buy new Yamaha keyboards-- just download and install Yamaha's Linux driver and apps for their new Linux computer.

 

[happyrat1]

Nonetheless you are totally at Yamaha's mercy when it comes to finding drivers for their older hardware whenever a later version of Windows comes out.

How many months did Windows 8 users wait for updated drivers when they first released Win 8?

Is that particular driver applicable to EVERY Yamaha legacy product?

What about the Motif Series? Are the drivers universal there as well?

And exactly how much bloatware and shovelware does Yamaha install along with it's drivers whether you want it or not? Everytime I install an update for adobe flash on a windows partition I have to agree to a nonsensical legal document and uncheck a box just so it won't install bloody McAffee on my machine.

As for the driver installation procedure for the PSR driver, it's ridiculous. Why the hell do you have to unplug EVERY USB device from your computer except the mouse and keyboard simply to install a bloody inf driver file?

As long as other keyboard manufacturers continue to give me the simple option of plugging in a USB cord and the computer can automatically find and install the correct driver without jumping thru hoops, I'll stick with the competition.

Hell, I'm currently posting in another thread on these forums right now advising someone that his Motif needs a new battery.

The Yamaha manual for the Motif XS has two small paragraphs on the first page, along with the FCC certifications and UL warnings that it MAY OR MAY NOT CONTAIN A BATTERY AND THAT IF IT EXISTS IT IS NOT USER SERVICEABLE.

What sort of nonsense is that to tell your customers? That MAYBE your board will stop working after 5 to 7 years but you'll have to send it back to the factory to find out for sure?

A little more googling found that there probably is indeed probably a CR2032 soldered in there but it ain't user replaceable and who knows what other landmines they've hidden in there to defeat unauthorized service techs 6 years after the warranty has expired? Rolands can be totally wiped out by performing the wrong sort of factory initialization without the factory restore disk. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me if Yamaha had the same sort of paranoid safeguards built in in order to defeat people from prolonging the life of their equipment at the expense of buying a new replacement from Yamaha.

This sort of proprietary, paranoid arrogance is a working philosophy for a few companies in the computer music hardware world.

Fortunately Kurzweil has a much more relaxed attitude about their products. Users are actually ENCOURAGED to open up their keyboards and perform minor upgrades, replace batteries and even perform minor repairs on their keyboards before being directed to seek out authorized service techs.

Companies like Yamaha and Roland will never have me as a customer for these reasons. Personally when I lay out three grand for a keyboard I like to feel that I've BOUGHT something instead of just leasing it for a few years.

Gary

 

[Thomas Karlmann]

Regarding your second question, I asked a PSR-S950 owner about editing a song you've saved as a MIDI file and he confirmed that yes, you can load it back into the keyboard later and edit it some more.

OffTopic: I see that you listed Casio CTK-710; I have the very similar CTK-731 right now, but was looking to upgrade. Have you seen the YT videos by Marcin Ryczko for the CTK-731?

 

[SeaGtGruff]

I haven't watched them yet, but I've bookmarked the page to watch them later. I also had to go check out the CTK-731 on Casio's site after I noticed a pitch bend or modulation wheel in the stills for some of his videos, then I had to search for the manual since Casio doesn't seem to have it on their site.

I'm sorry to say that the CTK-710 isn't much like the CTK-731, because the CTK-710 doesn't have tone editing, pattern editing, song recording, registration memories, etc.-- it's just a very basic beginner's keyboard. You can't even split the keyboard or layer two tones, just pick from a few predefined split tones and layered tones. I got it several years ago at Wal-Mart because it was so cheap, I didn't have a keyboard at that time, and I wanted something to fiddle around with.