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Reviews : Keyboard
Fruit continues to fall from Yamaha's Motif tree and the latest and cheapest example is the MX range...
Yamaha were once the masters of the low-cost but surprisingly impressive synthesizer. From the CE20 and CE25 to the DX21, DX27 and DX11, then the likes of the SY22 and SY55... these were all inexpensive descendents of more powerful parents. But for the past dozen years or so, Yamaha have been locked into its Motif product range, spinning off mid-range instruments, but with no obvious equivalent to any of the above. Happily, that's now changed with the introduction of the MX49 and MX61, a pair of low-cost synths that come packaged with Steinberg's Cubase AI6 sequencer and Prologue soft synth, as well as Yamaha's own YC3B organ emulator. That's a lot of stuff for such a low price. I wonder whether there's a catch?
The Synthesizer
Based upon Yamaha's AWM2 engine, the MX49 that I have here (which, henceforth, I'll just call 'the MX' because any comments are equally relevant to the MX61) is the baby of Yamaha's Motif-derived synths. It looks rather basic but, as I was to discover, appearances can be deceptive.
The
rear panel of the MX is not replete with sockets. There's just a single analogue output pair and their associated headphone socket, an auxiliary audio input on a 3.5mm socket and two analogue control sockets; sustain and foot controller. The digital side offers MIDI In and Out on five-pin DIN, and there are two USB sockets; one for computer communication, and one for devices such as memory sticks.Trying one for the first time, you'll find a wide range of patches (which Yamaha call 'Voices') each allocated to one of 16 categories: pianos, organs, strings, brass and so on. You can't overwrite these, but there are 128 user memories for normal Voices and another eight for drum kits.
Nevertheless, there's no 'patch mode' as such; you access and play patches by inserting them into Performances, at which point they are referred to as Parts. There are 128 of these Performances, all of which can be edited and overwritten by the user, and each is 16-part multi-timbral, with Parts 1 and 2 accessible from the keyboard, either one at a time, layered or either side of a user-defined split point. The other 14 Parts are accessible via MIDI in the usual fashion. Interestingly, you can edit some important aspects of Parts 1 and 2 simultaneously — for example, adjusting the filters in both sounds
Published in SOS October 2013
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