Janagirl, I am confused. In your first post, you say
janagirl wrote:The keyboard is shown on the list for the midi synthesizers but if I start a midi after selecting it the midi doesn't play. I'm using winamp for playing midis.
Then in your last post:
janagirl wrote:Hmm, my Problem is that I even don't find the Point where I could set the midi device in winamp. I found a few plugins for Input and Output but I didn't saw anything that has to do with midi.
In your first post when you say your keyboard is in the list of synthesizers, what list are you referring to? I initially thought you were talking about the device list in Winamp's midi plug-in, but I am apparently incorrect.
No worries Nocturnus. Had I not had PSR boards, I would've probably said the same thing as you. I myself own an FA06 which indeed has a very nice driver. The later Yamaha USb drivers also are pretty similar in my experience, though the PSR-S970, which is the board I use most often, sadly can't act as an asio device or a sound card, which is something I always liked about the FA.
I thought your Roland vs Yamaha observations were interesting. I actually had an opposite experience. I was, and still am, a Yamaha fanboy and for a long time I refused to get a Roland keyboard. They seemed to have a very dry stiff sound, to me it was almost like thin reinforced cardboard. Maybe that's because the sounds are used so much, maybe it's because many sounds are 20 years old and people still use them, but the latter is also true with Korg and I don't have quite as strong an impression of those sounds, so I don't really know what it is for sure. But when I heard the FA, I thought it deserved a proper chance, since I'd never owned a Roland product, just tried them and heard demos. When I played with the FA, I found many sounds to be similar to what I said above, but some of them, particularly the newer content, sounded fresher and more alive to me. My dislike for Roland sounds is probably a minority though, as I only know one other person who shares my opinion. I know probably a dozen now who adore the FA and I can definitely see why. Even though I don't like the sounds as much, I would never get rid of mine, as the synth action and many of the sounds are nice for gigging, which I've been doing more and more lately, despite my childhood oppositions to doing live performance.
Even the entry level PSR keyboards, while not being quite as attractive as the FA in terms of features, do have a sound I like, as Yamaha have done away with a lot of older generation sounds, particularly in the pop and some orchestral groups. I got the S970 because it is Yamaha's flagship PSR, so it's about as close to a Tyros as you can get. It's pricy though, I paid $2000 for it which is iirc twice the price of the FA, but I had money saved and I figured I needed to get something modern that would hold me for a few years at least. The s970 basically has the foundations of all the Tyros keyboards put together, even pulling a few resources from the new-ish Tyros 5. You don't get the more advanced patches or bleeding edge features, but you do get the essence, imho, of what makes the Tyros have its sonic character which I've always been attached to.
What makes the FA perhaps better than a PSR of a similar price point is that Roland gives you quite a fair selection of famous old sounds, and some new ones too, and to my limited knowledge they've been ported right over. I doubt I could listen to an identical set of sounds on the FA or JV or Integra, for example, and tell you which was used, because so long as the used patches are the same, they don't sound different between the synths. If you are a Roland fanboy, and even if you're not, this is a plus.
This is not the case with Yamaha. Even though they are based off each other, I can tell you pretty quickly if something is made with a PSR-S versus a Tyros, because the PSR-S has downgraded many sounds. Acoustic drum kits are a dead giveaway as they have been converted to mono. Newer brass and string ensembles have also gotten this treatment. Yamaha even acknowledges this to an extent. On the Tyros boards, some sounds have a "Live!" tag signifying that they are made specifically to emphasize natural stereo ambience. On budget keyboards, the patches that have been downgraded are conveniently relabeled as something else, often times just "regular" or something similar. To my delight, the s970 and s770 both have finally done away with this, and all voices that should be live are kept that way, although downgrading is certainly still done on cheaper boards. I don't mind that nearly as much, as I'm happy that nice versions of sounds that could only be found on Tyros are being filtered through to the mid range boards now.
Oddly, I am not a fan of the Motif, even though it's still Yamaha. I have a MO XF, and while I still use it, it sounds too big and thick for me, often having this pointy production sound if I can afford to put it that way. Because it's not based on XG specs and does a lot of things its own way, I have to do a lot more work to get the sound I want with an external sequencer like QWS. I often have to mess with Sysex to set things up in a way I like because the sound has too much focus to my taste. The PSR is much better about this, as any tweaks I make are just to enhance the defaults which I find as an excellent starting point. The FA also does this to an extent, though I like sequencing with it more in some ways as its sounds have a different character, one which lends itself well to its default setup. Still, to get the sound I'd want out of it, I'd still need to modify a lot of stuff, and modifying things is painful because Roland sysex messages are arduous to work with if you're like me and have only started getting into sysex editing. In the end, it depends on what kind of sound you're looking to achieve and what feature sets are most important to you, and I get the impression I am often the odd one out when it comes to these topics. It should go without saying that what I've said above is only my opinion, and I deeply respect those who enjoy the FA or other Roland products. I'm not trying to criticize in any way.
Make more of less, that way you won't make less of more!
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