Yamaha Motif XF Review

This is a very subjective review of Yamaha Motif XF from a sound designer/synthesist view.

Normally all my work is done using s DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) meaning a PC and some various software with endless possibilities. So how exciting is a hardware workstation for a person like me, in this case Motif XF, well let me put it this way, i feel like i've been pushed back 20 years in time. They call it a Music Production Synthesizer but the is not a shred of synthesis in this thing. Motif XF is a huge sample player, thats it. It has a very limited synth section, in short it has 1 VCF 1 VCA and 1 LFO which equals to a tad better than a Sound Font player.

When used as a preset player for live situations, then it shines with its 4 assignable effects and many on the fly knobs to use in VOICE mode.

When used as a sequencer it is crippled by the fact that you can only use insert effects on 8 out of 16 channels. I bet if you planned to sequence a song using 16 very nice sounding VOICE presets then you will be dissapointed to know that only 8 of these preset will include the insert fx like they are supposed to and the rest must live without the insertion effects. This is very annoying. So i tend to call the seuqence an 8 channel sequencer.

A look into the stock samples in the synth section reveals lack of many things, first of all in total there are ONLY 3 modulated stereo waveforms for use in broad pads, the mono noise sample is so short that you can hear the loop unless you plan to use it for a closed hihat. The synthetic bell waveforms are very thin and many waveforms are pretty useless as building blocks, however the P5 waveforms are clearly ment for serious sound design, each of these waveforms are phase locked and precise over the entire keyboard range. These are the waveforms you should use to create other waveforms, eg mix the 0 Degree Saw with a 180 Degree Saw and you get a pulse waveform. Thats how most samples should work in the synth section, but only a few do it. There is a complete lack of smart additive waveforms, harmonics you use to create physical model instruments. Sure you could use a sine wave to build up the harmonics but then it would eat away polyphony which we always try to preserve.

The handling of actual NEW waveforms are a nightmare from a sound designers view, you cant save individual waveforms but have to save the whole lot, which also means whenever you need to load a waveform then you have to import all again. In this case the machine adds the loaded waveforms to the existing waveforms so you end up with tons of duplicates in Flash Memory.
Anyways, you will need some kind of software to handle this proper.

The Arpeggio functions, yeah its super great when working in VOICE mode but when working in SONG and PATTERN mode the ARP settings will reset, so you have to find the original arp setting by browsing 7000 arps on each arp'ed preset. Dohhh

As you can guess, I am not super thrilled about Motif XF but I am a stubborn type of guy with a mission, the mission is simple, to improve Motif XF. I will start by making some of the sound designer samples which are missing and to make a point i will make these samples take ONLY 1 MB of the 128 MB free assignable ram in Motif XF.

177 KB is reserved for a useful 2 second NOISE sample. This gives me 823 KB to play with.

Wish me good luck ;)

/Michael