Where did July go?

July was a blur and now it is August!

I hope everyone is having a great summer.

Recently I have incorporated a small Yamaha synthesizer (MX-49) into my set-up and am working on new material.

My thoughts on the MX-49:

The MX-49 is an in-expensive synth and on the surface it seems a bit lack luster. What drew me to acquire it was:

1. I wanted updated Yamaha Sounds (My SY-35 was the latest Yamaha synth I had until now).

2. It actually has a pretty deep synth engine with a total of up to 8 elements per voice or patch. Most of the sample playback Roland synths I have had were 4 partials per voice or 3 based on their latest supernatural synth engine. You do need to purchase a third party editior to access the entire synthesizer architecture. I got the MX Voice Editor by John Melas for 20 Euros which was about $22.65 and it does the job.

The arpeggiator is good but I actually still prefer the Roland. In order to output the Arp on the MX-49 you have to actually go into the menus and change a few things around. That is a pain! My Rolands output the arpeggios MIDI pretty simply without too much menu diving.

The sound of the MX is decent but pretty dark in tone. The D/A converters, I would assume, are not on par with Motif XS which the sounds in this synth are based on. I will need to run this synth through my exciter to brighten it up. Overall it is a welcome addition to my studio and currently it sits on my desk where it also acts as a controller with my computer.