The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

From: "Shawn" <sclark@...>


> I was wondering if any of you used the EX5. I am thinking about adding one
> to the synth pile

I've been boring the list to death with my ravings about my brand new silver
EX5, as you may have read. :)

This EX5 is fairly new, but I've been using an EX5r (that I've sold
meanwhile) almost a year before that.

Things to note about the EX5:

- It's huge and it's heavy. Better get yourself a good stand, because you
don't want 20 kg of synth falling over.

- It's an excellent master controller. You can divide the keyboard up in
several zones, and they can be muted as well, so you could either layer the
EX5 and the AN1x on one part of the keyboard, or play the AN1x with the
upper part and the EX5 with the lower part, or any combination with even
more synths at once. The three wheels are softer to the touch, and the
ribbon controller is in a more convenient spot below them.

- It's capable of producing wild and beautiful sounds. The AN part is
completely identical to the AN1x, except that it's biphonic and that you can
layer it with sampled voices. The VL part produces stunningly realistic
accoustic sounds. The AWM (sample based) part is very deep, with six-pole
envelopes with both level and time settings, and inital volume, attack, and
decay1/decay2/release1/release2 slopes that can be more or less steep
depending on keyboard velocity. Despite this deepness, it's fairly easy to
navigate because of the big screen and soft buttons.

- It's remarkably flexible, not only because of the many synthesis
algorythms (AWM, AWM-FDSP, AN, VL), but also because you can sample with it,
resample internally, and put 64 Mb RAM and 16 Mb Flash RAM into it. You can
also hook it up to SCSI devices like hard disks, CD-ROMs and computers.

- You can import sample formats, like the Akai format and wav, without a
problem.

All in all, it's a beautiful instrument. The sound is *really* great, even
though the presets don't always show this off.

There are also some quibbles that may or may not be an issue to you:

- You can use one insert effect, 126 voices (layers) of AWM, and either
another insert effect, or AN, or VL, or FDSP (with a maximum of 16 voices
getting the FDSP treatment). If you intend to use all the special voices at
once, forget it. But keep in mind that the AWM engine is excellent.

- You really need the latest ROM version. With previous ROM versions,
accurate timing wasn't really possible. Also other annoying bugs have been
fixed and the VL part has become editable. You still have a problem if you
want to start 64 layers at the same time, but then again that's a stupid
test.

- SCSI is slow, not only if you compare it with a computer, but slow in
general. Floppy is slow too. And it cannot be fixed. So if you're into
sampling and loops (yuck!) and stuff like that, the EX5 is not the synth for
you. It's a supersynth that does sampling as well, but it's not a dedicated
sampler.

- Software support is virtually non-existant. There's TWE and other
SMDI-capable applications (like SoundForge), and Emagic has an EX5 module
for SoundDiver. There are some templates for Cubase, Logic, and Cakewalk,
but that's it.

- It's gone out of production and I don't expect much innovation, either in
new hardware or software. I really hope that mLAN will be available, though.
mLAN is written all over the service manual, so I can hardly imagine that it
won't be.

All in all, I think the EX5 is one of the most versatile and beautiful
instruments around. The sound really blows you off your feet, and if you
don't like the internal samples, you can add your own in RAM or Flash RAM.
So I'm all in favour of it, but you have to decide if the shortcomings are a
problem for you.

Good luck on your choice!

- Peter