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Average rating:
4.5 out of 5
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Could i be more sychophantic about this box.... No.... the comments i have read are true, crap sounds etc etc. However as a midi controller this is possibly the best thing that has ever happened to non computer music makers et al. You think that the user (U01, blank canvas) pattern mode is the dogs bo##cks for creating your own sounds (via a phil rees and a sound module or two) and then you press the edit button or go into song mode.....parameters become words that are meaningless, realtime record is what is god. Good luck with your pc etc but the realtime controls make your live set a performance, people ask questions, "how do you do.........without a laptop!" hmm. I own 3 of these beasties and make a sort of ambient dance and dub'n bass noise thing (with the help of many sound modules/samplers/and things that go bing). I am happy to answer of your comments/questions etc. And i thank a certain music shop in Brighton UK for pointing me in the right direction, (MC505?....NAH)! p.s. i dont work for yamaha, nor want to, but this device has given me the tool to express myself. ;-))
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BIGGEST MIS-CONCEPTION ABOUT THE BLUE BEAST: IT'S A GROOVEBOX. Yeah right!!!!!!!! Far from it. Great sequencer for the $$$$ and pretty decent tone generator. It works real well with samplers. How So? well, say you sample a one bar drum loop at 130BPM. Instead of spending too much time truncating the loop exactly, you can get it pretty close and then use the RM's groove menu to move the note-on message to the loop (x)amount of tiks forward or backward so that the loop can match up exactly to your beat. Sure, you can do this with other sequencers like the MPC, but the yamaha has 480 tpq (tiks per quarter note)resolution. the MPC only has a resoultion of 96 tpq. Don't get me wrong, the MPC is a GREAT SEQUENCER (but at 4times the cost). my studio partner has one and i've experimented with it triggering loops and i've concluded that it's not as easy as with the RM. even as a tone generator, the RM ain't as bad as many swear. the problem with the TG is that trying to edit sounds through the interface can be cumbersome and time-consuming. my solution to this: Sound Diver. if you have both Sound Diver and the RM1X, you have to install it as 'YamahaXG' and make sure that System ID is '1' in SD. way easier sculpting sounds with a software adaptation. Another feature about the RM that i like is that if i connect my Waldorf Pulse to it and then the Pulse's MIDI thru back into my PC, i can edit the pulse's patches in real time while the RM is playing the sequence. I've finally made the swith to Cubase as my sequencer, but i'll NEVER get rid of the RM1X :)
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Before I say anything critical I'd like to say that the rm1x was perfect for what my needs were.Quality sounds with options to personalise, a means to record on and great for showing off to your mates with.
When I bought the RM1X it was amazing.Had everything in a box that I wanted. The sounds and easy access to change sounds and effects.At the time of buying I didn't have any other means of recording music onto so it was perfect. But the longer I use it the more frustrated I got at its limitations. I can fully appreciate that it is performance orientated but editing is a painfully slow process, having to do single notes at a time. Also after recording in performance mode, I wanted to sit back and listen to the tunes as opposed to manually playing them but couldn't transfer data from performance mode to song mode. Also, I think I made it think too hard and all recorded material got distorted.
I would happily recommend anyone to get the rm1x if they were just starting up or wanted something for perfomance. But if they had the cash it'd be worth buying seperate sequencer, sound module etc as sometimes the rm1x couldn't handle the amount of data. Initially 5/5 but now 3.5/5
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What no one has really explained in detail here is the unique sequencing structure of this box ... everything you record into it is broken up into little patterns that can be mixed and matched on the fly. So you can take a bass line from pattern #5 and slot it into what you're working on now without breaking the flow. But the exact mechanics of this are a bit hard to understand at first. You have to know the difference between assigning a pattern (in which case a change to that pattern affects all instances of it globally) and copying a pattern to create a new one. This stuff is not explained well by Yamaha but it's vital to getting the most out of this box.
The other huge strength of this box is live, as others have mentioned. I was thinking of getting an MPC but aside from the price difference the MPC doesn't have 2 banks of 8 programmable tweak nobs (assignable to any cc # despite what some reviews have said, just move the cursor and use the +1/-1 keys guys!) nor can it instantly leap to any one of 16 different parts of a pattern, and it can't add midi effects, and its usuable memory is smaller (only 50K events in any one song). It's a bit of a pain for a linear-sequencer guy like me to rearrange my tunes into pattern-sized chunks for live play but the payoff in spontineity is well worth it. No other sequencer lets you basically rearrange your tune as you play it. I wish to god it had 2 midi ins and 4 outs like an MPC3000 but I'll suck that up to get the pattern features I just mentioned, and if you like to feel that you're being creative up on stage and not just pressing "play" and tweaking a few knobs, you will too.
Just get other gear for your sounds.
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I think this is the best hardware sequencer ever made.
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