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I've had my CS1x for 6 months, and I love it. I like dance music - trance, techno and trip-hop mostly, and that's why I bought it. If you're a synth snob, don't bother - it's not the Nord lead. But at an average price of US$600, it kicks. Sounds: lots of good performance sounds, and somewhat less good material voices (for multi-timbral setup). Nice acid sounds. Some good basses, but only in the performance mode. Drums are not bad - out of all my gear my favorite kick is a tweaked version of patch user/128. Material voice drums are not bad at all. Some very interesting spacey pads, but some weak ones too. Not interested in XG sounds. Using the knobs, you have lots of realtime sound control - in fact it's a very editable synth for a preset-based model. Filters are fairly good and the built-in FX are not bad at all. LFO tweaks sound cool, but unfortunately not syncable to... MIDI: OK. You really need a sequencer to get the most out of this. You can get 4 performance voices going, or 1 performance and up to 12 material voices (the basic samples for the performances). I usually play a lead sound on the performance voice, 5 or 6 drum tracks, a pad or two, and two slightly detuned acid voices playing the same riff, and some bass sounds (check the sub - very useful). Multitimbrality and timing response is good, even with all channels going and each one receiving a controller message most of the time. Bad stuff: channels sometimes go silent for no apparent reason, forcing you to change patches or reset. Usually this happens when I am operating too many MIDI controllers at once on one channel (3+) or tweaking really wildly :-( the manual is accurate and complete, but very unhelpful - get the Blue Book from the Yamaha website. On the whole I think it's a good dance box, great for a beginner (me last year) and surprisingly versatile. The arpeggiator is neat, but not well implemented in MIDI, so I don't use it too much. It's fairly rugged, but the knobs can get a little worn - the filter knob feels a bit the worse for wear, but what a lot of wear it's had The keyboard itself is very nice for a "spring" type. My friend has a Nord Lead and loves it to death, but she still thinks a *lot* of the CS1x. I haven't persuaded her to swap though :-0 If you're in the market for your first synth and like dance music, you should seriously consider this - great bang for the buck. I'm just about to collect my new Roland 505 ( B-D ) but I expect that I will still use the CS1x a lot. Maybe a bit more in fact, since I won't be asking to swallow as much MIDI as I do now - I can go back to concentrating on the fun features :-) Alternatives: the 505 for almost double the price (but what a dancefloor monster), or an EMU Orbit for about $800 if you don't need a physical keyboard/knobs.
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