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i like it, but some hate it. actually my first synth. the drum sounds like 808 and 909 are good, but the 808 cymbal is a real cymbal, not analog, damn. and the 808 909 kits dont just have 808/909 samples, so it kinda ruins it, instead i think they should just have one patch called analog or something (you know yamaha has to give it a corny name) which has ALL analog samples and one on each key, so when you sequence, you can use only one channel for both 808/909 sounds. the other GM sounds are pretty cool, especially for trance music and for some industrial (the two i listen to) i like the arpegiator for underwater trancy sounds, but the arp is not transmitted on midi out, or controlable by in for that matter, so its only good if you are playing the synth in realtime, or letting it run by itself while you play something else. i like using the velocity for filter cutoff, i managed to patch a cool sound that Funker Vogt always uses. i also got a really low floor shaker which is really cool with the arpegiator, but also really corny, which i like. the GM (infamous General MIDI) voices are mostly very real sounding. the piano is good, the acoustic guitars are good in the low notes, but in highs they are bad. why they cant get distorted guitar right ponders me. i took the ones they used and used the Cs1x's XG distortion, and it sounded pretty real. the brass sounds are actually pretty real in the low notes too. overall a great synth for the money, and since you can change any knobs function (even the pitch and mod wheels, even on midi out) this is great to control other synth's etc. it also has a midi thru, which is cool. TRY THIS--(i also have rebirth, so download the free version), and i hooked it up to the cs1x, and assigned the top three knobs to control rebirth's 303's (cutoff, filter mod, and decay) and the second three for the 2nd 303's same functions. the mod wheel was used to change the cutoff of the PCF. really cool, and theres no delay between the two devices, and its really cool to watch the knobs on the screen move as you move the cs1x's. some problems--some of the GM sounds, XG only on 1-4 channel, the demos (as always), no midi for arpegiator, with the GM voices you are only allowed a few controls, and it would be nice to be able to use all of them, including decay, effects, portamento, etc. maybe there will be an operating system update for this thing that will have some fixes of problems. if you want one, try it first a COUPLE of times, and think for a while, make sure you really want it, i do, but some hate it.
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