Yamaha FS-1R User reviews -Page 61

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Average rating: 4.8 out of 5

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WES a part-time user from US of A writes:

great box! some timbres border on physical modelling to me. the knobs are nice but when you tweak those parameters assigned to the knobs from, oh say, a Prophecy ribbon/log this beast springs to life! a REAL synth with an organic quality thats hard to pin down, almost like it can "morph" between digital and analog. knitpiks: the knobs are continuous rotation with small indents for "home" and the display could have graphic env. shapes but maybe i'm missing something. manual is not much help but the OS is easy once time has been spent with it, 1/2 hours. it does make me wonder if this could be done with a DX thru a vocoder, but the FM power alone is staggering! saMASH in edison,nj still has 2 for $399! jump it!!

Rating: 5 out of 5 posted Friday-Jan-14-000 at 21:22

Tom a professional user from Holland writes:

This is a very underrated machine, in fact it sounds extremely fat, warm, rich, punchy, funky... very original and inspiring. It's also very flexible, with solid fx-routing, nice and versatile matrix modulation possibilities and an excellent midi implementation. The only negative aspect could be its complexity. It takes some in depth knowledge of FM to discover its true power, which I think is amazing. This could very well be a legendary synth.

Rating: 5 out of 5 posted Monday-Dec-20-9999 at 21:30

a professional user from Norway writes:

I think this must be the first synth i feel I don't have to tweak from hour one. It fells real nice to just sit down, listen through the presets and be amazed again and again. Where I bought it (Procom Music in Norway), the owner told me he hadn't sold on single unit yet...I don't think people realise what they miss. I used to own a TX81Z, which I sold to buy a DX7. Luckily I coulnd't afford one until now. I went to the shop to get my Nova and got a very good offer on this unit (got rid of my XP80 at the same time). With this two units together Inspiration is back, and I think thsi time for good...

Rating: 5 out of 5 posted Monday-Nov-01-9999 at 08:45

Malfunkt a hobbyist user from Canada writes:

I remember playing on the DX-7 way back when I was going to high-school. Back then I understood very little about frequency modulation synthesis but I knew it sounded great. Now, we have the FS1R, which not only is king in the neo-FM synthesis dept., but merges it uniquely with patented Formant synthesis to make a classic at the end of the nineties. Yamaha has designed this synth solely for those who love diving into their synths to bring out personal and intriguing sounds. It looks somewhat non-discript and is not marketed in the same fashion as some of their other techno goodies. It also is relatively inexpensive when compared to many Virtual Analogs. In many ways, however, it blows away many other synths in terms of sound generation. It comes fully equipped with some great presets and a 1500 patches from other Yamaha FM synths. The FS1R has a unique sound thanks to the FS synthesis. It gives the tones an organic, "real" sound. The synth also has a full range of first rate effects to envelope you in dream-like wonder. There are actually 4 seperate effects processors, each with a certain function. There is a Parametric EQ, Variation effect (includes compression, wah, phasers, etc.), a designated Reverb, and an Insert effect which can be applied to wahtever part you like. Although it would have been nice to have 4 insert effects, the routing may have been more complex and probably would have cost the consumer more. In any case this synth is a specialized tone generator meant for the creation of a solid individual performance in which case the effects stage they provide you with is ideally suited. This performance consists of 4 voices, each which can have a seperate MIDI channel.

What kinds of sounds does this synth make? Anything from swirling pads, to thick beefy leads can be made. Nice basses and wicked percussion. FM can create great bell tones and remains pure in the highest of registers. The formants on the other hand can truly make a choir sound like a choir. In fact this synth can literally speak to you. It does so through the use of formant sequences in which voiced and unvoiced operators are strung together to create formant changes which can lead to sentences, percussive patterns, a many other experimental possiblities. Formants can also recreate many other real-world and other-worldly.

Yamaha has released a beta-FS1R Fseq and patch editor for the Mac. I have had no major problems with it thus far and it commmunicated excellently with the synth. It is also much easier to see what exactly you are doing when changing parameters as you get a visual display of your bandwidths and Envelope Generators. You also realize how deep the synthesis architecture is. If you are into the art of sonic engineering, then this is for you. Even if you aren't, the synth has so many excellent sounds on board it will make you curious! :)

Rating: 5 out of 5 posted Saturday-Oct-23-9999 at 14:33

phil a hobbyist user from USA writes:

I've had this about a week,and it continually blows me away.The presets are both amazing and usefull (and believe me,you will be mostly using the presets).It sounds incredible: an awesome combo of trippy digital and warm fat analog(ish). It even has good drums! (not whole sets,but four sounds mapped across the keyboard).It excells at vocal-type things.It does great fat heavy squelchy basses.And of course it can do everything a DX7 can do,times a million.

The 4 knobs are a definite plus,and the midi control is flexible enough to easily use my phatboy with it.The OS,while deep and complex,is also logical-you're not going to program sounds from scratch on the front panel (I hope!),but you can get around pretty well.I'm using it with sounddiver,and the implementation is complete-you can even edit Fseqs (well,you can try).

If I could,I'd give it a 4.5 not a 5,cause the manual bites,and cause the effects and LFOs can't be synced to midi.The whole Fseq thing can be usable,but I've had to record bits and bring them into Soundforge to try and figure out the bpm so I could bring them into Cubase and add drums,etc. Many of the parameters,in fact all except the effects,are based on arbitrary numbers,and the ONLY correspondence to real life values EVER mentioned in the whole manual is "0 is the slowest speed setting,producing an LFO speed of approximately 0 Hertz"!!Thanx for that bit of illumination Yamaha!

Still,I love this synth!

Rating: 4 out of 5 posted Wednesday-Aug-04-9999 at 02:04

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