My review, good box, easy to work, hopefully yamaha will support it with software upgrades. Sounds are o.k. and sampling is ok, but wouldnt it be sooooo much cooler to have a full real sampler i.e. a3000 (not mpc crap)in a box like this? Good box would have ruled in 98, but now i say just get a laptop, reason, cubase (logic/nuendo) and a ton of plugins and youll have a much more powerful system

Good: internal sounds that are basically usable, but aren't 'all that'. They can be manipulated rather nicely using the very good internal efx, but not modified as in a conventional synth unit. sequences can be written with them, and supposedly samples laid on top of them and sync'd up with the bpm of the track. Excellent: real time efx processing is awesome on this unit, and while recording the unit 'remembers' the tweaking you do to envelopes, filteration etc in real time and saves it in the pattern-kewl. Then the various patterns can be arranged and chained together to create songs. Here is what makes it a piece of crap. Firstly, I put 64 MB in mine, and it only sees 32 megs..why? I removed and reinstalled the memory, but same thing.

BAD-and basically makes the unit useless

1. Sampling functionality-when you sample, if you want the sample to be of rhythmic value, in order to get your samples in sync together and usable in your song structure, the RS requires you to sample in what Yamaha terms the "Slice/seq/pitch mode". Now, when you enter this mode, you use up three times the internal memory (per the manual, page 237, wave memory required for this operation requires 1.5 times the original memory...it goes on with information, then states "with the memory expanded to 64MB, the longest possible sampling time will be 47 seconds stereo at 44.1khz." great, so to get your samples to sync, you only get 47 seconds...hmm, might as well use a computer to time stretch and pitch correct(much faster)and dump them into a dedicated sampler. This is not good, and it doesn't work anyway. I sampled and utilized this function and the machine just sat there saying "executing"...forever! I had to turn it off. Good thing I didn't have a serious composition going when this occurred! When I did get it to work once, the 'chopped up bits of garbage' the machine spit out were unusable, and not arranged as a playable pattern, as Yamaha said they should be. So, you are lucky if the function works, and if so, will get unusable results. BAD: SCSI-this thing wouldn't recognize my ZIP drive of all things. At first it just sat there when I pulled up the menu, showing nothing. After I turned it off. Plugged in the Zip drive, set termination on, and a new ID for the ZIP, then fired the RS up, it finally did see the folder on the ZIP drive, but it is a 50/50 situation whether it will or won't. When I loaded the samples, it was somewhat fast, and once entered, I needed to 'slice' them to use them in the sequence so they would be in sync. When I sliced them, it did execute, but took a long time. When I went into real time loop arrangement mode to get the samples to be arranged on the keypads in order to play back the samples with my already created pattern, it stated "NO DATA"!. At this point I was getting pissed. If a machine doesn't do what it it is supposed to do, then how is it usable? If I can only marginally get it to function, it is useless. If it doesn't perform the dutites the manual claims it will, then Yamaha should be sued on the condition of Warranty of Merchantability. It is like buying a 5 speed car with a turbo and it won't go into 5th gear and the turbo never kicks in. Would you keep the car? Hell no, 'cause you bought it for those features, right? Same with this unit. It doesn't live up to its expectations, and is garbage, just like the ASR-X was, and the Roland SP 808( Both which I had and sold or returned). I also owned the SU700, which didn't work either-just threw you into a loop mode, with no way to sequence the samples. Now, maybe you think I don't know what I am doing, or how to work the machine. Well, my two staple samplers, the MPC2000 and EMU E5000 do what the companies claim they will, why can't the others do what they purport they will do? Every groove box I have owned has never lived up to its claims, except for the MPC, and I don't work for AKAI, so that makes me a person who is serious about sample manipulation and sonic creation who wants others to get the straight dope on all the hype that is out there. If you think I have missed something here, please feel free to inform me before I return another useless groovemachine, since I am not perfect. Also, Yamaha tech support sucks..I called them, and they gave me a Reference number and said they would have a "product specialist" return my call-thus far, three days later,no one has bothered to call me back. Also, no one returned my emails, because they probably know they are having major problems with this product. Phew on Yamaha, and Phew on their products.

*Last note-Don't believe most reviews, as they are written by two types. The first just toys with these machines and never gets DEEEP into them, so they miss much of the functionality of them, or never delve beyond the 'canned' samples that come with the machine, so never have problems and won't inform you in their reviews. The second types are the writers for the major keyboard rags--now come on...if they tear a unit to shit, do you think the manufacturer is going toadvertise with them anymore...NOPE!..so they give them good reviews usually, which is a major source of the magazines income, and what you the reader get watered down tripe. Greg Scoggin CW2scogg@yahoo.com