X6...not impressed with the sound

Yahamaforums wrote:
Do you have to add effects to the sounds before they come to life?

Yes, for many complex patches, FX are integral to achieving the correct sound (pianos, organs, distorted guitars, many synth sounds). Without the MFX assigned many patches do lose much of their richness. While in Patch Mode (single sound) you can view the specific MFX effect settings in use. There are only 3 MFX units, so in Performance Mode you may not be hearing your patch with FX depending on what channel is playing. There is a method to assign the MFX units to specific parts which is described in the FAQ of the Documents section (from home page).

Also with piano in particular people who have had need of an even more realistic sound have taken to tweaking aspects of the sound, and even using 3 MFX units in series with different effects to get a richer sound. You may find some of these discussions by searching the forum for "piano sound".

David

Thanks for that info David. I'll have a read through the site later when I have some more time.

I do like the Fantom and I do beleive it was still the right decision to buy it. However I feel the Roland Web Site demo's are misleading to put it mildly.

You have to play around with the mastering compressor. I usually turn up the treble band to get the sound more crisp.

The mastering compressor can make the Fantom sound REAL bad if you use certain settings.

That's one place to look...

Yeah I heard something about the mastering fx being the cause of the Grand Piano not sounding right. Just wish Roland had sorted all this so it was the "default" rather than having it sound like a bad synthesized piano form the outset.

The reason I'm really a bit dissapointed is because I have never bought a brand new keyboard before in my life and I had much higher expectations in regard to the sound from something costing this much money I'm not a programmer, i need to be able to switch on and go, with perhaps the odd tweak here and there. I thought from everything I had seen and read that the Fantom-X was exactly the sort of machine I needed. Not so sure now.

All the other keyboards I have owned over the last 15 years or so have all performed exactly how I expected them to. I have had Yamaha, Kawai, Ensoniq and Roland keyboard before and was never as dissapointed as I am now

Still....I'll plough on and hope things improve, if they don't I think I'll be heading back to Yamaha again.

Hi Yamahaforums, we had met before on your first post discussing your interesting name, but also the RS7000, (Yamahas best invention according to my taste).

I think the issue is very simple. The Fantom is a totally different keyboard to the Motif. The Roland sounds are raw and mostly uneffected, especially if you play in Performance mode, on the other hand, the demo sounds of their website are all effected.

To me, the Roland sounds grow on you and after a while you just love 'em. Eventually you tweak them till they suit you, as opposed to the Motif where you are fairly limited in changing the sounds to your liking.

If you resonate with the Roland sounds, which may take some time, I promise you will change your name to Fantomaforums...

http://www.jostsauer.com
"When one is not expressing himself, he is not free." - Bruce Lee

Well have been playing around this morning and certainly I have to say things are looking up. Piano sounds a LOT better now

I'm not so much miffed with the Fantom-X but more with the way Roland demo'd the thing? Obviously any company, Yamaha included will try to show their product in their best light. But the difference between the Yamaha Motif ES demo's and the Roland ones is that when I tried the Motif in the store it sounded exactly like I heard on the demo....wheras when i got the Roland home I found it most certainly did not.

Now I'm not yet sure if it was a good or bad thing but the Fantom-X was the only keyboard I didn't actually play in store. It was an impulse buy and I figured I had already heard enough and read all the reviews so was convinced it was the board for me. That's why I was a bit downbeat about the sounds out of the box. I didn't realize until now that you actually have to tweak them yourself before they sound anywhere near close to the demos. I'm not saying it's a bad keyboard, just wasn't exactly what I expected.

I'll keep working through the manual and let you know how I get on

Did you buy it new, or did you get it used?? If you got it used, you may want to look at doing a factory reset. Even if it where a floor model, you may want to do a factory reset.

When I got my FantomS home, I also felt it didn't sound as good as the Roland Demos, then i played the Demo Songs, and they sound killer. I'm guessing as soon as I learn how to play the keys, my shtuff will start to sound as good. I mean, I know the board can sound good.

I really wish Roland would have made the Demo's available to the sequencer, so I could break them down, and learn how they did it.


FantomS
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check out this thread in another forumI don't understand how your opinion is so far the other way


FantomS
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just give him a few months and he'll change his mind about the whole thing...I think everyone is a little sceptical in the beginning about the sounds....I know I was, but after a while they came to life....even without effects.

I think it was the fact of me payin so much money, my expectancies were much higher than reality...I thought I was gonna hear the Gods singin or something, then I realised I was playin a keyboard, then had to come back down to earth, and work the sounds to get what I wanted out of it.

To me, I like them alot better than yamahas except the strings and synth sounds of course(and most of y'all know I'm a die hard yammy fan) but it's something about their hardware that is just supreme(diffrnt subject, I know)....I need a Yamaholand, to keep me content....until then my X6 will have to do.

I don't think that factory patches are ever gonna be good by themselves.. I think what makes them is good patch progamin cuz the waves can't be that much different from one machine to another. they are, but not so much to really say, this machine is better or worse than another..it's all how u use and program these waves in the patch editing, and all machines have basicly the same parameters.. some might have an extra parameter or something but basicly the patch programing is the same on all machines...that's how u get some sounds better on one machine over another. but I bet u can get them to sound equally if u know what u're doin.

It's like ppl who start these long ass threads about how their piano sounds better than so&so's piano or this organ doesn't sound like my B3.....Who really cares? when it comes to down to it, 'we' the are the only ones who are gonna tell the difference..the general public is just gonna hear a piano or an organ that's all,, they're not gonna say "that was a nice hammond!" or "Wow! that stienway sure sounded great!" unless they're us. To ppl like us, well if u tell me that my Ultimate Grand don't sound like your stienway, well I'll just remind u that your steinway don't sound like my Ultimate Grand on my FX. every instrument is has it's own character.

But going back to the subject, I guesstamate that by Febuary, or maybe sooner, u'll be typin a thread titled " I'm SOoow Impressed with the X sounds, that I could hardly contain myself! "

What are u listenin thru, headphones or monitors?

Septimo ,'^)
X6
XT

yamahaforums, what sounds are you actually refering to?

what kind of demos are you talking about? the audio/video demos on rolandus.com?

Ok well first off I bought the Fantom-X new...so it wasn't cheap! And as I stated I wasn't bowled over by the sound out of the box. However having played around with it quite a bit today I can say I'm a lot happier than I was...so we'll see if i write that thread singing it's praises in a couple of months time...it could happen

The Demo's I was refering to were the one's on the Rolandus.com site and also on Sonicstate.com

I am listening through Roland monitors and sometimes headphones.

I have only had my Fantom-X just on two weeks. so although not initially impressed with the sounds, Grand Piano in particular, I don't think this is long enough to make a definite decision about it's qualities.

I'll keep you posted with how I'm getting on over the next few weeks.

check out this song I have at Soundclick:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=384603&songID=2991115

This is all Fantom Xa except for the lead guitar. Believe the guys posting here - you will be OVERWHELMED with your Fantom within the next few months. You'll see...

RedEye

yamahaforum! i have to state that you are entirely correct in you earservation as i've had to deal with this thing for ages and i can't believe i fell into the trap again(and yes i was a dissapointed previous roland keyboard owner as well) I know i'm gonna get burned,but hey the sounds are just the same old roland shit that they,ve been bringing out for years with a little bit of extra sheen to maybe some of them.Tweaking the hell out of presets is something that may make some people feel more intimately acquainted with the board but it definitely is not ideal in my books.Theres nothing really club killer in there,just that you can make a tune with this thing and try your best to work it to perfection with your mixing skills.yes we can work with it,but there just ain't those ragingingly phat chunky hardass 21st century tones that i would have expected from Roland.This board was just an evolution.Nothing really special in the patches in my opinion.It needs more simultaneous effects,variphrase technology and more editing features in the sampler like loop crossfade etc,but Roland thinks that everyone must be using a computer as well,which i ain't.THESE DAYS I expect a board to have evrything in it,and really get me going and make me bob up and down on my feet and walk around not knowing what to do with myself,yknow!
Work with it is all i can do,the reverb needs improving because it doesn't have that high end silky smooth sound.
PHAT PHAT PHAT definitely needs to be on the agenda for the successor to this thing.Roland seem to be sitting on there complacent arses and take us for fools,either that or they just don't make much money in this area of the business anymore and therefore don't put in the effort and research with a passion.Hang in there or just chuck the shit out the window and get a triton extreme.At least on the korg you can crossfade your samples and then run evrything out that fat tube they built into it.
Some people will justify this thing just because they put down the dosh and don't really wanna hear anything that shows the Fantom is not as good as it should of been and that we had the right to expect more from it.

So...M Bot, the Triton Xtreme has Variphrase technology?? Cool, I'll have to get me one of those.

Or does a $14 tube effectively replace variphrase?? won't a $99 blue tube do the same thing?? by the way, any preamp sold for less than $1000, is designed to seperate you from your money. It has nothing to do with fattening up your sound.

And if Roland would put Variphrase into the Fantom, would you be willing to pay an extra grand for it?? I mean you're already getting 8 audio tracks, for the same money as the Motif, and Xtreme, which don't have 8 audio tracks, don't let you drag and drop samples, don't come with a software editor, librarian, etc......

but those lazy Roland engineers............sheesh


FantomS
AW4416
Now all I need is talent.
Anyone selling any talent??
member # 55
registered 21 May 2003

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