Does Yamaha make soft synths anymore?

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Particularly, i'm intersted if they make General MIDI soft synths. I think they're last good one was S-YXG100 Plus, but it's for Windows 98 only.

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Yamaha had a complete series of softsynths (most of them for Win98 only):

S-YGM General MIDI-only softsynth without XG support (Japan-only)
S-YG20 (General MIDI + XGLite)
S-YXG50 (GM + Full XG set),included in a few PC games and old PC drivers
S-YXG50NT (WDM) - a WDM version that works on WinNT,2000 and XP
S-YXG50 VSTi (a Japan-only VSTi version,part of the SOL/XG Works series of DAWs)
S-YXG70 (only included in a few PC games (Final Fantasy series),contains both S-YG20 and S-YXG50)
S-YXG100 Plus (GM + Full XG + 1-voice VA)
S-YXG100 PVL (GM + Full XG + 8-voice VA)
S-YXG/DM (DirectMusic version,included with FF8)
S-YXG2006LE (a stripped down [XGlite only] version of an updated and rebranded S-YXG100)

The Japanese versions of S-YXG [50 and 100] also supported (cheesy) formant 'singing' (SG) synthesis.

S-PLG: There were several plugins for the S-YXG100 Plus/PVL which added Virtual Analog,FM (DX7) synthesis,Yamaha drums,vocal harmony FX and much more to the already great S-YXG100 series.

The only synths working on Win2000/XP are the S-YXG50 NT WDM and VSTi versions.
The main problem with nearly all of these softsynths (not sure about the VSTi version) was the relatively high latency,so they were not that useful for performance,only for MIDI playback and sequencing.
But those synths sounded wonderful for the time,maybe even now :)

I think the only "softsynth" (that's not a part of a DAW package) Yamaha makes now [outside Japan] is the Vocaloid. (not sold by Yamaha,but licensed to 3rd party companies,and that's not a GM synth).
The S-YXG series was quietly discontinued a long time ago.
So,if you still want some of that great Yamaha stuff (on XP and later),the only option is to get yourself a high-end PSR series keyboard,TYROS or a MOTIF,track down an old PC game which came with a S-YXG50 NT installer (FF7 or FF8) or use a VSTi / SoundFont based on Yamaha GM/XG sound sets.

FYI,FF7 and FF8 included a different (DirectMusic) version of S-YXG,called S-YXG/DM.
Last edited by softsynth on Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:41 pm, edited 28 times in total.

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If you use Cubase 4 you get the VSTI HalionOne
for free.It uses some original waves from the Yamaha Motif synths. Its a rompler.
It has hundred of presets and a GM bank.
Some sounds are very useful.

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Whoa, somebody knows there softsynths! Good job. Except, your missing one important point: The best thing about the Yamaha S-YXG, Roland VSC, and Wingroove series of soft synths was that they used 0% CPU power. They functioned like a Windows MIDI driver(NOT sure exactly how) and as a result they performed on par with their hardware counterparts and HW synths, in general. Ok , the latency was pretty bad (the worst of them all being the Roland VSC, where adjusting the response would cause choppy playback), but even HW synths suffer from stuck notes, some latency, and what not.

The plug-ins were great, too, for the S-YXG soft synths. By the way, what does PVL mean? Did just come with more plug-ins? Another thing you missed is soundfonts. I found a 3.5 meg XG sf2 w/ sounds from the S-YXG20, i think. Moreover, you could sample the sounds of the MOTIF into a killer soundfont, but of course that would take ages.

As for Halion, never heard of HalionONE, but isn't Halion more of a soft sampler? In fact, that's much better than a soft synth, since you can add/create/edit your own sounds. Is HalionOne sold separately, or does it come with Cubase 3, by any chance? Are there other VSTi/DXi w/ Yamaha XG sounds, beside HalionOne?

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<--- seskanda,just look at my nickname,LOL

The softsynths do use some CPU time,but you barely notice it cause they were created with slow machines in mind (by today's standards) such as the Pentium 200 and similar :)

PVL = 8-voice Polyphonic Physical Modeling (VL) Synthesis. It's essentially a plugin for the SYXG100 series of softsynths.An extension of XG.Not of much use to you,since you are only using the GM sound set.

seskanda,do you have a link to that GM soundfont? I could make a good use of it to replay some of my sequences.

And yes,I know about WinGroove.It's not that good of a softsynth,but the demo tune shows an excellent use of its capabilities.
Have you ever tried TiMidity - an open-source softsynth which uses the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) patches as its soundset? It can also load use SoundFonts if you like.Much better than WinGroove,but nothing can beat the S-YXG series.

BTW,do you have some MIDI demos you've created with the S-YXG softsynths?
It's been a long time since I used these synths.
Last edited by softsynth on Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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What the...?!? seskanda? Are you that seskanda from SF2MIDI.com? :D
I was just looking for some good SynthBrass soundfonts/VSTi.
Check my post below for mode info.

LOL

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Hmmm...i think your right, again. Using S-YXG100 Plus, on a Pentium 600, i may have noticed the CPU rise ever so slightly in my sequencer. I've got serious problems w/ Wingroove on XP, although it works great in Win98. Well then, that leaves us w/ Timidity. Maybe it's just my PC (or my ears :) ) but even when loading soundfonts, the quality sounds much like the crummy Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth. Probably because it's originally a Linux program ported to the PC.

And, unfortunately no, i haven't made any demos with the excellent S-YXG100 plus, mostly because i just didn't have the time. And i was pissed to find that it won't work with XP. Yep, i submitted those Synth Brass soundfonts on sf2midi.com, did you like'em? As for the XG soundfont, i downloaded it from here: http://zandro.googlepages.com/ed2k_listing.rar You'll need a P2P program that connects to the Edonkey network to get the file, i use Shareaza.

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Have you tried using any soundfont-capable Creative consumer card (Live/Audigy/Audigy2) for playing soundfonts? Its hardware synth uses zero-CPU,so this might be the best option if you're still using that crappy Pentium 600 :)

P2P list? No thanks. I can smell a warezmonkey :D
And i was pissed to find that it won't work with XP.
S-YXG50 NT does work on XP.
Go and find one of those old PC games that come with an S-YXG50 installer.
The quality of the second generation S-YXG50 synth is not that bad - it's almost as good as the 100plus.
Last edited by softsynth on Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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softsynth wrote:Have you tried using a Creative consumer (Live/Audigy/Audigy2) soundcard for playing soundfonts? Its hardware synth uses zero-CPU,so this might be the best option :)
I have a Live! Value card, the 32 MB polyphony limit is NOT very encouraging, moreover, it does NOT respond to Portamento, while the Roland VSC and Yamaha S-YXG100 plus CAN, and these are just soft synths! Heck, even the venerable Emu APS card does NOT do Portamento, that makes just about ALL cards that have hardware soundfont synths unable to accept Portamento. As i doubt the Audigy/Audigy 2/X-Fi series is able to receive Portamento. The best card i know of that does Portamento is the Yamaha SW1000XG, this card has EVERYTHING, except a HW soundfont synth, of course. But, since it has mature drivers, i should be able to use Kontakt and/or Synthfont, and get good results.

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softsynth wrote:Have you tried using a Creative consumer (Live/Audigy/Audigy2) soundcard for playing soundfonts? Its hardware synth uses zero-CPU,so this might be the best option :)
I have a Live! Value card, the 32 MB polyphony limit is NOT very encouraging, moreover, it does NOT respond to Portamento, while the Roland VSC and Yamaha S-YXG100 plus CAN, and these are just soft synths! Heck, even the venerable Emu APS card does NOT do Portamento, that makes just about ALL cards that have hardware soundfont synths unable to accept Portamento. As i doubt the Audigy/Audigy 2/X-Fi series is able to receive Portamento. The best card i know of that does Portamento is the Yamaha SW1000XG, this card has EVERYTHING, except a HW soundfont synth, of course. But, since it has mature drivers, i should be able to use Kontakt and/or Synthfont, and get good results.


Sorry for the double post, i guess my hand slipped...isn't there an option to delete your posts?

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About the only solution to being able to use VL synthesis with Seer Systems Reality! or Yamaha S-YXG100plus is getting Virtual PC running Windows 98. :\

There's another softsynth out there, the CASIO SW-10 (came with the LANAOnline MIDI karaoke program, now defunct) that only works with Win98 and earlier as well. It was essentially a software version of consumer-level CASIO keyboard soundbanks (CTK-571, closely.)

FYI guys, Yamaha's last movement with XG is in Japan only. With the release of their SOL2 program, that came with a VSTi version of S-YXG50, perfectly working with sysex, bank changes and variation effects. (Only thing is, messages are only respondant to MIDI; it cannot be adjusted through its featureless GUI)

And in other news, Yamaha Music E-Club released MidRadio Player 7, which came with a brand new XG softsynth (only playable through the player) through a file called SGP2.DLL. Someone named GOCHA actually discovered this file was actually a VSTi with the table header taken off, and managed to create a patch so that it works with Audio hosts as a proper VSTi.

This SGP2.DLL is called the S-YXG2006LE as seen in its inner copyright tags on the DLL. It has no GUI, and requires 2 files (installed with MidRadio Player 7) to be alongside the DLL in order for it to work. (Much similarly to the S-YXG50 VSTi)
The functions are the same as the XG50 VSTi variant (without a GUI however), but the main downsides are, it has no variation effects, has 32 poly only (unchangeable, run 8 instances of it running 2 channels each to rectify this.) and it has no GUI screen. Also, hosts like Sony ACID Pro 6 may not pick it up on VSTi Scanning (most others pick it up. FL. CUBASE and REAPER have..) If this happens, look up mGUI, a VSTi wrapper/reskinner.

The S-YXG2006LE VSTi is essentially written under XGlite architecture, however the sounds on it are matched to that of the MU100 or PSR-275. (In terms of quality.) In addition, some preset bankchanges from certain PSR keyboards (PSR-275, including its Dance kit though it's located at bank 127 patch 113 or 114, and GalaxyEP at Bank LSB 114 patch 5) are present in this synth however is not listed in any instrument lists available as far as I know. Other than that, all controller changes available on the S-YXG50 do work on the S-YXG2006LE.

You will have to do a bit of googlesearching to obtain this. I am unsure if this is bound to DMCA Copyright Laws, due to the nature of the use of this synthesizer. (Of course it makes one thing available. MidRadio Player 7 was only released 3-6 months ago. Yamaha still hasn't forgotten the XG!)

In other news, are there any volunteers to send Yamaha some suggestions to revive the SW1000XG / MU2000 XG DTM synthesizers to VSTi form? I just sent one today and well am doubting of their response...

Links (Japanese Only)
http://download.music-eclub.com/midradio/detail.php
(MidRadio Player 7)

http://gocha.s151.xrea.com/page/Tools.html
(GOCHA's SGP2 VSTi patch for MidRadio Player 7)

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softsynth wrote:I think the only "softsynth" Yamaha makes now is the Vocaloid (not sold by Yamaha,but licensed to 3rd party companies,and that's not a GM synth).
Only partially true. Yamaha Japan still sells the S-YXG100 in a software package (called S-YXG100plus), but my tries to get in touch with them via Yamaha Germany and USA failed.

I'd also love to see a native VSTi from the MU128, but I still have my MU15, which is basically the same as the S-YXG50 (22kHz max if I can still remember) and most of the S-YXG100 (44Khz and more patches), but in hardware form in size of a video tape.

(in the hardware research of my page, there's a link to the japanese page)
softsynth wrote:The main problem with all of these softsynths was high latency,so they were not that useful for performance,only for MIDI playback.
Well if they run in via loop back drivers, maybe. But PCs nowadays should be fast enough to handle them.

The S-YXG20 and S-YXG70 (if I can still remember) was shipped with Final Fantasy 7, the 4 CD version, for PC. Maybe you can still get a copy of it on eBay. Or the XG-Edit/S-YXG100 pack, which was sold seperately as kind of producer bundle (the editor was ment to take care of the hardware, but it also shipped a software synth - was a nice deal back in the day, even though pricey - unfortunately it doesn't work anymore, and it never really saved patches in a "suitable" way, only .MID files with SYSEX data, no interaction with your host).

Or you try to get a cheap MU-15, they don't cost that much anymore nowadays.

softsynth wrote:But those synths sounded wonderful for the time,and even now :)
If you know how to tickle out every single bit of it, yeah. Else it sounded fairly cheap, sometimes not even worth the effort, but sometimes it was just the right cheezy bread and butter sound.
Last edited by Compyfox on Sat Mar 10, 2007 8:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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MaliceX wrote:Links (Japanese Only)
http://download.music-eclub.com/midradio/detail.php
(MidRadio Player 7)

http://gocha.s151.xrea.com/page/Tools.html
(GOCHA's SGP2 VSTi patch for MidRadio Player 7)
You're kidding, right? I could use the S-YXG50 in VSTi form? I mean, I can use the manual for the MIDI CC, MSB and Program Change settings, no sweat. But VSTi?

Sounds too good to be true. If somebody makes a GUI for it with the GUIless VST wrapper (FX section), best if it's looking like a MU128, or the LCD on the MU-15, that's be rad1

Ravity S? If the firm's not out there anymore? The Roland Sound Canvas, that is not even HALF the SC88? Who cares, I'm sold!
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You can run the setup by changing the app properties.
You have to run in compatibility mode as win98.
(right click>compatibility>compatibility mode)
Yamaha S-YXG50 runs in XP normal mode as VST plugin from almost any host.
Another choice for GM soundbanks is Sfz from RGCAudio and some GM soundbanks from www.sf2midi.com .

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Er... don't forget, the S-YXG20 to S-YXG100 are stand alone synth/rompler, it's no VSTi. You still need something like Hubi's Loopback device to integrate it into a host, if the synth doesn't conflict in terms of audio drivers.
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