Yamaha S70 XS

I have seen many people use the Yamaha S70 XS as a stage piano and I have also seen it in many studios. My experience with the S70 XS starts in the studio. First thing that I noticed with it was how good it feels to play it, the keys feel great. It has 1,024 voices and 64 drum kits. All of the drum kits sound pretty good, they are much better than a lot of the other Yamaha keyboards that have come out over the last few years.

UTILIZATION

The sound and effects editing is simple, everything is done in real time and it is all at your finger tips. It takes little to no effort at all to use the S70 XS. I do not use many of the effects on it though I run the signal out through a interface and into my software mixer track and that is where I add most of the effects.

SOUNDS

The manual that comes with it is easy to understand if you need it. But chances are you won’t even need a manual to operate the S70 XS because it is self explanatory and more of a plug and play type of synth keyboard. All of the keys are weighted and it has a built in arpeggiator.

OVERALL OPINION

For the money, this is one of the best Yamaha keyboards that I have used in all of my time making music. They only thing they could improve on is maybe making the screen a full color display and making it a little bigger because it is small and it can be difficult to read sometimes if you need to switch things up quickly. But all of the sounds are great and useable. I am very satisfied with my purchase, this will remain one of my favorite keyboards to work with.

The Yamaha S70 XS is a 76 key synth and it is also considered a stage piano. It has over 1,000, but it will take some time to get use to. It was not an easy keyboard to understand for the simple fact that it is set up differently then previous S models from Yamaha, maybe because it is using a different OS, I am not sure. It does come with a manual and you will need to look some things up if you want to understand how everything works quickly. The S70 has 22 different type of chorus effects and about 10 different reverbs that can all be changed and tweaked in real time. On the back of the S70 you have an input slot to plug in your mic and you can record into it. You even have controls right on the S70 to control our effects to your voice so they wont sound dry.


UTILIZATION

Editing your sounds are not easy, but they are not difficult. You will just need to take some time to understand the flow of the board and then you will be editing everything pretty quickly. Setting up the keyboard takes no effort, its getting use to that takes some time. With 192 MB of internal memory and a nice lit LCD display. You can even load in your samples or whatever and edit them right on screen.


SOUNDS

Most of the sounds on the S70 are realistic, a few of the piano’s I was not a fan of because I felt like they sounded too toy-ish and more like a free VST piano would. But there are enough effects on the S70 to spice up any of the sounds you don’t initially like.


OVERALL OPINION

Overall, it is a solid synth with a lot of sounds that you can use right to your music no matter what style you make. It is more of an all in one synth but at the same time it has a high price that might not be worth the purchase when you can buy something that cost less that does virtually the same exact thing. If you are going to spend this much you mine as well go with the Yamaha S90 XS.

see the news s90 xs

UTILIZATION

At first it's a very intuitive keyboard with lots of realtime controls for a true gaming pleasure
on the other hand, if you want to go deeper into the many features of this keyboard, the manual is mandatory and must spend a little time to understand its operation. On this test the magazine home studio manual mentions a 62-page manual but it is only getting started. The reference manual in pdf format (not cool!) Is 160 pages not counting the manual editor. It is a scene full keyboard with real function synthesizer.
The editor is easy to use and required to edit sounds a little deeper and especially to have access to eight elements (waveform) that constitute a vote.
Otherwise the screen keyboard is too small which makes some use even if it does not bother me in terms of what the concurence ...

SOUNDS

To close the debate: "Who has the best piano sound" go listen!. What i can tell you is that the sound s6 far exceeds that of the great piano XS, as touch (heavier is far superior to my taste at a course north EX piano sounds) is very expressive and I take my foot! In addition there are other presets piano worth seeing as the piano rock.
This keyboard is a keyboard with sounds generalists which suits me perfectly for a style of pop-rock (amateur jazz and classical on your way!).
On the whole the 1024 surpasses it sounds concurence keyboards scene in terms of quality and realism. Personally I do not look for sounds in accordance with the original instrument, but what interests me is the personality of sounds and being able to adapt to my style.
I find the sounds of piano, EP, organs, violins, brass, guitars, synths very good and very varied. I have only been a little disappointed with the keyboard percussion (marimba and others ...) I find it a bit "dull" and webs of synthesizer (new age style ambience or Korg Wavestation!) Varied little (the effect modulator ring is not very effective next to my old JV 1080!)

OVERALL OPINION

I use it for 3 months.
I hesitated long internship with the north I found the touch too soft and its price is too expensive. SV1 of the korg was in my budget, but apart from his piano sounds very good the rest is below the s70 and user memories too numerous not to mention the monotimbralité which for me is a characteristic playoff.
What I really decided is that I paid 1790 euros on the internet in a store in Paris and at that price I will ever buy this without any hesitation.
In conclusion, I am the keyboard scene the most complete and most polyvalant market compared to a nordstage or SV1. In addition it has many functions: the performance (so arranger editable but unfortunately does not ternary rhythms ...) great to improvise with rhythm and accompaniment, the effect half-pedal (pedal optional) recorder and digital player (wav), the direct connection of a microphone with the possibility to add effects and many buttons to fiddle for mofifier its sounds or can easily find them. Only the vocoder disappointed me, I find it a little gadget.