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Jmd103 « Best In Class When New, Best Bang For Buck Now »
Published on 06/17/20 at 18:50
Best value:
Excellent
Audience:
Advanced Users
Unlike the one 1-star reviewer here, I've been gigging since 1969, I have owned more modules than I can remember, and I'm a Yamaha digital piano customer since 1986. Nonetheless I spent months researching piano modules back in the day and selected the P50m after having a great experience with the TX1-P. This was a remarkable module when it was introduced, far better than anything in its class on the market. it was not even close.
I have used the module live and on recordings and it is very well-behaved sonically and responds great to EQ. The only con to this product is the 32-note polyphony, which on some voices is further reduced to 16 because of the structure of the voice. Top compensate for this, Yamaha put in a feature to have the module respond to only even-numbered or odd-numbered MIDI notes; the idea is that you can then daisy-chain two of these via the THRU port and come close to doubling the polyphony. My guess is that the note limitation is caused by the amount of memory required to produce the complex sounds.
Some have said that the sound is not go great on this module. Then they say that it's their first module, and that they don't play piano. Well I will make the observation that if one is not a pianist and one tries to use this, one will not sound great, just as one would not sound great on a real piano. So don't expect it to go into autopilot and turn you into Chopin just because the mains switch was pressed. As a real pianist, I found this module to be so good that I have kept two of them until now, in 2020.
I have used the module live and on recordings and it is very well-behaved sonically and responds great to EQ. The only con to this product is the 32-note polyphony, which on some voices is further reduced to 16 because of the structure of the voice. Top compensate for this, Yamaha put in a feature to have the module respond to only even-numbered or odd-numbered MIDI notes; the idea is that you can then daisy-chain two of these via the THRU port and come close to doubling the polyphony. My guess is that the note limitation is caused by the amount of memory required to produce the complex sounds.
Some have said that the sound is not go great on this module. Then they say that it's their first module, and that they don't play piano. Well I will make the observation that if one is not a pianist and one tries to use this, one will not sound great, just as one would not sound great on a real piano. So don't expect it to go into autopilot and turn you into Chopin just because the mains switch was pressed. As a real pianist, I found this module to be so good that I have kept two of them until now, in 2020.