YAMAHA MOX REVIEW

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YAMAHA MOX - INTRODUCTION

How do you fancy having a professional Yamaha Motif in a very lightweight and affordable package? Well, Yamaha have just released two new synths - the MOX 6 (61 semi-weighted keys) and the MOX 8 (an 88 note graded hammer action keyboard). The new MOX has 1217 voices as well as 6720 Arpeggiator patterns taken from the Yamaha Motif XS range. The MOX 6 weighs an incredible 7.0 kg (15.4 lbs.), whilst the MOX 8 only 14.8 kg (32.6 lbs.) despite its full size keyboard. The prices are such that there is currently nothing on the market that provides this much by way of price, portability and professional sounds. This sounds like an ideal home studio keyboard workstation synth... it has a sequencer but its weight obviously lends itself to the live situation as does the new layout and controls. Well, it all sounds good but I need to put this through its paces and determine whether this light weight keyboard can stand the rigours of the road. Perhaps only time will tell, but it certainly appears to provide the ideal carrying weight for someone who needs 88 hammer-action keys.

YAMAHA MOX - PLAYING THE KEYS

I must say that I am not a great lover of Yamaha key beds, but to be fair, everyone to a large extent has their own idea about what feels right for them. Whilst the MOX 6's semi-weighted-action clearly did not feel right for me, after a few hours of playing it, my fingers settled down to its ways. It is very light and fast and in my opinion it seemed to be far more at home with sounds that were not of the acoustic piano variety. The MOX 8's graded hammer action on the other hand did a much better job, providing me with much better dynamics to aid my pianistic performance. I would add that that the graded action is OK, but the keys coming back at you feel a little slow, although it can be improved slightly by using different velocity curves.

YAMAHA MOX - DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE MOX AND THE MOTIF XS

Well, there are some good and some bad points. The price has got to be the best point as you are looking at less than half the price of a Motif XS equivalent. There is also no longer a Linux based operating system and the boot-up time is very fast. The new layout and design is all about speed with their new searchable interface for selecting sounds. The weight of the MOX is also approximately half of the Motif. Probably one of the best aspects of the MOX is that it is also a USB Audio interface, providing four-track recording and two-track playback. There is also a dedicated and handy DAW Master fader on the Yamaha MOX for you to adjust DAW playback. These keyboards both ship with the usual Cubase AI but also include Yamaha's YC-B3 soft organ and Prologue soft synth to get you started.

On the negative side, the MOX's light weight means that its construction is far less solid and feels more plastic-like. However, the controls are fine. There is a reduction in the polyphony - the MOX is only 64 note max, whereas the Motif XS is 128 note max. There is no aftertouch on the Yamaha MOX and gone is the 5.7 inch graphic colour backlit LCD (320 x 240 dot), which has been replaced by a simple smaller 240 x 64 dot, backlit LCD. Lastly, there is no Sampling facility on the MOX and the eight real-time sliders have gone, which will disappoint the Organ players.

YAMAHA MOX - VOICES, PERFORMANCES, SPLITS AND LAYERS

If you are familiar with the Yamaha Motif XS then you will be aware of the great range of sounds and performances that it offers, ranging from very versatile pianos to complete backing tracks with drums and bass riffs, which instantly provide you with song-writing inspiration. Each voice can be built from up to eight elements or waves. String slides, brass falls and guitar harmonics can easily be triggered via one of the AF1 and AF2 switches, to add an additional realistic element to the sound. The Performances mode allow you to layer and split up to four voices. There are also quick layer and split buttons, which are very useful when playing live.

The Yamaha MOX puts 1217 voices at your fingertips, which are made up of 8 banks of 128 giving you 1024 voices plus 128 GM voices, 64 drum voices and one GM drum voice. Then you have 3 Banks of 128 User presets, which are currently filled with copies from the preset bank. On top of this there are 2 user banks of 128. I think it is fair to say that although you may think so, there is no loss of sound quality despite this being a budget version of a Motif. The only reduced quality aspect that I noticed was that the output was low and so I found that I had my volume control very high all of the time.

YAMAHA MOX - KNOBS AND BUTTONS

There are two banks of four knobs on the Yamah MOX and each also has a function button. These function buttons allow live editing of 24 parameters which include:- Cutoff, Resonance, FEG Depth, Portamento, ADSR, Volume, Pan, EQ, Effects and Arpeggiator controls.

On top of this I found two very useful assignable function buttons. If you press these during your keyboard performance, depending on what the Expanded Articulation settings are in the Voice Element mode, you can call up the specific element of your selected voice. You can of course also assign other functions to these buttons.

As well as this, Yamaha also supply dedicated buttons. I personally like to see (as a minimum) three dedicated buttons on a keyboard for Transpose, Octave Transpose and Tempo. The Yamaha MOX keyboards have Transpose up to 11 semitones, Octave Transpose from -3 to +3 and Tempo, which gives a very generous 5 - 300 BPM range, with the Tempo control available in the second group of four knobs under the Arpeggiator line.

YAMAHA MOX - MASTER KEYBOARD FUNCTION

It is good to see that consideration is now being given to the Live Performer in that with many keyboards you now have Voices and Performances. However, more often than not, you need to change from a Voice to a Performance but what you would like to do is to perform this in one operation with one key press. The new Korg Kronos seems to do this the best with its 'Set List' mode, whereby it has a grid of 16, so that you can easily select (with one-touch), a Performance and then a Voice and then a Sample and a Song if you wish, without the need to go into different screens or menus.

The Yamaha MOX has something called Master Keyboard Function. This has a dual function that as well as letting you use the keyboard as a master keyboard controller, can be used to switch easily between Voice, Performance, Song or Pattern Play.

YAMAHA MOX - MODES

There are 13 operation modes in this instrument and they can be selected by using either the ten Mode buttons (Voice, Performance, Master, Song, Pattern, Mixing, File, Utility, Quick Setup and Daw remote) or the three 'global' modes (Edit, Job and Store).

With Song and Pattern mode you can record, play or edit Songs or Patterns that you have created. File Mode allows you to save the data (created on the MOX) to a USB flash memory device and visa-versa. Quick Setup mode is there so that you can register up to six MIDI and audio connection settings (between the MOX and your PC) as 'quick setups' for instant recall.

YAMAHA MOX - SEQUENCER, ARPEGGIATOR AND PERFORMANCE CONTROL

The 16-Track sequencer features real-time recording, which I just love. There is nothing worse than coming up with a song idea and not having a quick means available at that moment to record it! The Yamaha MOX records all your performance data as you play it and also has Replace, Overdub and Punch In/Out. It also has a Step recorder so you can record your phrases or other difficult passages with ease. You can even record a Performance into a song again - great for quick ideas! You simply hit 'RECORD', select 'SONG' and start playing and all of your performance, sounds and arpeggiations are recorded into the Song Mode and you can then edit or add other tracks etc.

The Yamaha MOX features a staggering 6,720 arpeggiator patterns. This will certainly give you something to listen to in your spare time! What is outstanding on both the Yamaha Motif and the MOX is using the Arpeggiations in conjunction with Performance mode, where you can have four Arpeggiators running simultaneously. Here you could have say Drums, Synth Bass and two other synth sounds and you can filter these individually rather than globally. You can also assign up to six Arpeggiators to each voice, so whilst you are playing, you can instantly switch to another Arpeggiator. You could even set up the performance so that if you wanted a bit more dynamics from Verse to Chorus for example, you could switch Arpeggiator and have say a stronger Drum Part where the snare drum cuts through the mix more and use this for the Chorus. Again you can do this in real-time by pressing one button.

YAMAHA MOX - EFFECTS

When you are in a preset, if you just press the Common button you will see a tab named 'EFFECT' on the LCD. Here you have access to all of the unit's effects, including Yamaha's excellent VCM effects. There are:- 9 Reverbs, 8 Delays, 5 Chorus effects, 4 Flangers, 4 Phasers, 3 Tremolos / Rotarys, 4 Distortions, 3 Compressors, 3 Wahs, 3 Low-Fi effects, 7 Tech and 8 Miscellaneous (which give you a VCM EQ 501, a HARMONIC ENHANCER a TALKING MODULATOR, DAMPER RESONANCE, PITCH CHANGE, EARLY REFLECTION, a VOCODER and a NOISE GATE + COMP + EQ). Plus, there are also 9 Master Effects, Master EQ (5 bands), Part EQ (3 bands, stereo)! What else could you ask for?

YAMAHA MOX - USB AUDIO AND MIDI INTERFACE

Another useful feature of the Yamaha MOX is having an on-board audio and MIDI interface, allowing you to record audio straight into your DAW with no additional hardware, which is amazing considering the low cost of this keyboard. You just connect the MOX keyboard to your computer with one USB cable and install Cubase AI, the USB Midi and Audio drivers and the Software Editor. The Editor opens up in your Cubase Project and you can edit everything in real-time. To open the Editor you simply press the 'DAW Remote' button and the whole MOX keyboard becomes a remote for Cubase. For example, if you press 'Play' on the MOX, Cubase starts running. You can also then call up the editor from the MOX. Here you can select sounds to edit all the different parameters, e.g. effects and filters. This means that you can move away from editing on the small screen of the Yamaha MOX and you have 'total integration' (as Yamaha call it) with Cubase.

Because the Yamaha MOX gives you an Audio and MIDI interface, you can also start to use the Soft Synths in the Cubase software provided. Just go to 'Devices' and 'VST Instruments' within Cubase and you will find the included Prologue Soft Synth. A message comes up saying 'Do you wish to create a MIDI track' and you simply say 'Yes' and you can then play all the interesting sounds on the Soft Synth. On top of this, because you are in Remote mode on your MOX, you can control the Soft Synth using the controls on your keyboard and filter the sounds in real-time for example. You can also do the same for the other soft synth, the YC3B organ. With the remote you can control the drawbars with use of the main knobs and you will see the actual drawbar adjustments on your PC!

YAMAHA MOX - CONNECTIONS

Going from Left to Right, after the Power connections there are two types of USB connections - a 'USB to Host' socket (to transfer MIDI and Audio Data between your Yamaha MOX and PC) and a 'USB to Device' socket to connect to a Flash Memory Device for data backup. Next is the MIDI section for IN, OUT and THRU. Then you have the assignable foot switch and foot controller jacks, Left and Right Main Outputs, Headphones and Left and Right Audio Ins.

YAMAHA MOX - CONCLUSION

This is Yamaha's sales pitch:

'The new MOX series combines a MOTIF XS sound engine, a MIDI keyboard controller with extensive DAW and VST control, multi-channel USB audio interfacing, on-board sequencing, and an extensive DAW / VST software bundle. The MOX6 and MOX8 are the most powerful, mobile and affordable Yamaha music workstations ever.'

I don't normally take much notice of these types of statements but in this case I totally agree and think that even though Yamaha are blowing their own trumpet, they have got it spot-on in this case! These keyboards are simply great value for the money!

For more information on the Yamaha MOX6 or MOX8, or to purchase one of these keyboards, follow the links below:

Yamaha MOX6 - Buy/More Information

Yamaha MOX8 - Buy/More Information

Also, click here to check out our range of Yamaha Motif keyboards!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZv34tbwtE