Thank you for this exhaustive explanation.
To reiterate, when I first heard the Genos ac bass, my first instinct was, it was better than T4. My issue was the manner it dealt with my touch on the keys.. presumably legato. I prefer the T4's way of handling that touch I use. I still think the Genos DAC etc, will make a better sounding bass though !!
OT OT!
The following comments have nothing to do with my issue with Genos ac basses ( btw I only saw two, not 5 or 6 ac basses on Genos among presets ) which were strictly about the legato/ touch of this user , and nothing else. 99% of you do not play manual left hand bass, so I apologize for fact that this is only for a tiny minority of you.
Yesterday I spent considerable time on t4 with ac bass.. I modified the tone/eq in voice set on the ac bass. I liked it enough that I asked myself, 'why are you not trying ac bass in live situations?' Of course this is not my first rodeo.. everything changes within a few moments of being on a gig...in other words, regardless of how the ac bass sounds at home, I seem to always default to the Lo Bass sound exclusively.
This is all about musical instinct, not some isolated idea about "oh how nice this ac bass sounds". No, it is about a harmonious alchemy between the left bass and right hand sounds.
I cannot begin to explain it... I just know, my instinct takes over, and leads me away from ac basses.
More OT
To those interested, I will go a little more into it.. but it is not technical talk, but rather the words of a musician not esp versed in extensive editing of sounds.
50+ years of experience suggests to me that my musical instinct about preferring one bass sound over another, is sound.. ( no pun intended ). Another way to say, my instinct will hear some quality in the preset bass that suggests to me, "this is the bass sound that works best" and fiddling with parameters to improve a bass sound is not worth it.
more OT
Next thing I want to mention is difficult to discuss for me..
The sum of the parts ( Left and Right 1 2 3 ) is different than the individual parts in isolation.Because a certain sound sounds appealing in isolation, does not mean combined with other voices. that "sum of the parts" will be the ultimate combination.
So choosing various combinations of Left and Right voices boils down to instinct, not science. One example.. after years of using concert piano on t4, I discovered Rock piano works better for me with the other voices! I like the tone of the Concert piano a bit better, but the rock piano perhaps "blends" better.
OT
I will go one more layer into an insight I had the other day with a guitar player. This pertains to playing in a group setting, not as a solo one man band.
An essentially acoustic musician such as myself, always was drawn to an acoustic instruments tone and tonal flexibility . In my case, saxophone, elec bass, piano, B3 organ and Fender Rhodes. ( Some purists would argue, Rhodes, B3 and Elec bass are not acoustic... point taken)
I would always be in search of the best sounding instrument I could find and or afford.
This idea at first glance means,
I want a beautiful tone or better yet, a flexible tone that can express various moods. But my recent insight came to me this way..
Tone is NOT just about our subjective idea of a beautiful tone... Tone also serves another function in a band setting.A tone eg of a guitar, has to communicate not just the guitarists vision of beauty or a cool sound, but beyond that, it must also communicate time feel, and clarity of the notes in the chords. The guitarist I was advising had a tone, he personally liked, but it altogether failed in regard to clearly making the harmony obvious ( a necessity when playing in an unrehearsed situation, which is pretty common ) and it failed in defining his beat. He thought his tone was cool, but I knew better.
Again, this was all based on my instinct.. I long ago, unconsciously knew this about tone...( your tone must not only be expressive to you, but must define a pitch clearly and a beat clearly ) but when I met this guitar player I was forced to think deeply about my unconscious instinct about tone.
They say the teacher learns as much as the student he teaches. I hope this is not too far afield, and that some among you will appreciate this insight. By being forced to critique his tone, I was reminded of this buried truth.
A little less OT
This talk about tone applies to our keyboards.. the tones in the 4 voices we use manually, have to not just sound cool, in isolation, but collectively. And that combination of tones is no simple matter.
My guess is, as Yamaha continues to make new keyboards, the DAC will improve the total sound quality when several voices are playing at once.
Again, when I first heard the Genos ac bass, my first instinct was, it was better than T4.
I still believe that... so go and buy it!
