I did some experiments with the DSPs of the Genos (mainly in search for a more convincing distorted guitar sound), in theory the possibilities are awesome !
But in practice, there are some 'shortcomings' (read: 'bug defects') :
- The Genos allow to set multiples different DSPs to a single voice (say 'Right 1') , but the main 'Voice Edit' screen only shows the last added one… the workaround is to use the 'Mixer' screen that show all the DSPs as Insertion Effects.
- The Genos allows us to 'tweak' each DSP, by modifying the 'Detail Parameters' , a very important point to achieve a good distorted guitar sound with reverb, distortion, compression… but once again, accessing the 'Parameters' screen is not really 'user friendly' (read: 'a f***ing nightmare'), since you have to either:
- Temporarily disable other assigned DSPs, edit the parameters, reactivate the other DSPs
- Temporarily assign to another part the other DSPs, edit the parameters, reassign the other DSPs to the initial target part
Not really practical, and really frustrating when you need to test a voice with all the dsps activated …
But the worst is yet to come:
- When you achieved the exact sound you were looking for, you save it, right ? You have to save it in a Registration Memory (
not as a 'User/Custom Voice', since it can only remember *one* dsp) ...
- You switch off your Genos, happy with the result
- Later, you switch on your Genos, select your registration, and play it ... W T F
It doesn't sound like when I saved it ! Something is missing... -> Yes: The registration kept the DSPs 'Type' (Distortion, Reverb, Compression and so on...) , but only saved the tweaked parameters of one of them (It seems to be the the last edited one...)
End result: I stopped trying to assign multiple DSPs to the same part, since I cannot reliably save my settings. (and, yes, i tried to check/uncheck the various checkboxes when saving the Registration, yes I double-checked the 'Parameter Lock' screen, and yes, I did a Factory Reset of my Genos, without any change…)
This is one of the biggest flaw in the current (v1.30) firmware, I really hope that it will be fixed in the 'rumored' upcoming February 'big' update !
btw: Another area plagued with bugs is the 'Style Assembly' functionnality, most of the time it will display a 'Out of memory' message when I try to copy multiple parts of a Style to assemble it with another one, but if I wait a little bit (or I copy one track at a time) the error message appears much less frequently... (As a Software Developper, I suspect that the Style Assembly functions was created by a Junior Developper, not aware of how to correctly manage memory allocation/deallocation ...).
Currently, the Genos is a '
Shut up and take my money, I'll only switch on and play' instrument, not a '
Hey what an amazing piece of hardware ! There's much more power inside, let's see what unique sound we can achieve with this beast' ... A lot of people seems to be happy using only the presets styles and voices (which are great, without any doubt) , but when we see all the wasted possibilites, we can be really frustrated...
Benoit
Ps: Ho, and 'Yamaha Expansion Manager' software sucks a well.