Topic: Genos compatibility with S975 and SX900?

[Toril S]

Hello friends
I would like to know if the SX900 is more compatible with Genos than the S975?
With compatible I mean that you can switch styles between the two, and they will play well on both units.
The reason for asking is that I now have a Genos and an S975.
I take the 975 when I play outside the house, but I often have to make two versions of a songstyle, one for the Genos and one for the S975. Old styles work well, but newer styles are more of a problem. It is not only the missing third voice on the 975 or the revo drum noise, but some voices have different voice numbers in the two keyboards. For instance, I made a MIDI using organ voices on my 975. When I played the MIDI on the Genos, the voice was missing. They were there, but had been assigned a new number. The MIDI was looking for the old voice number. And so on.
Is it more likely that this will not happen with the SX900?

[pjd]

Hello Toril --

After looking at the Data List PDFs for both keyboards, the SX900 brings voices and styles closer to Genos. For popular music in particular, the SX900 has a few additional DSP effects and Telecaster guitar voices which are not present in the S975.

That said, Yamaha consciously maintains a wide gap between the Genos and the S/SX-series. I grant that the S9xx and SX-900 have excellent sound quality and, to many ears, is sufficiently close to a Genos sound for many players, especially those who don't have the dosh for Genos.

However, style compatibility is a thicket of details -- missing voices, Revo programming vs. standard drums, etc. Having tried to make "compatible" styles across product lines, the devil is definitely in these details and ironing out the details is very time-consuming.

Hope this helps -- pj

[Toril S]

Thank you so much pjd! And thanks for looking at the data lists for me!😀

[EileenL]

Hello Toril,
  As you know I have both keyboards  and I use quite a few of my Genos registrations in my SX900 and they work very well. There are many of the Genos styles in there that have been adapted to work fine and third party ones work well. I am doing a Christmas show on Saturday and am using my Genos
registrations in my SX900 which I will be using. All I had to do was load the styles that were not on board ones and link them to my registrations which did not take long. Great little keyboard.

[Toril S]

Thanks Eileen! I also have a gig on Saturday.🌲

[pjd]

Hi Toril --

I was thinking about Eileen's comment.

Moving styles is a two way street, but the street has a big hill. Going one way, a bicyclist has to work hard. Going the other way, the bicyclist can glide. 

Moving Genos to S/SX is a lot of work because, as you know, Genos has a number of features which are not in the S/SX-series. That requires fix-ups. However, moving the other direction, S/SX to Genos, the S/SX style should work quite well without (much) work.

I'm still using styles that I made on S950, playing them on Genos. They are good enough.    When I have the time, need or inclination, I'll upgrade a style to Genos.

That's the catch -- time. With gigs and other duties, none of us has that much time. So, a quick way to go is to use S975 and port to Genos.

Just thoughts -- pj

[Toril S]

Yes, pj, I realize there will always be a gap between the PSR/XS keyboards and the TYros/Genos. As you say, the older styles usually work well, sometimes only with minimal adjustments, but the new ones do not transfer well between the PSRs and Tyros/genos. Even though the XS will work better than the PSR, it won't be perfect either. And I am concerned with the screen size of the XS because of my vision problem. So I most likely will keep my S975 for gigs, and maybe even take the Genos out. The Genos is not much heavier than the S975, but longer, so I am concerned about fitting it in the cars. I rely on people to drive me to venues, or taxi. You can order big taxies, but it is more expensive. As long as I have more than one keyboard of different models I guess I just have to cope with this problem. I never thought I would miss features on the Tyros/Genos when playing my PSR, but I do
I am not a very advanced musician, but the extra features on Genos are nice, and I am starting to use them more