Yamaha Motif XF8 Music Production Synthesizer Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I'd give the Motif XF8 4.5 stars if that option were available, because, as one of the most costly workstations available, it lacks a few features that ought to be standard and its complexity is a but daunting. Otherwise, it really is an amazing machine. The sounds alone justify the cost and a five star rating.
First and foremost, the sounds that the machine generates are the best I've heard. A guitar actually sounds like a guitar, nearly as good as when I record on my Martin and without mistakes. I am primarily a piano player, and the piano voices are top notch. There might be better dedicated piano units available (the Nord Stage comes to mind), but the Motif gets very close. I also like the balanced hammer action. Though it is not as weighted as dedicated top end stage pianos. the action offers sufficient tactile response to make playing easy and responsive. The performance mode is very useful as a starting point to creating music. They are widely varied, offering something for every style. I particularly like it that there are great jazz and classical performances to use. Far too many modern keyboards are geared nearly exclusively to hip-hop and similar styles, leaving those who play more traditional styles out in the cold. You are limited to playing four voices at one time (one of those includes the drum pattern), which is rather meager for a workstation of this level.
The Motif is a complicated creature. This is in large part because it does so many things. One can literally create a full composition from scratch, sample, perform, edit, mix, and record it. The problem is that Yamaha could not be bothered creating a manual that actually explains how everything works. I have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities, due in large part to the ridiculously spartan owner's manual. For a machine this capable and complex, you'd think Yamaha could have spent a little more effort putting together a manual that actually shows the owner how to extract its full potential. or at least have decent online support. But that is equally useless. Be prepared to learn the complexities on your own. The motifator forum is very good, and offers a lot of help, but you end up wasting a lot of time rummaging through various threads and posts trying to find information that should have been in the manual to begin with.
There are a few features that are lacking in this flagship unit. For one thing, there is no flash memory included, only a measly 128mb of volatile RAM. Try downloading any set of voices, and you will quickly see that they far exceed this puny onboard memory. Which means you have to pay $150-$300 for either 512 or 1 gb of flash memory. Yamaha makes the flash proprietary, so you cannot install standard flash cards. So, that's $600 extra for 2 gb of flash rom, at least half of which is probably necessary.
Yamaha also sells as a $300 option a firewire expansion port which allows us to record audio into a computer via firewire, instead of the standard USB port which only allows MIDI. If you want to record audio-don't we all?-you have to spring for the card or buy an separate interface. I already own an Apogee Duet, which works just fine, but if you don't, that's yet another expense. The firewire port should be standard.
I am still learning the interface of the Motif, but my initial impression is that it is far from user friendly. There are countless tiny black buttons protruding from the black metal body (which is of a rough texture, and holds fingerprints like superglue) not color-coded in any way. The display is good but not great. There is a lot of information in very small font size, and to move from screen to screen entails trying to line up and press the correct physical button that corresponds to the menu on the screen. It is quite clumsy. On the other hand, there is a physical button (even if it is small and looks like every other one) for nearly every important control, so there is a lot less digging through screens than there might be. Still, Yamaha could do much better in the ergonomics department.
The internal sequencer is MIDI only, very useful, but an audio recorder would be welcome. Trying to record the MIDI from the internal sequencer to a DAW (something that many would want to do) is more complicated than building a spy satellite. I still haven't figured it out and can't find much assistance. This is the inherent problem with the Motif. It does so many things and most of them quite well, but because only the most basic functions are explained, it is easy to spend hours and hours trying to figure out how to record something, for example.
So, in the end, I just end up playing the keyboard. And, it sound great.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Yamaha Motif XF8 Music Production Synthesizer

Get 13% OFF

Click here for more information about Yamaha Motif XF8 Music Production Synthesizer