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Upright Piano samples- Halion/ Kontakt/ AIFF downloads; Emu/AKAI CD. |
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The Yamaha
TX16W is a relatively rare late eighties sampler. It seems to have been
an experiment by Yamaha, because there are very few proprietary LSI chips on the board, which one would expect of a Yamaha product of this era. Instead, it is comprised mostly of discrete
logic chips. The build quality is typical of Yamaha- very solid. It is a very deep
2U rack unit, and there are 3 very large circuit boards layered inside. It's
a 12 bit audio system, but the discrete electronics mean that there is more
analogue headroom in this instrument than most other 12 bit audio systems. It
certainly sounds better than the Akai and Casio 12 bit machines, and compares
well even to the latest virtual samplers. The TX samples at 50kHz, although the full benefit is masked on
the TX itself by the analogue anti- aliasing filters on the outputs. They give
the instrument a "dark" sound, which is actually rather nice. 50kHz samples replayed on more recent
instruments sound really hi-fi. The
main polyphonic outs sound brighter than the eight monophonic individual outs.
The transposing is nice and crunchy, particularly at lower sampling rates.
The original Yamaha OS was OK as long as you didn't want to actually
sample anything. My theory is that Yamaha used it as a way to gather sounds
for the PCM based keyboards and synths it was to produce when FM synthesis became
unfashionable. This theory is borne out by the fact that you can still hear
original TX library PCMs in any Yamaha home keyboard. Unfortunately, they didn't
use any of the really good sounds!
The Typhoon 2000 OS is available as a free download from Nu-Edge developments. It is a necessity
for TX users. It can import Yamaha OS patches, and eliminates most of the problems
with the instrument. Most notably, Typhoon uses a lossless data compression
algorithm which gives a space saving of about 33%. This compensates for the
double density disk format the TX is saddled with. Some of Typhoon's features
have not been beaten by more modern instruments- auto pitch tracking and logical
sample mapping makes multi sampling very easy; excellent file management like
a DOS PC; good sounding portamento; extremely flexible modulation and layering;
and a consistent hierarchical system from sample to multitimbral performance.
Other things were impossible to fix- the digital filters are still poor, and
modulation can cause glitches with certain pitch and sample rate combinations.
To put this in perspective, the only contemporary sampler with better filters
and equivalent modulation flexibility was the E-mu Emax. But with Typhoon the
Yamaha is a much more accessible instrument than the E-mu.
The Typhoon OS disk includes some excellent sounds to demonstrate the modulation
and sound quality. The drum kit is especially noteworthy, because it is constructed
from basic synth waveforms and sounds fantastic. Incidentally, Magnus Lindstroem of Nu-Edge has recently developed a VST/ AU drum synth plugin.
Tips to make the TX sound more modern: Typhoon can read AIFF files from
floppy, so you can bypass the onboard A to D. This method makes the TX Recycle
compatible too. It's not much fun mapping 30+ short samples chromatically, but
it might be worth it to access the great modulation. Typhoon 2000 has
an emphasis process to compensate for the DA output filter. For the ultimate
in quality, you could emulate this using eq in a 24 bit DAW, and then use the
free Sound Effects 0.9.2 to dither your samples to 12 bit. But I think it's better to use the character of the TX as an effect
in itself, and leave the hifi reproduction to more modern samplers.
Sample library: We have the complete Yamaha
UK library, which was programmed by Mr. Paul Wiffen, a really nice guy. He informed
me that all the sounds were recorded on the Yamaha DRU-8 digital tape system,
using Yamaha microphones. The original tapes have disappeared, but Paul still
has the original long unlooped samples stored away on floppies. There are some
very special sounds in there, especially the cello trio and french horn ensemble.
We transferred the best ones to the ESI4000, and re-looped some of them with
Antares Infinity. A long time ago I made a nice composite 11 piece ensemble
using the cellos, violins and violas. The sounds were layered in the Yamaha,
recorded onto a (don't laugh) Philips DCC600 and sampled back in to the Yamaha.
We tried making this "better" later on by doing the same layer in the ESI and recording digitally in to Cubase, but it just didn't sound as good.
I've finally moved over to Kontakt, which has all the modulation capabilities (plus many more!) of the Yamaha and vastly superior filters, but I have yet to figure out how one gets that crunchy transposing sound! Kontakt is probably the most powerful sampler ever made, but it still doesn't tell you the pitch of the samples...
We also have the entire collection that was hosted on Muki
Pakesch's ftp site, which you can access HERE, it includes the Yamah Japan and UK factory disks. We also have an extensive library we created ourselves when
the TX was the main instrument in the studio. Some of this is now available to purchase in Kontakt format HERE. Our library of useful sounds consists
of 150 floppy disks! Some sounds need the character of the TX to sound their
best, so we still use this instrument "as is" from time to time.
For fast turnaround of noises into musical sounds, or for old style lo-fi sampling,
the TX16W is a very nice instrument to have around.
© 2004/ 2008 Tomás Mulcahy, http://www.madtheory.com