Yamaha RS-7000

First off i struggled with this unit. When i was looking at getting a hardcore sampler + synth i was looking at this and the Korg ESX-1. I had previously used/owned a few pieces of hardware (Korg em1, Korg Es-1 ( which i loved ), Roland Mc-09, Korg 05/rw) but mostly had written my music using a laptop.

After buying my Rs7000 i was kicking myself for weeks :( i hated the massive interface and the sounds were strangely muffled. I didnt like the way the sequencer worked and when i would take it to jams it did all kinds of strange things from erasing my memory cards to freaking out with delay and i was having all kinds of troubles trying to get samples into the unit without having to sample them all again :( . I was very unhappy, and was seriously thinking of selling it. Then i upgraded to the new os and things started to get better. The sounds were clearer for one thing, and as i played with the unit more i discovered a very deep and interesting piece of equipment.

Its menus and knobs are incredibly daunting :S with a total of around 52 menus in its system, and while this is innitally offputting, when you get the hang of the unit you can breeze your way through straight to what you want.

Basically unless your a hardware nut there will be a pretty serious learning curve to this unit.. Im giving it a 7 because once to figure it out it all makes sense :)

Features abound in this unit and was one of the main reasons i bought it. Firstly its upgradable to 64 meg ram which makes the unit much more stable.. and this can be picked up on ebay for cheap as.

There are some hardcore sampled editing features, right down to being able to see the waveform on the screen and change it to a certain extent. You can slice samples, and even better is the ability to remix the slices.. brilliant for drum loops.

You can pitch, effect, change gate/phrase time/velocity, decay, attack, LFO depth and speed, filters and more right from the knobs on the front of the unit.. want a sound that filters via LFO? or maybe even pitches from the lfo? its easy :)

I have yet to hook anything up via midi so i cannot comment on it too much, but the sequencer is awsome. It really does take a fair bit to get used to as each part is containted in a phrase. This makes it very flexible for playing live as you can have one phrase going in a song.. then decide to swtich it to something else without loosing time :) the sequencer also allows you to edit phrases via step, realtime or grid.. i never got the hang of the grid and just do my drums via step and synth via realtime.

The live capabilities on this are awsome.. the way you can tweak most things is awsome, as is the way you can flick between the stored setups of your track. I did an improv set for a party the other night in which i just cut some samples and looped before hand.. then on the night made up songs using realtime tweeked presets.. want to change that hiphop snare into something DB? use the midi time knob to speed up the phrase and pitch + change the attack of the sample.. its really sweet :) :) :)

I was looking at the multi out card the other day but it was basically half of what i paid for the unit :S i might save up and get one thou.. it would be nice to effect seperate channels..

There are tons of preset sounds and thousands of preset phrases.. not to mention the ones available on the new units that come with a smartcard full of tracks/phrases... Being on OSX i could not use the bundled software but just cut up my samples in spark and save them to a smartcard ( this took me a while to figure out but its easy now )

The preset sounds are pretty damn good, and while not editable they are certainly tweekable enough to change them completely And while you cannot save your tweaks, when you create a phrase ( loop ) with your editited sounds its saved as a user preset. easy!

You could really do any kind of electronic music on this thing.. i use it for IDM beats but the other night was pulling out RNB and House on this thing just for laughs :)

There are a ton of effects built in like distortions, delays, reverbs, phases, overdrive.. blah blah blah.. they are all digital but most sound pretty good. There is also a master effect that you can play with although appart from the cool tricks you can do with the delay ( fatboy slim anyone? ) i couldnt find them that usefull.. I really did wish i could have more than one effect too :( that was a big dissapointment. For example you can have say a compression on one knob, delay on the middle and reverb on the end. it would be nice to have compression on one, overdrive on another and delay on the end.. you can get variations of effects like delay + Compression + overdrive but its just not the same as having them seperate.. fix this please yamaha :(

there are two velocity pads on the side of the unit, their pretty useless really and if i really wanted to id get a midi controller or a cheap velocity synth and midi it up.. but i guess its nice to know that they are there.

This thing is BIG! and heavy... it almost put me off buying it when i compared it to the small sleek ESX-1..

But i use it for gigging all the time, i had to convert a suitcase that i fitted out with acoustic foam for protection as to get a case made would have cost me big $$$

I feel i can depend on it although i do get a little nervous gigging on it without a backup :S

Yamaha have been fairly helpfull with queries i have had.. although they say there was no carry bag made for it when there is clearly one on the Yamaha Europe site!! go figure..

other than that i have not had any reason to contact them.. :)

I would cry if this thing was stolen :( its such an amazing piece of gear once you nut it out that im starting to wonder how i lived without it!! Nothing i have owned even comes close to the abilites this thing has ( even my MAC Ti laptop )!!

Im really trying to make my music as live as possible, and the rs7k really lets you do that with ease.

There are some quirks ( not being able to set volume to 0 on the start of a phrase, you have to do it via velocity ) but most of these seem to be work-around-able.

I wish it had selectable effects for every track, editable synth features and a smaller body :) but we cant always get what we wish for.. At the price i got mine for ( 995$ AUD, the ESX-1 retails for $1395 over here.. almost as much as my car or an apple laptop ) i feel like i walk away with the deal of a lifetime.. maybe yamaha are the devil?? ;)

www.hazyinseptember.com

version 1.21. Presets sounds are very usable, especially percussion sounds which I really like. Many of the other sounds are very usbale too, one just needs to be creative with what's available. Editing patches is very easy, one thing I have discivered is that there is a cliff on some effects when using the knobs, ie turn a little bit and it's really obvious, and a bit the other way and you can hardly hear it. This is as opposed to more gradual implementation. The manual is good, in fact there is little chance of understanding this unit without at least a brief read. Now that I have read a fair bit of it, this machine really does make it easy to get ideas into music very fast.

Well Polyphony is 64 I beleive, but I haven't run out yet, the keyboard action is dismal, but hey, it's not a real keyboard, I use my real keyboard for playing. You can add RAM to make sampling time longer and also a card to increase the number of in-outs and also digital in-out capability, it all depend on what you want to do with the unit. This unit is (IMHO) best suited a master sequencer. The midi capabilities are good and two outs mean you can hook up other other midules with ease. The on board srquencer is very good and simply a joy to use.

Like I said earlier, the percussion sounds are what I use, I like some of other sounds too including some bass. Well I know lots of people dump on the internal sounds but there areally are a lot of usable sounds. Currently I am making Trace music, and for that this machine is excellent. Having on-board sounds makes it easy to make things happen. The master effects are very nice and usable.

So far so good, I bought this unit so that I can ditch my cumbersome PC and go out and jam with it, so I do depend on it. I would use it for a gig and wouldn't bother with a backup. If worst cam to worst I could survive without it for a performance, but life is so much better with it.

Haven't need service.

Well for the price I paid I am very impressed. A this price I would buy it again if it was stolen. I also use some VA synths, Novation and Virus and also a PC. What I really like about any hardware gear is that it generally works and does what it's designed to do and does it well. What I don't like about it is the plastic build and the large size, the size alone almost stopped me from buying. When I bought it I also considered the Akai MPC 1000. I choose the RS7000 for price and features. It would be good if it had an internal hard drive and also accepted other media then Smart Media. This machine all in all make it easy to make music. If you can get the same sort of low price I would suggest buying it.

Not easy

Good efx..thats it
64 paltry Megabytes of RAM?

some cheesy, a few quality presets..can't save em though once tweaked..

forget it...you will be tempted to smash it unless they fixed to OP sys.

They tried, but denied

I bought it when it first came out and returned it a week later. What a love-hate relationship I had with this machine. It would not perform it's sample 'Recycle' type function properly so I could never get the sample laid onto the pads and syncronized to the composition's BPM. Internal sounds were weak, save for a few stellar ones. The effects were awesome and worthy of an outboard piece of gear rating...shame The 16 track midi sequencing setup was goofy, and based around Yamaha's other goofy loop sampler, the SU 700 something or other. It was a quasi-based loop-pattern based sequencing and configured the sequence on channel 1 of 16 possible by creating an initial midiloop type of track on the channel 1(usually the rythym track) in which you continued to build around the initial 4 or 8 bar midiloop track that you laid down....stupid, but workable if you like stagnant sequences that rely on one loop that you have to cut and paste continually to keep pace with the length of the rest of the sequence, which could be longer than the original and first track you laid down, weird... I grew up on Roland MC-series style of pattern based sequencing in which my pattern was as long as I wanted, from the get go, so this was a damned hindrance to me. Good news was the subsequent patterns one wrote could extend longer than the original pattern on track one, which I had to keep copying onto itself (this is why it was my rhythm track) then overdub fills etc..strange...I think It was designed to be implemented around the chopped sample that you laid out onto the spongy little pads, accept that the damn thing would never chop the sample correctly, lock up and eventually freeze until you turned it off. No panic button here on this one..shit...hope you weren't two hours into your track, cause you lost it. Even more frustrating, when you went to save to SCSI hard drive, it couldn't find the drive (even after formatted to Yamaha's stupid file format system) and yes, again, would some times lock up, meaning again, you lost all your work. I tried Syquest Syjet, ZIP SCSI and Seagate SCSI drives, all of which I used with my MPC2000xl, and all worked fine on the MPC, so it wasn't the drives.

In all, I was so pissed with this machine and Yamaha but loved its concept and wish Yamaha did a little more R&D on it prior to releasing it at is 1400 dollar price tag to a hardware craving audience who, at the time were inundated with good software options but very little hardware to control it. This is where Yamaha promised to deliver, but just couldn't cut the mustard. Too bad, because it was a great concept at the time, and still is when you think about it. I Love the concept of integrating syncronized samples into a midi sequncer that drove both its own internal sounds and could midi out to other gear. The best of hardware and software that was portable, too, so one could scratch out track foundations on the road then reintegrate the sequencer back home into their pre-existing midi setup...still, it wasn't to be from Yamaha and the idea was further developed by Roland's team and eventually produced the MC-909, which I now own, and is a joy to use with a simple 25 dollar midi controller. Still, the MC 909 is not as portable as a laptop when you throw the midi controller in on the package and try to lug around your flight case, but the sounds and programming along with the added expansion board option (too bad only one expansion board, though)make it a great way to sample, sequence, lay down beats, sync it all, then go home and integrate it into your choice of software sequencer and hard disk recording setup, if that is your thing, or just write an entire track on the 909, because I have done that as well, and it is commercial release quality, I assure you (minus the mastering house glitz and sheen. If you don't want or care to sample and integrate your samples into the sequence and are happy saving your tracks as midi info onto the the RS

Well, for the basix I use it for, it's quite simple. There are several seq. related thingz i'd like to manage, but impossible... Editing patches is quite simple, because there's no patch editor. i rate this 10, because it's very easy to use (on one hand)... (see later)

well this is a real work horse... tons of features, loads os FX, huge bunch of patches, nice polyphony, great expansion possibilities (SIMM RAM, Smart Media Card, SCSI), 16 track pattern sequencer, pattern chain, song, master FX, it even makes coffee for you... but hey, I don't drink coffee!D So what is it all for? You wanna produce music dont ya? (see later) I rate this 1, because:

1. all those features are for nothing... if a music instrument doesn't sound good, and has nothing to offer (like a 12 string noname guitar with no resonant body and no pickups at all, havin 12 strings but what for?), than it deserves 0, but here 1 is the least.

the sounds!!! yes! my favourite. I always wondered on the purpose for Yamaha to build electric instruments. well... yes, this device has a huge amount of patches on-board. Most of them sound like from below the pillow. no presence at all. If I had a kid, I would rather teach him to use Reason instead. This is not the first time I ever met a hardware synth (or so), but the sounds are among the worst crap around. Now I should mix the album of a band, which produced all their accompaniment with RS7000, and I'm afraid, that no matter how hard I'm trying, it will never ever sound better than an E seires Roland (the lowest budget of all low budgets). Of course I may not change the soundz, because... you know... it was the creators creativity. yep. how creative. loading bad sounding patches. really creative. The Sampler section is told to be nice, but hey... I have the device to sample from, I have the capabilities to program the sound I'd like on it, I have MIDI sequencer... so why should I bother with sampling with RS7000??? just to suck out all the life of the patch I programmed with sampling? nonsense.

anyway. the sounds may fit for live acting... (or playing around)... but if ever want to step forward (going into studio to make it sound good (or at least better)) you will immidiately feel the lack of proper sounds. really like from under the pillow. and as far as I experienced, if there's an unnecessary freq in the sound you can easily hunt it out, but if no needed frequecies contained it's impossible to get them...

I rate this 2, b-cuz I've already heard worse ...

well... really stable... a stable coffee machine...:))) (no offense) (except for MIDI, but this one is also ... "see later")

never had a deal with em.

if it was mine, and was stolen, I would laugh on the stealer...

In the last decade (even more: 13 years) I've been programming and playing really a lot of different kinda analog, virtual analog, and digital synths, and software synths. from Korg Poly800, to Kawai K4, from Roland D10, Alpha Juno2, from Novation KS, to virtual MiniMoog, and MS20, and ofcoz the almighty Reason (which is also children's toy, but a serious one). I used Cubase 3.0 on Atari, and now SX on PC, and Nuendo 2.0. and my overall rating goes like:

I have to tell you, that I'm not an everyday user. Now I have to use it (everyday) for a while, and my task is to record, and mix the songs a band composed in RS7000. I'm really not familiar with the pattern seq., and editor and functions for it, bla, bla, ... but...

RS7000 might be a nice hardware to buy, but it has major deficiencies like:

- in MIDI it's a DUMB. Synchronizing is something it really cannot handle. when recording track by track I had to face the problem that several cases it simply misses the right beat. And it's quite disturbing to slice and quant. a song when recording from a machine!!! I also missed the START/STOP/0 POS. messages, that were also known by my f***ing old Yamaha RY-10 drum computer. (for those who are not so familiar: normally when I press START on the "master" sequencer, the "slave" device (ie. RS7000) should also START)

- there's no patch editor, which is really bad as the 99% of the presets are ... crap. (no presence, and they are lack of frequencies, they are really like pre-mixed)

- there's a multimode resonant filter LP24,18,12,HP, BP, Notch, but... if only there wasn't. Really nice to increase to filter cutoff of a bass-sound in the hope of getting some high-mid, and high freqs, and guess... not much happening.

- you can access the mixer only in pattern mode, and solo and mute is only available in pattern mode...

- it's quite nasty to get along in the mixer with the stupid knobs... I never used MC909, but it has sliders!!! yeah. my forearm wants MC909!D panning, and vol is a hell to set up!

- it has a master compressor... hehe. really funny. I used multiband compressors when working in studio, but hey, I didn't find out what those parameters for. "Offset"??? between -64 and +64??? and there's a huge difference between 0 and +3, and almost nothing between +3 and +64! that's the way!

- it's possible to go CLIP when using master compressor (with 0 threshold) and using D output! Gorgeous!

- the reverb is nice as an effect, but has nothing to do with reverbration...

- the sample is said to be nice, but as I opened the manual and read through the proper chapter I've found, that I really don't wanna make samples... and really, I don't feel like I'm "weak" for it, but it's a bit 2 complicated (programming the Korg M1, or the Kawai K4 is NOT!).

anyway...

if you have this amount of money, and you're interested in what to use it for... send it to me! it's a much more worthy business than buying an RS7000... in my opinion.

and there's so much lackage i discovered in a pretty short period of time, that I guess that there are much more hidden (from my eyes), but the most important, that (in my opinion) it sounds like a real toy... ridiculous (for that bunch of money)

noah said it best for all u haters... READ THE F*KKIN MANUAL!!!

this machine has waaaay more than its rivals (mpc, 909, es1) and is only $800 right now. the knobs can twist up the sample so u cant be sued. u can resample ur own sh*t, and its VERY clean, no white noise or air. READ THE MANUAL, DAMMIT!

ive heard coughing used in music... babies cryin in the background(R.I.P. Aaliyah),etc,etc... any sound can be used for anything!!! it has built in fx and other filters which free up ur other equipment. the built in keyboard helps all of us 1 and 2 finger keyboard guys get our freak on. this is not for the Alicia Keys, and Elton Johns of the world. READ THE DAAMN MANUAL!!!

always worked, never crashed... make sure u get OS 1.2 free download and READ THE FRIGGIN MANUAL!!!

get tha upgrade from yamaha.com... THE MANUAL, READ IT!

this machine is for HIP HOP. PERIOD! this is yamaha's answer to the mpc. This is one of the most slept on machines EVER! im glad it is, i got mine. those of u that hate the keyboard buttons, u wasnt supposed to buy this in the 1st place u dicks. u were supposed to buy a MOTIF. by the way, the RS paired with a MOTIF is a RIIIDICULOUS combination! any good synth for that matter. ive downloaded lots of drum sounds from all the vintage drum machines, and set up new kick, snare, and hi hat and cymbal banks onto a 128 meg card so now i have everything mpc users have, plus more! (dont bite guys, ok? lol) 1 or 2 expansion slots and a usb port and I wouldve given it a ten, but im happy nonetheless. for u strugglin fake musicians...RTFM!!!

da relic

after reading the manual (YOU MUST READ THE MANUAL! DON'T BITCH ABOUT ANY FUNCTIONS UNTILL YOU KNOW HOW TO USE THE THING) and playing with it a couple weeks i was sold. its like second nature to me.. SERIOUSLY.. so easy to get your ideas out with little menu scrambling and all that nonsense (ala motif) simply a great product. yamaha you get an A+ from me!

are you kidding me!?!?!?! FEATURES!!!! this baby is nothing BUT features! MPC what!!?? ASR who!?!? LOL!!! i swear, if every mpc user was aware of the capabilities of this maching the mpc would be obsolete... and i am dead serious. if you produce dance/rap oriented music this is the thing for you. TRUST ME.

revereb: wonderful!
filters: sick!
multi-effects: very usable (wha wha is tweakable and very usable)

front panel knobs to access almost everything... MPC WHAT!!! hahahahahahahhaa yeah right!


ok, now the sequencer is wonderful, just wonderful... i love it. and the sampler... YAMAHA, HORAY! HORAY! it is sooooo easy to multi-sample a bunch of different waves and set start points on the fly! i mean... there is NOTHING i would change about it!

ummm.. well lets see here, the sounds are OK! nothing absolutely stunning... but lets face it... this baby is well worth the price even without the god damn sounds! so anyone bitching about the sound, SHUT UP! where the fuck are mpc's sounds!? where are asr's sounds!?!? lol! i mean, theres like 1000+ sounds on this bitch!

as far as filters go... they are so wonderful... if you do hip-hop you can get the filters to make your samples sound beautiful with that vintage lowpass effect

got it used and ive never EVER had a problem with it

WHAT A GREAT PIECE OF GEAR... simply stunning! and for the price!?!? what can compare?? i mean, i havent used the mc-909 but im sure its very similar.. but the damn thing costs like $400 more (although it does have expansion) ok... yamaha i thought of one thing: maybe an expansion slot???

ive used an mpc, asr, and various keyboard sampler/synths (including motif) this thing is the greatest piece of gear i have ever owned!!!!!!!!!! HANDS DOWN!!!!

if you produce dance/rap/hiphop/rnb: this is for you! you must buy this gear... if you dont believe me then drop me an email...
simply fantastic!

Software version 1.2. There are no real sound preesets. If we are talking about the preset styles the hip-hop set is better then the techno set which sounds to hard. The good news is that sound editing is easy, but the bad news is it is also easy to lose your edits. Manual is bad it for instance does not mention one usefull feature that if from the grid groove screen you press key-transpose this would lock the button

It has lots of features and good midi capabilities, but no expasion cards, probably they thought that with the sampler you should get all the sounds you need. Theoreticaly this is so but browsing sounds only with the RS is slow it's a lot faster on a a computer, you can transfer samples to the RS via SCSI but it is slow or through cards which is faster but it often fails erasing the whole contetnt of the card

Realistic sounds are pianos and synths. Also there are a lot of electro sounds making it more sutable for that kind of music than Korgs Electribes to my ears. While playing it often requires you to stop and save your work or do somethnig that you cannot do while playing so the workflow is not very smooth.

It is more reliable than a computer

The upgrade was avalible for free download

I am trying to sell it for over a year but nobody wants it. I prefer to play on keyboard without a sequencer. I like the number of features it has but I hate that it is not more like fruityloops of Madtracker

Great, took me about a week to figure out. This thing has tons of features! I thought software programming would be superior...No, no, no! This thing, once your used to it, is fast.

holly sh@t!, I produce hip-hop/r&b/reggae/drum-n-bass and this thing is a MONSTER! Effects are great (very tweakable to your liking) especially the reverbs. I can get pretty much whatever sound I want with this baby. SCSI is a great addition, I have a 10gb scsi drive so i never have to worry about disks or anything.(usb would be nice)

I'm giving it a 9, only because, yes, I agree the onboard sounds are a bit low budget, drums are pretty good. But I sample, so I rarely use them. This is a GREAT machine for hip-hop in my opinion, you can get real grimmy sounds, to clean and crisp. There really is no limit...(exept for the 64mb of sample memory ARGGG!)

yes! She is my baby, and if anyone touches her, I will kill them.

na

Yamaha, great job. Really, this thing is my savior.

only drawback...64mb internal memory. I load all my drums in at once, so this leaves me w/ little room to do much of anything else. But this is a small problem, I'm just lazy...

After using Cubase v5 and an RM1x/SU700 combination for two years I decided that I needed a portable solution which provided me with all the capabilities of the software and synth/sampler, but in one package.
When the RS7000 was released, it seemed like the perfect solution to my needs. I finally bought one in 2001 and have been using it exclusively since then. I've upgraded to software version 1.2 and bought the maximum 64MB of memory for it. The operations on the RS7000 are very similar to the other Yamaha instruments I've used, so the learning curve wasn't as steep as I thought it would be. The sampler is fairly easy to use and is packed with some great features, especially the 'Slice' feature which enables you to break a loop into segments in the same way as Steinberg's 'Recycle' or Sonic Foundry's 'Acid' software does. Though there is a problem I've encountered with the 'Slice' feature, which sometimes freezes if you ask it to process a long sample or a loop with an unusual time signature. This happens rarely though, and if you choose your loops carefully, the RS should cope with it. The manual is easy to follow and logically organised, as with most Yamaha manuals.

The RS7000 allows for 128 note polyphony for the synth section and 64 note polyphony for the sampler. These work independently of one another, so you don't have to offset polyphony in one section to compensate for the other section as with several other machines. These figures are perhaps a little misleading however, as some of the presets use voice layers and multisamples, so a pad preset for instance, may actually be using 4 voices and therefore, 4 notes of polyphony. This isn't particularly restricting unless you are producing very dense instrumentals and you can always sample some of the sounds internally and play them through the sampler instead. The 16 track sequencer has real-time, step and grid recording modes and a large note capacity (100,000 events - though that includes control and sys ex data also). The sequencer has a nice range of midi and timing effects, such as 'Groove', 'Harmonize', 'Swing' and 'Midi Delay'. Sequencing is virtually the same as with the RM1x; and though there are times when I would like better VISUAL control over my compositions (as with a computer based sequencer), I find that the sequencer is more than satisfactory. In fact, once you get to know it better, it seems like a very natural way of working. In addition to this, there is a basic arpeggiator, the output of which can be recorded. The RS comes with a whole heap of multi-fx to alter voices and samples. These are generally of an excellent quality, especially the reverbs, delays, distortion/overdrive, Amplitude modulation, Lo-fi fx, and the internal Aphex 'Aural Exciter'. These effects can be applied to as many individual tracks as you wish. However, there are also a further 8 multi-fx which can be applied to the entire mix ('Master Effects') and these are of a high quality and very usable (particularly for live performance and Dj-ing). All effects setting can be altered and saved within a pattern or song, or can be altered in real-time using the knobs on the front panel. This is a very well laid-out and practical machine, with knobs and buttons for every function (and not much holding down of 'Shift' keys thankfully). The internal sample RAM of the RS7000 is 4Meg as standard, but can be expanded to 64MB (not a massive amount, but enough) using relatively cheap 72-pin SIMM memory. There is a SmartMedia card reader/writer for pattern/song/sample storage (the machine comes with a standard 8Meg card full of samples and demos to start you off). As all memory is lost on power-off, you MUST save everything (as an 'All' file) to SmartMedia card after each session. Expansion-wise, Yamaha have made the RS software OS upgradable, and upgrades can be downloaded free from the Yamaha website. Installation takes place using the SM card, though this requires an inexpensive card-reader/writer for your computer. There are also options to install a digital audio I/O board and separate audio outputs, though these boards are expensive additions. SCSI is fitted as standard to the RS, so you can attach a ZIP drive or hard disk to store songs/samples.

The synth presets are all servicable; there are a large range of sounds available, from basic synth tones (saw, sine, square, pulse waves plus noise and digital FM-like tones) through warm pads and crystal digital pads to orchestral instruments (not the strongest sounds but usable in moderation...the strings are good though). There are a wide variety of sound effects, from wacky, cartooney clunks and shrieks to vinyl scratches and vocal effects (the latter are rather cheesy). All these sounds are editable though and this is a very straightforward process. You have control over the ADSR of amplitude, filter and pitch; and you can change the filter type for each sound, transforming it beyond recognition (there are lots of filter types to choose from, especially after upgrading to v1.2 which provides another eight filters) and a comprehensive LFO (with bpm sync) takes this further. There are 41 drum kits to choose from, and generally these are excellent: the (now) standard 808/909 kits and acoustic kits are augmented by kits catergorised by genre, such as 'HipHop', 'drum&bass', etc. The multi-fx can be applied to each kit, as with any other sound, enabling some good scratchy or grungey beats. One thing I can't understand though is why Yamaha have restricted the filter-type for the drum kits. The drums can only be fed through a standard low-pass filter (albeit the LPF24 version) and none of the others. Why? Everything else (instruments and samples) can be fed through any filter you choose (and there are 19 of these in total - after upgrading to v1.2), thus enhancing their potential no end. The RS is basically a dance machine and the sounds reflect this well. The built-in keyboard is OK for playing drums and sample loops, but is of the mini-'button' kind, similar to the ones found on all grooveboxes; so if you are a 'player', you'll need an external keyboard. There are also two assignable velocity sensitive rubber pads on the right of the keyboard which can be used to program drum loops. One thing that strikes me is that though this is advertised as a dance/DJ instrument; it is actually a fairly successful all-rounder. It is suited to studio and live use, it provides a lot of varied sounds which can be played from an external keyboard by a musician; and samples which can be looped, sliced and effected for the DJ. There are knobs gallore, and you can control virtually any parameter in real-time from these. Despite the crappy keyboard, this is actually quite an expressive instrument.

Ever since upgrading the OS, and being a little more careful about which samples I use to Slice n' Dice; the RS7000 has been solid and totally reliable. Think of it as a combination of a PC (running Cubase and Acid with a softsynth and sampler) which NEVER crashes! I have used it for two years in my studio and in live performance and it has always been dependable. All you need to do to take precautions is back everything up on SmartMedia card (and transfer it to your computer) in case the cards get lost or damaged. I love it!

OS Upgrades are easy to get....go to www.Yamahasynth.com or the excellent www.RS7000.org and download it (it's about 4Meg in size). Yamaha UK have always been very helpful if I've contacted them by phone or email. They reply to your emails with the relevant information and if I've ever had any problems (as with my SU700 a couple of years ago) they've solved it.

If the RS was stolen, I'd buy another one as soon as the insurance cheque came! I love its portability, its ability to make great sounds AND sample AND sequence. I like the fact that it does not crash and it isn't dictated to by Microsoft. I love the controllability and the fact that it can be used to great effect live or in the studio. I make all my music on it now.....that includes animation soundtracks and my own dance tracks. It kicks the ass of anything else, especially the Roland MCs. It might not have the kudos of an Akai MPC (so overrated), but it is a superb machine. The only rivals sound-wise are the E-mu grooveboxes, but they are all preset based and don't have sampling. Check out the sounds at www.Besonic.com and search "dementio13"; all the tracks have been produced solely on the RS7000.

I'm an RM1x veteran. As far as the ease of using this machine, I barely had to crack the manual since I was allready familiar with it's little brother. Once you learn the architecture of this box, laying out a track is second nature.

Grabbed this unit on eBay with max RAM and a road ready case - so glad I got it. Haven't hit a ceiling on it's sequencing and playback capabilities. The sequencer rocks - high resolution and deep realtime tweakability. I have max RAM, as well as the I/O expansion board with Digital Optical, SPDIF, and 6 more analog IO's.

I keep finding new and interesting sounds, anyone who can't get what they need should just use a prefab sample CD. I write progressive dance music. I find the digital sound quality mixed with the grungy distortion and filter capabilitites of this box to be an excellent combo. Effects are good, I can get everything I need out of it. This unit has a groovebox step/single velocity keyboard - works fine for me.

Very dependable, never had this unit, nor it's llittle bro - the RM1x - crash on me. I've used it to gig out quite a few times. A ROCK SOLID SEQUENCER - Feature for feature, probably the best ultra portable hardware/sampler/synth on the market.

Never needed customer support.

I've used and shopped around for boxes to gig with - Blows any standalone groovebox Roland makes out of the water. This unit powers up and offers everything I need to sit down and write a techno track. For songwriting, I'd rather have this unit than my G4 Mac.