Yamaha RS-7000

IMO the RS7000 is very easy to use. Just like with every multiple usage tool you have to look in the manual for certain things, but the interface makes it very easy to understand. I used Cubase and Logic (Silver) before and the RS7k is much easier to handle. It contains all basic features plus some extra ones but still very compact and easy to maneuver. The presets are for my ears really good. They can be used as bread and butter sounds and really Greg, if you compare a ROMpler with an analogue or wavetable-synth from Waldorf, you do indeed a comparison between apples and oranges. So in this way even a Kurzweil would suck if compared with a MiniMoog...
Editing the sounds is because of the relative easy structured sythesis engine very easy, of course you need to have understood the basics of substractive synthesis. My favourite sounds are besides the drumkits, the pads. Together with the (analogish sounding) filter you can change them until noone recognized the preset-sound behind it.
A patch editor is not needed. The manual is quite, because of the complexity of this machine, thick and well (despite other Yamaha manuals...e.g. for the FS1r...3000+ parameters and only a 80 page manual is a shame...) written, easy to understand and read.

The built in FX are a good quality, of course not Lexicon, but for sure mid-class FX-unit quality, at least as good as those Rev 500 from Yamaha. They are simple to edit. The RS can be expanded by extra analogue and digital out's (6) and the SampleRam can be expanded up to 64MB with standard EDO-Simms. Also it has a SmartMediaCard slot and can read (and write) on Cards with a capacity up to 128MB.
It has one MIDI-in (cheap, Yamaha, cheap...;) and two MIDI-outs, the sequencer has 16 tracks and is very flexible, easy to use and works almost as Cubase or Logic. Plus is the easy sample-integration, which let's you play samples just like using internal preset sounds. Plus the Sampler offers additional Recycle functionality, means the sampler can slice your drumloop and add MIDI-notes to each slice, so that you can use it with different tempo.

a lot of sounds seem to be taken out of the RM1x, for sure, but despite some people say, but for my ears in better quality. The drumkits are beyond any critics, they are simply great. The RS can be used for any kind of music, and if you don't like the internal sounds, it's still a great sequenccer.

The RS i have has been very reliable so far. The hardware is solid and the knobs and buttons make a good sturdy impression. And yes i would use it on a gig without a backup.

Never dealt with them

The RS is much more than worth what i paid for. For a all in one workstation, it is very good. It helped me a lot so far in developing again fun and creativity for my music. Something i didn't had since i started using software sequencer on PC. It almost gets never in my way, only the sample editing after sampling could be better, otherwise i am very happy with it and i would definately buy it again if it would be stolen. Best buy i did in a long time.

Okay, I guess I just feel obligated to give a normal review. I don't know what all that other crap from Greg Scoggins is, but here is the scoop. I am very happy with my RS7000. I've been playing Synths for about 15 yrs and have had all kinds of gear through the years. Before I bought this, I was running Cakewalk on a PC. I decided to dump it because who are we kidding...we all love knobs, sliders and lights. This unit is fun as hell to play with and can get deep as deep as you need. With three effects blocks with very tweakable effects, independent EQ on each of 16 channels, and master effects (most importantly a compressor), the machine can sound totally professional. I'll admit that the sounds are a little weak, but with the effects and the ability to resample and twist everything around, nobody should be using a dry sound out of this thing anyway. The manual is 2-300 pages because the unit is so in-depth. I think once you learn your way around, it is very easy to use.

I have bumped up against the polyphony limits a few times, especially when abusing the unison feature. But again, if you have that problem, resampling is always an option. More often, I turn to my other gear to lighten up the load on the RS. It can not be expanded except for the storage options. BUILT IN SCSI!!! NO EXTRA COST!!! When have you ever seen that? The MIDI implementation is again very thorough. There are some annoying things with the MIDI, like not truly being able to turn tracks off on the RS if you are sequencing outboard gear, but there are always workarounds.

See ease of use...sounds are okay. Sample your own if you want something unique. Drum kits are quite good.

I've had no problem with it whatsoever.

I haven't called Yamaha on this product, but I dealt with them on my S80. They were very cool and responsive. Maybe it's just in the delivery, eh Greg?

I'd buy this again if I had to two or three times. I hate PCs and virtual instruments. I can unplug this thing and go elsewhere in my house or even outside and mix down sequences, it is awesome.

Easy-no problems in learning the unit

Many have emailed me about my previous RS reviews.
Perhaps I was too hard on the unit.
Plain and simplke, Yamaha (the company) sucks, but the RS 7000, for anyone without the follwing inclusive items: Rack sampler, sampling drum machine and sequencer, keyboard controller and effects units (which I use), and are on a budget, the machine is great because it serves so many purposes....not all of them awesomely, but professionally enough to make it the centerpiece hardware unit for anyone wanting to get away from the computer and sequence external gear, decent internal sounds,create beats and sequences,sample and intergrate the samples into an internal sequence, etc etc. and basically write a complete composition without the need for a lot of external gear....you get the picture...plus the effects are really nice on the unit, I must admit. If I didn't already own an MPC 2000 and EMU E5000,I would have never returned this unit, even with all of its bugs in the operating system. Eventually (hopefully), Yamaha will iron them out.
Yes, for all that you get with this unit, it is a fanstastic value, because you don't need so many other items that are required to get compositions going...it can all be done within the RS, which is indeed a great value.

I would say this machine is easy to use. You will have to look in the manual once or twice, but other than that it is fine. Preset sounds are O.K. I like mono pianos, pads and LFO synced patches. Sounds lack a punch without effects, but effects are very good in this unit. Yamaha for some reasons put a large number of there old XG sounds in Rs7000, however RS7000 is not XG compatible. Filters are very good on the unit. Taken together with filters, effects, sounds this unit is capable of producing different styles of music. Sampler should help to overcome limitation of internal soundset.

Sequencer is very powerful and feature-rich on RS7000. MC505 sequencer can not even be compared to sequencer on Rs7000.

I think the best parts of Rs7000 are knobs and switches. They allow
you to control almost every parameter in real-time. Master effect section is great. heaven for DJs. I only wish it had a Ex5 synth engine in it, however sampler function can solve ones soundset desires.

I had it only for one month. I think Os update is needed to clear some of the minor bugs in Rs7000 and I know that it is coming.

I have several other Yamaha synths and I reached Yamaha US support specialist without any problems.

I like this machine. I sold Roland Mc-307 and got Rs7000. I think that
it is way more powerful than any of the grooveboxes. Sequencer section and real-time controls is where Rs7000 really shines. Add a sampler here and you got a very flexible unit which will keep you busy for a long while. There are some things to be improved on Rs7000, but then show be a perfect piece of gear.

Miracles never cease!
A Yamaha Product Specialists finally called me back (must have read my other reviews...UH OH!) cause after he called the product manager even decided to call me back (wow, bad press makes bad situation!)Maybe I shouldn't flatter myself, but oddly suddenly my situation to them has become important...The day before yesterday no one could give a rats A** if I needed help with the unit. Why the sudden snowball effect on customer support? This internet is a powerful thing..really forces lard-a**ed corporate yahoos to get off their multinational ego thrones and take notice when a billion people read a review on how shoddy their equipment is
Come on, when a message is left, twice for that matter, and an email is sent, at least give some form of response within a 24 hour period...In the past, AKAI and EMU have answered my questions immediately when I called. Yamaha put me on product specialist ignore.
It is disconcerting. When someone frivoulously spends over 1000 USD for a product, and drove round trip of over 150 miles, and waited patiently in a loud, crowded music store ,someone should give a crap when they are having problems with the unit.
I am discovering that Long-term customers keep a company competative and profitable in the long run; (not some lame magazine with N'Stink on the cover who probably don't use the stuff any way and are paid to promote your 'giveaway' gear...noone cares about that S*it..Does Yamaha think I am going to buy a unit because the lamest musicians on planet earth say their stuff is "just Terriffic!"?) Someone at Yamaha needs to figure out that we musicians in the trenches of midi world call because we need help; We are not lame asses with dumb questions, and even if we were, our long term admiration for a product and its people is what keeps us coming back for more (why EMU went from a small house in Santa Cruz Ca to the greatest sampler company in the world). Come on Yamaha, Midi/synth musicians are intelligent tweakers by nature and are on average slightly more intelligent than the 'Joe groove box DJ' you are assuming is calling, and when Yamaha attempts to market a unit they need to be aware of that and treat customers like they care. The true test is when we bring the product back because customer support never calls, and the unit fails to function.
well, you just lost a potential long term customer, and it is those of us who work for a living that make up the majority of people that keep a company solvent.

Man, what a change in attitude a day makes. Read my first review of this machine, then the second..night and day huh? I dug deep into the unit for 12 hours on day two, sampling and tweaking, and couldn't get it to sample and perform its slicing and bpm syncronization correctly..it locked up, wouldn't slice (*sat forever in "Executing!" mode.I got so frustrated, I returned the unit to the shop for a refund. I wish I hadn't had to, for if the machine functioned correctly, it would have been great.
To give yamaha the benefit of the doubt, I jumped on RS7K.org to get answers...none...and some said they couldn't get theirs to sync either. I spoke via email with another fellow about the unit, and the SU700, and he stated at the store the RS worked fine. Now, I don't know if he used the 'canned samples' or sampled his own material, so I can't vouch for his experiences with the unit. I know for a fact that I followed the manuals' instructions line by line and could never get it to sample, slice and lay a sequence with me, and sometimes it froze up. Could I have gotten a bad machine, an early op sys bugged machine? It was new out of the box, so I don't know, but I have lost faith in Yamaha. I was going to buy an AW4416 but forget it...gonna have to stick with AKAI, there stuff works, even though it is minus the fancy bells and whistles. It is a shame, really...the unit is a great concept, albeit released too early (not enough R&D), as is often the case in this highly competative market.

The preset sounds are usable, and tweakable, but not editable like a standalond synth, save for the ADSR section.
Once you get into it, the unit is easy to use.

has good polyphony, and very good internal efx. I don't know if it is yet expandable sound wise, but will accept 64 MB, although i couldn't get my machine to recognize all 64 MB. It has a nice, usable onboard sequencer which can record in step, grid and real time and the patterns can be chained to create songs

The Piano is really nice, the internal sounds nice, but not 'mind blowing!'(like the Waldorf or anything) and the onboard efx excellent.
The unit 'remembers' the tweaking you do when in record mode, which is a very cool plus, and is a awesome option. It has two modes of velocity switching.

Hmm. it didn't recognize my SCSI ZIP but then after messing around with it it did..not good. It doesn't do what it says it will do completely, which is a sham and a shame.

Called them about the problems I am having, yet have had no response yet from Yamaha. Said they would call me back, but haven't..bad!

This is a 50/50 unit so far. What it does do, it does awesomely, what it doesn't do, makes it useless. this is the review i gave it on sonic state:

Bugs bugs bugs........Don't buy it.
Well, yet another 'groovebox' that doesn't live up to what the manufacturer claims it will do.
I have owned several samplers over the years and currently own the RS, an MPC2000xl and an Emu e5000 and have been sampling seriously for over 15 years. I bought the RS hoping it could keep me away from the computer and concentrated on the compositional process, using it to sync my samples and get them in tune without resorting to external programs...well...forget it, it ain't happening, the machine is lame and it is more time consuming and frustrating than the computer. Before I rip it to shreds, lets investigate its good points


Good: internal sounds that are basically usable, but aren't 'all that'. They can be manipulated rather nicely using the very good internal efx, but not modified as in a conventional synth unit. sequences can be written with them, and supposedly samples laid on top of them and sync'd up with the bpm of the track.
Excellent: real time efx processing is awesome on this unit, and while recording the unit 'remembers' the tweaking you do to envelopes, filteration etc in real time and saves it in the pattern-kewl. Then the various patterns can be arranged and chained together to create songs.
Here is what makes it a piece of crap.
Firstly, I put 64 MB in mine, and it only sees 32 megs..why? I removed and reinstalled the memory, but same thing.

BAD-and basically makes the unit useless

1. Sampling functionality-when you sample, if you want the sample to be of rhythmic value, in order to get your samples in sync together and usable in your song structure, the RS requires you to sample in what Yamaha terms the "Slice/seq/pitch mode". Now, when you enter this mode, you use up three times the internal memory (per the manual, page 237, wave memory required for this operation requires 1.5 times the original memory...it goes on with information, then states "with the memory expanded to 64MB, the longest possible sampling time will be 47 seconds stereo at 44.1khz."
great, so to get your samples to sync, you only get 47 seconds...hmm, might as well use a computer to time stretch and pitch correct(much faster)and dump them into a dedicated sampler.
This is not good, and it doesn't work anyway. I sampled and utilized this function and the machine just sat there saying "executing"...forever! I had to turn it off. Good thing I didn't have a serious composition going when this occurred!
When I did get it to work once, the 'chopped up bits of garbage' the machine spit out were unusable, and not arranged as a playable pattern, as Yamaha said they should be. So, you are lucky if the function works, and if so, will get unusable results.
BAD: SCSI-this thing wouldn't recognize my ZIP drive of all things. At first it just sat there when I pulled up the menu, showing nothing. After I turned it off. Plugged in the Zip drive, set termination on, and a new ID for the ZIP, then fired the RS up, it finally did see the folder on the ZIP drive, but it is a 50/50 situation whether it will or won't. When I loaded the samples, it was somewhat fast, and once entered, I needed to 'slice' them to use them in the sequence so they would be in sync. When I sliced them, it did execute, but took a long time. When I went into real time loop arrangement mode to get the samples to be arranged on the keypads in order to play back the samples with my already created pattern, it stated "NO DATA"!. At this point I was getting pissed. If a machine doesn't do what it it is supposed to do, then how is it usable? If I can only marginally get it to function, it is useless.
If it doesn't perform the dutites the manual claims it will, then Yamaha should be sued on the condition of Warranty of Merchantability. It is l

This thing is at first, confusing for MPC owners

Outstanding

killer rez and bpm sync stuff

havent had it long enough

havent had to contact yamaha-I assume bad being a large corporation

I just bought the RS7000 and really got into it today.
This thing kicks ass. I have been sampling for over 15 years, and lay a lot of sampled grooves down. It has been tedious and time consumning to say the least, and the best thing I could come up with for looping and arranging songs was a combination of MPC200XL and some pitch correction software through my computer, which worked, albeit slowly and tediously. I was hesitant to trade my MPC for the RS, so I paid my hard earned cash instead, just in case I needed to bring the thing back for a refund, as I have with the SP 808(crap) and the SU700 (another piece of garbage...why yamaha made this thing I'll never understand) I have bought so many samplers trying to get them to sync samples and loops and all have failed miserably up to this point. My MPC is great for composing and pattern chaining, but lacked decent internal efx, lame filteration or much memory (32 mb is not much, really) and its time stretching was time consuming, so I had to pre-rig my samples using Recycle and monitor the computer and the sampler till I got the samples to 'sync' and be in tune together. This is cumbersome, and when the computer crashes (which it will) you are screwed.
MPC watch out!
My Mpc is sitting in its box right now. I thought, I'll give this thing 20 minutes and I will be back to the music shop for a refund, but that is NOT to be. The RS7000, so far combines the aformentioned within it and has 64 megs of memory expansion, recycles the samples automatically, rearranges the recycled loops for really kewl variations to the original sample, has insanely usable internal sounds (what a realistic piano!) and about a gazillion internal drum sounds and kits that can be programmed by you, rather than your having to rely on the cheesyassed internal patches and presets that come with most of the units like this ( *uhum* Roland Groove machines.) In conjunction with this, the effects are insane, and can be assigned per voice!( MPC is per program, so it you have 10 samples in program A, you gotta use the same effect on all the pads unless you resample them) are all editable in real time, so you can have in reality, 16 sequences, with 16 tracks each, and each track having a combination of 16 parts consisting of your samples (which the RS will automatically syncronize for you, and you can even pitch correct them to get them in tune) and the internal sounds, which by the way are really really good, with some being BPM syncronizable resonant filters, LFO's, you get the picture.
This machine was made to kick wild assed beats and samples together and tweak the shit out of them, and it does it well. There are a few drawbacks to the unit (such as memory used when sampling in a certain mode to get multiple samples to 'lock up' together), but it is a small price to pay for the power of this unit. The user interface is at first confusing, but follow the manual's tutorial step by step, and soon you will be laying down some insanely phat tracks. No, I don't work for Yamaha, and the last unit I owned I took back in a days time(SU 700), but this baby is a totally different monster altogether. Somebody finally got their shit together and made a unit that does what it will say it will do, and at a decent price.((I paid 1300 US$ OTD for mine)
I considered the Roland Variphrase processor, but a 3K and a list of bad reviews, I decided to stick with my MPC and a copy of Pitch and Time software that I use in conjunction with the Free Protools software that is on the net at www.digidesign.com, until this thing came along.
I am still skeptical after one day, thinking I am going to run into something that blows it for me on this machine, but the deeper I get, the more powerful I realize it is. It seems confusing at first, and at the music store I couldn't even get sounds out of it; When I first attempted to play with it, it seemed overwhelming, but once I followed the tutorial in the manual (HEY...a real man