General question about PSR-E keyboards

[BogdanH]

Hello,
I have PSR-S keyboard, and out of curiosity I checked PSR-E keyboards section on Yamaha's web. From what I could see, the main difference (let's forget bells and whistles) is:
On PSR-E keyboard one can not use expansion packs (as I saw no YEM there for download). That is, one can only load "pure" style files on keyboard, and can only use voices which are built into keyboard.
Am I correct on this?

Thank you for answering,
Bogdan

[BogdanH]

Thank you very much for answering, Roy
And yes, such keyboard can be great choice for those, who are "not sure yet" -no matter how it ends (not interested or need better), one doesn't loose some big money.

Bogdan

[panos]

Hi Bogdan,
The main difference of instruments is always the sound quality they can produce.
The samples,the internal parts,the bigger speakers,the effects(are really important to change a soundwave),the keybed, they all contribute to a better sound quality.

E 4xx series as far as I know can load up to 10 styles at a time on board.
The styles have to be in SFF1 format,mega voices, s!art voices etc better not be in styles and should be no more than 50KB as far as I remember.

On the S series there is no limitation on styles and can have some new sounds with YEM as you know.
(YEM is needed to load the new voices of a style or a style pack.A style can still play with preset voices as you know but it will not sound good if you do not load the new voices/drumkits through YEM)

E series has only 2 mains.
In S series with regs you can have as Mains as you wish.

Of course no style editing on E series and the polyphony is 48 notes
The S series has up to 128 notes polyphony.

Add the notes you are playing with your right & left hand,the effects of the sounds in them plus the notes and the effects of the voices of the style parts that playing and that's where you need polyphony.
If you haven't over exceeded them yet yet on an S series, add a 4 notes Harmony effect and  now you know why a Genos has up 256 notes polyphony.(At least that is what the specifications say which is the polyphony of synthesizers)

[BogdanH]

Hello Panos,

(btw. where did Roy's post disappear???)

Yes, I'm aware there's huge gap between E and S series. I was just wondering about the fact that E series can only use built in voices.. but I shouldn't be surprised really, as they're relative cheap. It's good to know one can load external styles, though.

Bogdan

[Toril S]

The E keyboards sound fairly good in my opinion. And they have two BIG advantages, they are very lightweight, and you can use them on batteries!

[SciNote]

The E-Series keyboards cannot load new voices, per se, but on the PSR-E400 series keyboards, there is quite a bit of editing that you can do to the existing voices to create entirely new sounds that can be saved to a registration.  There are the filter, with resonance, an attack/release envelope generator, chorusing (including flanger), and reverb.  The later models (PSR-E453 and E463) also add DSP effects that include a phaser, high-pass filter, and distortion -- among several others.

I have the PSR-E433, and I have created all kinds of synth-type sounds on it.  The big limitation there is that all of these keyboards -- from the E433 to the current E463 -- only have 32 registrations.  It would be nice if Yamaha adds at least a couple more banks in the next version of these keyboards, but at least all of the settings of the keyboard can easily be saved and recalled to and from a USB flash drive.  Note that the older PSR-E403, E413, and E423 do not have the USB-to-device feature that allows this, and I believe they only have eight banks of two registrations, which would be very limiting for me.