Yamaha PSR-EW425 Dual Voice

[Gary LI]

I'm getting a hit or miss (mostly miss) every time I attempt to use the dual voice whereby I end up with just the second voice.

I select 'Voice' for what will be the first/primary voice,
            hit the 'Function' button,
            search for 'M Volume',
            hit 'enter'
            and then set the numeric volume.

Now for the second voice, I hit the 'Dual' button ('Dual' shows on the screen),
                                       select 'Shift' and while holding down 'Shift' I hit the 'Dual' button again.

  Now here's where it all goes awry, I need the second voice and when selecting another 'Voice', sometimes the 'Dual' is
                  removed from the screen, but not always. If it's removed, I hit 'Dual' again.
                                      Now that 'Dual' continues to show on the screen, I'll hit the 'Function' button,
                                      search for 'D Volume',
                                      hit 'enter'
                                      and then set the numeric volume.

I start to play and only the second voice plays. I feel like I should be able to clear any previous DUALs that I entered, but I can't see how to do that. I have cleared the keyboard multiple times holding the right-most white key while turning the keyboard on and the display shows 'clr', but this doesn't solve the problem.

Although many say that the keyboard is intuitive, I did follow Jeremy See's 'Setup Voices & Rhythm Accompaniment on Yamaha PSR-E473 & PSR-EW425' Youtube video.

Do you see anything that I did wrong?

[SciNote]

This is very curious.  I was getting ready to give you advice, but I figured I'd check the manual first, and it's a good thing I did!  Yamaha really changed the work flow from their previous PSR-E400 series keyboards (I have the E433) -- and right now, I'm not convinced it's for the better.  It used to be that simply holding down the DUAL or SPLIT buttons for a couple seconds would get you right to the part of the function list to change the voice, and then you could access function-select up/down buttons to go to related functions (dual volume, dual octave, etc.) from there.  It looks like this has changed significantly.

First of all, as I read your post, I'm noticing a couple things.  You mention how the dual voice indicator goes off unexpectedly, and then you also say that you should be able to "clear any previous DUALs" that you entered.  So, I'm not sure what you're doing here.  Are you trying to layer multiple "dual voices"?  If so, that's not possible.  You can only layer one main voice and one dual voice.  And as far as "clearing" the dual voice, I'm not sure what you mean by that.  A dual voice will always be present in the data -- it's just a matter of whether you have it switched on (dual voice indicator lit up in the display) or not, which is controlled by the dual voice button.

Now, beyond that, you seem to be on the right track to select a dual voice -- hold SHIFT, then hit DUAL to go right to the dual voice sound setting.  And the manual says you can change the sound from there, but then what?  It doesn't say if you have to hit ENTER, or what to do to go to related functions.  The section on the functions later in the manual does describe how hitting FUNCTION gets you into the function list, and how you can select the functions and change their values.  It essentially seems like you're doing the right thing.  I am curious... If you do the SHIFT+DUAL to select the dual voice, then hit FUNCTION, does it take you right to the part of the list of functions for the dual voice, like dual voice volume, dual voice octave, and the like?  Or does it just take you to function number 1, or maybe the last function you edited?

And I'm very surprised that you're hearing the dual voice, but not the main voice.  I do not see a way to just turn the main voice off (and this is also true with my E433) -- the only way to do that is to select the main voice volume, then turn it down to zero -- a series of steps that would seem unlikely to be done accidentally, unless maybe when you thought you were adjusting the dual voice, you selected main voice parameters instead by mistake?

Another thing to try is that, whenever you set any parameter in the function menu, such as dual voice volume, you can try hitting ENTER to make sure it's saved before going to something else -- though the manual implies that this should not be necessary.

I'd really have to sit down and play with one of these keyboards (or the similar E473) to get a feel for the workflow.  Another thing to remember -- if you change the main voice, you will also change the dual voice (and this is also true on my E433).  This is because these keyboards are designed to automatically set up a dual voice that Yamaha feels would be appropriate for whatever main voice you select -- and if you want a different dual voice, then you must change it as we've described.  But the important thing here is that if you select a main voice, like piano, then select your own dual voice, like brass, if you then select a different main voice (such as going from the piano to an organ sound), it is very likely that your dual voice will no longer be the brass you previously selected -- and any related parameters like dual voice volume, octave, filter, etc. will also likely be changed.  In fact, I'm not sure, but selecting a new main voice may even turn off the dual voice, and if so, this might explain why your dual voice seems to turn off by itself.  Maybe you went back and changed the main voice at some point, and it changed all your dual voice settings, leading to the confusion?

So, when setting up a combination of voices and parameters, always start with your main voice, then set up your dual voice, and (if desired) split voice.  And when you've got something you like, save it to a registration so you can easily call it back up when you want.

[Gary LI]

Some clarification here:

Paragraph 2 - I only attempt to layer two voices; I'm aware that it is the limit. Now when the keyboard is turned on, the concert grand (001) displays. If I scroll to 'OctPiano' (003), 'DUAL' shows in the display. If I continue to scroll to 'BritePiano' (004), it turns off. Note that I have used the 'OctPiano' with success in the past as the main voice in a dual mode, but not anymore. If I scroll some more, the 'DUAL' does display for some other voices and the display turns off for other voices. If I just want the 'OctPiano' by itself, I simply hit the 'DUAL' button to turn it off.

Paragraph 3 - I select the primary voice, then hit the 'Function' button, scroll to 'M Volume', select 'Enter' and then set the numeric value, but I don't do anything else at this point for the main voice. I then hit the 'DUAL' button, then select 'SHIFT' and holding that I select 'DUAL' again. At this point I should be able to select another voice. Sometimes I can and go through the same motions, but for the 'D Volume'. There are also instances whereby once I scroll to what I expect to be the second voice that the 'DUAL' display turns itself off on the screen.

Paragraph 4 - I don't ever turn the main voice off and when I attempt to start over again, I have always used the 'M Volume' before starting the 'DUAL' and 'SHIFT+DUAL' exercise.

Paragraph 5 - I always select 'ENTER' once I'm done with the 'M Volume' and 'D Volume'....I didn't think it would take otherwise.

Once that 'DUAL' icon goes out on the display, I end upstarting all over again because I'm not convinced that anything has been accepted. I want to think that I've missed some step or two and not that there is a fault in the keyboard. I bought this in March 2023 and when it works the way it should it's really enjoyable.

[SciNote]

I think I see what might be going on here -- at least part of the time.  Simply put, on some of the voices, when you select the main voice, it automatically turns on dual voice -- and I believe that octave piano is one of these situations.  This is because not all of the "main voices" are strictly and solely contained in the "main voice" part of the keyboard.  For some voices, Yamaha determined that to get the fuller sound that a particular voice may call for, it needs to be combined with another voice, so certain main voices do this automatically.  In other words, for some of the "voices", the sound is not designed to be just a single voice, but a combination of two voices, which are automatically put in the main and dual voice slots.

So, assuming octave piano is one of these voices, Yamaha determined that it couldn't get a good enough octave piano using just one voice, so when you select it, the keyboard turns on a piano voice as the main voice, then automatically turns on another voice (in this case, likely another piano voice an octave higher or lower than the main voice) with the dual voice.  So, when you select the octave piano voice, and then turn off the dual voice as you described above, you are changing the sound that Yamaha intended for the octave piano voice, and are likely losing the extra octave part and just remaining with a basic piano sound.

Now, as I said before, in any case selecting a main voice automatically causes the keyboard to set up a dual voice that Yamaha feels goes well with the main voice, but the keyboard does not normally automatically turn on the dual voice, unless you select one of these "double sounds" where the main voice is designed to work with a dual voice for the overall tone of the "main voice" selected.  I believe that when you then go from one of these "double sounds" to a main voice that is just a normal sound not designed to be combined with a specific dual voice, then it turns off the dual voice mode, which is probably why you're seeing dual voice turn on and off they way you are as you go through the voices.

So, what happens when you use one of these "double sounds", that automatically turn on dual voice, as the actual dual voice?  You just get whatever would be in the main voice slot as the dual voice -- and whatever the keyboard would've automatically added as a dual voice, just does not get added.  As an example, if selecting the octave piano sound as the main voice gives you "piano sound A" as the main voice and "piano sound B" as the dual voice, and you instead select the octave piano sound as the dual voice, then you only get "piano sound A" as the dual voice, and "piano sound B" does not get added at all.

So yes, if you use the octave piano sound as the dual voice, it will sound quite different than when selected for the main voice, because you are not getting the extra octave piano part of the sound.  And when you use a sound like this as the main voice, then if you do change the dual voice sound manually, your sound would likely be different than you expected, because as we know, you cannot have three voices layered, so using the octave piano "piano sound A" and "piano sound B" example from above, if you select the octave piano sound as the main voice, but then change the dual voice to a brass sound, you'll just have "piano sound A" and "brass", with "piano sound B" now removed, overwritten by the brass sound.

This is something that my E433 does, as well.  So, when Yamaha advertises something like "780 sounds", or whatever the number is for the E425, it isn't REALLY that many, because some of those sounds are just automatic combinations of two of the other sounds available on the keyboard -- in my experience, the main voice in one of these "double sounds" is a duplicate of one of the other sounds on the keyboard  -- though you may want to double check that -- they could've updated that in the newer keyboard, but I doubt it.  On my E433, I believe the literature states 731 voices, including these "double sound" voices.  When I looked at how many "double sound" voices that includes, I figured that the keyboard really has about 600 or so truly unique, single-sound voices.

The data list, showing all of the sound selections, should indicate which ones are "double sounds" that automatically turn on the dual voice.

EDIT: Note that when I originally typed and submitted this, I included information implying that the dual voice sound information stays the same as you change sounds except for when you use one of the "double sounds" described above, but that is incorrect.  Whenever a new main voice is selected, the keyboard automatically selects a new dual voice set-up, overwriting what was previously set as the dual voice.  But the keyboard will not automatically turn on the dual voice, unless it is one of the "double voices."

[BogdanH]

Hello SciNote,

.....
... So, when Yamaha advertises something like "780 sounds", or whatever the number is for the E425, it isn't REALLY that many, because some of those sounds are just automatic combinations of two of the other sounds available on the keyboard...
... On my E433, I believe the literature states 731 voices, including these "double sound" voices.  When I looked at how many "double sound" voices that includes, I figured that the keyboard really has about 600 or so truly unique, single-sound voices.
....

I don't have PSR-E keyboard, but I think that you are very optimistic by thinking that there are 600 unique voices -but then, that depends on what we consider as unique voice. For me, a voice is a set of sound/wav samples which is used to reproduce particular instrument voice. In short: one sample set = one unique voice.

Of course we can modify the voices by applying various settings and save them for later use. Now the question is: do we consider these modified voices as "unique"? If yes, then that would mean we can have infinite number of unique voices -which is strange way of thinking.
Let me explain... If someone plays a trumpet in a hall, it will sound different than if he play it outside in park. That is, we have two different sounding voices, but that's still the same instrument (one unique voice). The same is true if, for example, musician is playing trumpet with vibrato or without it. What I am saying is, by editing existing (unique) voice, that's still the same voice -it only sounds differently.

Fact is, that the list of built-in voices contain voices which are derivatives of "unique" voices: different settings are applied on the same sample set and result is stored as separate voice -and that's how we get various "warm, bright, sweet, rock, etc." pianos on the list of built-in voices.

So, how many "unique" voices do we actually have in keyboard? Once I was checking something about particular saxophone voice on my keyboard and I found out, that a single sample set is used for six different sax voices (at least). In short: my guess is, number of unique voices (sample sets) is about 5-10 times smaller than listed in specification.

Bogdan

[SciNote]

That's a valid point about the number of actual waveforms used for the voices in any of these keyboards.  I'll have to take a look, but you might be right in that some sounds, like some of the various pianos, may use the same base waveform and just apply different settings of reverb and chorusing.  I can easily check that by just checking what the reverb and chorus settings are after selecting different voices.

And on the E400 series keyboards, several hundred of the sounds are "XG Lite" voices, many of which are derivative of the main voices.  Indeed, some of them even have the same name.  I think they are mainly included to allow some compatibility with MIDI files that could have been made on more advanced keyboards.  However, some of them are unique and useful in their own right.  They don't often have the best quality, but they can often be beefed up with reverb and chorusing.  And in the E433, many of them have ridiculously low default volume levels, so just boosting their volume levels often helps, though I think Yamaha corrected this on successors to this keyboard.  One example of a useful XG Lite voice is the piano/strings combination voice.  With the main voices, it is one of those "double sounds" I described above -- selecting the piano/strings main voice automatically turns on dual voice and gives you piano and strings as two separate voices turned on together.  In the XG Lite voices, the piano/strings sound is a single voice -- so it can be used as a dual voice, and you still get the piano and strings together.  But, as to be expected, it isn't as rich as sounding of a voice as the "double voice" used in the main voice selections.

If the original poster, Gary LI is seeing this, please go up a few posts for the additional information that I provided based on the clarifications that you provided concerning the dual voice on your PSR-EW425.  Short answer: Some voice selections automatically turn on the dual voice, which could cause the dual voice to turn on and off by itself as you select different main voices.  Long, detailed answer: see above 

[Gary LI]

I was assuming that I could combine any two voices no matter how inappropriate that combination would be and that 'Big Brother Yamaha' was not going to 'guide me' to what they believe to be appropriate. As I said previously, I see the 'DUAL' display for some voices and I guess you're saying that at this point (I'll assume the volume default for the main voice here) that I can directly go to the 'SHIFT+DUAL' and grab my second voice. For these second voices I like to use the brass or woodwind category, but the trouble seems to start here, but I'll try that when I get home.....I'm at the tire shop now with a long wait. 

[SciNote]

I was assuming that I could combine any two voices no matter how inappropriate that combination would be and that 'Big Brother Yamaha' was not going to 'guide me' to what they believe to be appropriate. As I said previously, I see the 'DUAL' display for some voices and I guess you're saying that at this point (I'll assume the volume default for the main voice here) that I can directly go to the 'SHIFT+DUAL' and grab my second voice. For these second voices I like to use the brass or woodwind category, but the trouble seems to start here, but I'll try that when I get home.....I'm at the tire shop now with a long wait.

For the most part, you can use whatever dual voice you want.  There are just a few exceptions -- these "double voices" where Yamaha felt that, for the overall tone to have the best quality, it was necessary to use two tone generators -- the main voice and the dual voice -- to combine tones to make the overall sound.  Kind of like using two oscillators on a synthesizer, instead of just one, to get a more complex and robust sound.  On my keyboard, I think there are about 30 such sounds.  You said that if you select one of these sounds, where "dual" is displayed, that you could just use shift+dual to grab your second voice.  Yes, you can change the dual voice -- but remember, if "dual" came on automatically when you selected the main voice, then this is a voice that Yamaha set up to use both tone generators for the overall sound labeled in the main voice.  If you then manually change the dual voice, then you will change the overall tone of what the main voice was meant to sound like, because you'll be changing half the tone.

Another example is piano/strings.  At least on my keyboard, that is a "double voice", with the piano sound being the main voice, and the strings automatically set in the dual voice, with the dual voice mode automatically turned on.  Yes, you can change the dual voice manually, but then you will no longer have the strings part of the piano/strings voice, and instead you'll have just a piano combined with whatever dual voice you select.  Remember, this is only for main voices where the dual voice is turned on automatically.  If you select any other voice where dual is not turned on automatically, then although Yamaha does put a "suggested" dual voice in the dual voice slot (without automatically turning the dual voice on), you can change this dual voice to mostly whatever you want, and it won't affect the main voice.

Also keep in mind that at least some of these "double voices", where Yamaha sets up main and dual voices for the overall tone, are represented in the XG Lite group of voices, and those (at least on my keyboard), are all regular single-tone voices that can freely be combined with a dual voice or act as a dual voice without losing any of the voice's original tone.  An example is the piano/strings.  My keyboard has a piano/strings in XG Lite that is just a regular single tone -- it does not turn on dual voice, and it can be fully layered with another tone.  But the tradeoff is that the XG Lite piano/strings is not as full and vibrant of a sound as the main piano/strings that uses both the main and dual voices for the overall sound.