convert voices for sx700 to sx600?

[Dshaggy]

I am still trying to decide whether to buy a sx600 or sx700 (mainly because of the price -these are hard times).
I have seen that some expansion packs will work on the sx700 and not on the sx600. One of these packs is the Yamaha Entertainer Pack. This pack has "yodeling voices" which i need.

My 1st question is : Can I somehow convert these voices in such a way that it will work on the sx600 as well?

My second question is: How many extra styles could approx fit in the 100mb that is available on the sx600?

Can somebody help me out please?

[Fred Smith]

I am still trying to decide whether to buy a sx600 or sx700 (mainly because of the price -these are hard times).
I have seen that some expansion packs will work on the sx700 and not on the sx600. One of these packs is the Yamaha Entertainer Pack. This pack has "yodeling voices" which i need.

My 1st question is : Can I somehow convert these voices in such a way that it will work on the sx600 as well?

My second question is: How many extra styles could approx fit in the 100mb that is available on the sx600?

Can somebody help me out please?

As far as I know, it's not possible to transfer voices from one keyboard to another.

You can fit approx 4000 styles in 100mb -- more than you'll ever need.

Cheers,
Fred

[johan]

There is some confusion here: expansion styles are not stored in the 100MB voice memory but in the 20MB internal memory. You can always add extra styles on USB of course, so there is no real limit here.

Concerning packs from other keyboards, if you can find a PPF version of the pack, you should be able to import most instruments to the SX600 (via YEM), at least to my knowledge.

[fdawald]

Regarding voices and different keyboards, I have copied a voice from the PSR-s670 and put in on a usb stick and transferred it to the PSR-s975. I believe it was a distortion guitar that I really liked. It did work, but I had to really dig into the manual to figure it out.

Regards,

Rich.

[BogdanH]

My 1st question is : Can I somehow convert these voices in such a way that it will work on the sx600 as well?

Yes, this can be done with Yamaha Expansion Manager (YEM) software. But that's only possible if you have so called "unprotected" pack -that is, pack file must have "ppf" extension (not "cpf").

My second question is: How many extra styles could approx fit in the 100mb that is available on the sx600?

Expansion memory:
SX700: about 400MB
SX600: about 100MB
-that's the only place where we can install expansion packs.

Average size of single voice is about 10-30MB
-can be a bit less or much more (depends on voice complexity/quality). Means, on SX700, you can have max 4-5 external voices installed at once.
Average size of single style is about 10-30kB
-that is, on SX600, you can have hundreds of styles installed at once.
The only thing you must keep in mind is, total pack size (styles+voices) must be smaller than 100MB.

Bogdan

[Joe H]

Regarding voices and different keyboards, I have copied a voice from the PSR-s670 and put in on a usb stick and transferred it to the PSR-s975. I believe it was a distortion guitar that I really liked. It did work, but I had to really dig into the manual to figure it out.

Regards,

Rich.

It sounds like you copied a "User Voice"  This is not the original Preset Voice sample but a MIDI file that contains setup messages for the Preset Voice.  You cannot copy the actual sample that is burned in ROM.  Only the TOTL keyboards allow editing of the samples which are included in the YEM software.

Joe H

[johan]

Average size of single voice is about 10-30MB
-can be a bit less or much more (depends on voice complexity/quality). Means, on SX700, you can have max 4-5 external voices installed at once.

Bogdan, I guess you mean 40-50 external voices on the SX700? On my SX700, I can install several complete packs at the same time. Also note that the expansion styles are stored in the internal memory (1GB on the SX700) and do not use any expansion memory which is only used for the wave files.

[BogdanH]

hello johan,

Bogdan, I guess you mean 40-50 external voices on the SX700?...

.. well, as said, it depends on voice sizes. If voices are 30MB in average, then about (400/30=) 13 voices fill fit into expansion memory of SX700.

...Also note that the expansion styles are stored in the internal memory (1GB on the SX700) and do not use any expansion memory which is only used for the wave files.

I think that's not exactly true... If we install a pack, that contains styles and voices, and then check on keyboard, we can see that both will appear in User>Expansion section. Btw. if you try to delete/rename a style in Expansion section, you'll see, that that's not possible. Styles will only be in User>User section, if they're loaded from USB separately (for example, as *.sty files -not as a pack) or if they're created in keyboard.
Voices (wav samples) can't be loaded manually and so we can't have them inside user section. We can only install them by using packs, and so they land in Expansion section. However, we can load voice "settings" files into user memory by using *.vce files -obviously, that's not the same as wav sample.

There's another thing that need clarification... I haven't really tested that (and specifications are a bit unclear), but I think there's not 1GB User memory + 400MB External memory. The way I interpret specs, there's 1GB of User memory, where 400MB is reserved for Expansion packs. That explains why both, User AND Expansion, reside inside User selection.

Bogdan

[andres_fprado]

There's another thing that need clarification... I haven't really tested that (and specifications are a bit unclear), but I think there's not 1GB User memory + 400MB External memory. The way I interpret specs, there's 1GB of User memory, where 400MB is reserved for Expansion packs. That explains why both, User AND Expansion, reside inside User selection.

Bogdan,

These are separate memories. All of the entertainer keyboards (PSR-S, Tyros, PSR-SX and Genos series) share a similar architecture regarding memory.

• Part of the memory is directly connected to the sound-generator chip, and is only indirectly accessible from the main processor and UI. This memory is highly optimized to work together with the Sound Generator chip and produce sounds. This memory contains the facory-provided sound samples, as well as any additional samples you load (using YEM to package them). This is what Yamaha calls "Expansion Memory", and which has 400MB on the PSR-SX700. Since this memory is not directly accessible to the main processor, which is the one managing Styles, among other things, styles can not be stored here.
• Then we have User Memory. This is, for all intents and purposes, a solid-state hard disk connected directly to the main processor. This memory can store everything, except sound samples, and Styles (even from packs created through YEM) will be stored here. The OS reserves a special directory in this memory space to store the styles from the external packs, and "protects" them as part of the pack. It is important to note that this memory is completely separate from the sound-generator memory (it is even technically a different type of memory). In the case of the PSR-SX700, this memory space has 1GB (and is part of a larger memory chunk which is not user-accessible, which stores the keyboards operating system, UI, internal styles, and more).

I hope this clarifies it. If you want a more in-depth treatment (with circuit diagrams included), I can only recommend the "Sand, software and sound" Wordpress site, which is authored by another forum member. A couple of articles about memory (for Genos, but the PSR-SX line is not that different):
Yamaha Genos Tone Generation circuit: http://sandsoftwaresound.net/yamaha-genos-tone-generation/
Yamaha Genos Main CPU circuit: http://sandsoftwaresound.net/yamaha-genos-main-cpu/
A (longer) analysis of memory on keyboards: http://sandsoftwaresound.net/random-answer-day-1/

Regards!

Andres.

[BogdanH]

hi Andres,
Thank you a lot for links to sandsoftwaresound -will study it for sure!
Let me explain the reason why I'm thinking as I am... Usually, memory capacities are always in power of two: 64kB, 256kb, 512.. and so it appears quite strange to me when I see 400MB -you know what I mean. Yes, total memory can be divided into smaller chunks of any size, but 400 is still kinda odd number.
Anyway, thanks again 

Bogdan

PS: Just checked with YEM... and yes: as I increase number of voices, only "Voice Wave Size" (Expansion memory) populates. And when I reach max size (392 of 392MB), I can still add styles -in that case "User Drive Size" starts to populate.
What can I say.. I stand corrected 

[andres_fprado]

Usually, memory capacities are always in power of two: 64kB, 256kb, 512.. and so it appears quite strange to me when I see 400MB -you know what I mean. Yes, total memory can be divided into smaller chunks of any size, but 400 is still kinda odd number.

Yes, Bogdan, the number is odd. But the reality is that the sound generator has a directly connected memory (I think for the PSR-SX700 it is 1GB or perhaps 2GB, but I'm no sure about the number). A part of this memory is devoted to the samples for the internal keyboard sounds. What isn't used by the internal sounds is what is available as Expansion Memory. So, the number just reflects the difference between the actual physical memory size (which IS a power of two), and the size of the included samples, that is whatever Yamaha deigned to put there. Therefore, such an odd number.

The information is also available (albeit rather hidden!) in the Owner's Manual for the keyboard, in the Specifications Table (page 118 in my copy of the Manual), under expandability:

		PSR-SX900	PSR-SX700
Expandability	Expansion Voice	Yes (approx. 1GB)	Yes (approx. 400MB)
	Expansion Style	Yes (Internal Memory)	Yes (Internal Memory)
	Expansion Audio Style	Yes (Internal Memory)	-

Regards!

Andres.