Going to buy Genos next week

[melokeyz]

Hello Friends,

Finally, I got the budget to buy this beast next week. I've been watching YT videos of Genos for 7 months. So far, the voices and styles are amazing. The only downside is the PRICE even though I am going to buy it.

I want from Genos owners here to tell me how good, how bad, how stable and lots of other hows, is the Genos?

Before Genos, I considered the Korg PA4X but believe it or not ! it is the same price as Genos here in my country. Customs and taxes raised its net price into almost the same price as Genos, although it should be 1500 bucks less. I wanted the Korg for its extensive on-board editing capabilities. However, it is not a huge problem now because maybe next year I'll get Korg Kronos workstation which is the king of editing.

Now, I want to collect valuable advises about the Genos.

And thanks for your support in advanced.

[keynote]

My recommendation would be to personally demo the Genos before you buy it. YouTube videos can be instructive and beneficial but a firsthand knowledge of the keyboard itself is the best way to determine if the Genos (or any other keyboard) meets your specific needs. Since you like to edit parameters on a micro level the Pa4x might be a better option for you. Although since you plan on getting a Kronos workstation later on the Genos might be a better choice because of the stellar sounds and the abundance of styles available from Yamaha and other sources. But again the best way to determine if the Genos is right for you is to demo a unit beforehand so you know what you're up against as far as sounds, styles and workflow. Also try the Pa4x too if you start leaning in that direction. Whichever one you decide to get enjoy what you play! 

Mike

[beykock]

Hi,

IMHO, if you should decide to buy a Genos, it might be a better idea to add the newest Yamaha synth later on instead of a Korg Kronos. But who am I ? 😏

Babette

[Keyboardplayer]

My recommendation would be to personally demo the Genos before you buy it.

+1 Try before you buy.

[DerekA]

IMHO, if you should decide to buy a Genos, it might be a better idea to add the newest Yamaha synth later on instead of a Korg Kronos. But who am I ? 😏

Good idea - Use GENOS as the arranger, and a MODX for sound design. A dream combination.

[valimaties]

... The only downside is the PRICE even though I am going to buy it...

It depends on how much you use your keyboard's DSPs, Registrations, etc... If you have a little experience with arrangers (Yamaha, Korg, Roland etc) and you are an experimented keyboard player, I must say you have to try this keyboard for some days, not hours, but days. It takes time to reach bugs, and when you will reach them you will be sad that an expensive keyboard like Genos can do some things wrong or has some minuses. So, not the price is the problem here, but the needs of Yamaha to solve existing problems on Genos before you buy this keyboard. IMO.
I think you'll have to wait for the next firmware release (1.40 or whatever) and to see if all problems about DSP, Registration memory, Audio timing problems were solved.

PS: Search for this forum to see how many people encountered errors, or missing features, or whatever any other bug...

Regards,
Vali

[EileenL]

Well I for one have not experienced any bugs since the last up date. In my opinion a lot of people are asking for things to be added and that is a totally different matter. Have never had any problems with registrations, Making loading or copying. Every one I have played for just love the sound in produces.

[zionip]

Disclaimer:  I am just an amateur keyboard player who mainly plays at home.  My opinion on gears only reflects my own personal preferences and needs.

I have been enjoying Genos since November 2017.  It is an excellent arranger keyboard with a vastly simplified control interface due to the touchscreen display.  The Genos SA2 voices and the Revo!drum sounds are amazing.

On the one hand, there are fewer direct function buttons on Genos that gives an overall tidy buttons/knobs/sliders user interface.  On the other hand, a lot of functions have to go through the touchscreen several times to get to the screen which could be accessed with a dedicated button in previous Tyros models.  That is why there are quite a number of professional arranger keyboard players who prefer using the Korg PA4X in gigs due to its full control capability achieved by the provision of lots of buttons for dedicated functions.  We have to extensively use registrations on Genos to memorize our preferences of playing, usually a bank of 10 registrations for each song, to simplify our operations.  Overall, I prefer the sounds of Genos much more than the sounds from Korg PA line of arrangers.  The out-of-the-box experience of Genos is much better in my opinion, without the need to dive deep into sound tweaking.

Genos and Korg Kronos 2 complement each other very well.  Genos has some of the best traditional instrument voices available outside of VSTs.  Genos has very convincing orchestral, saxophones, guitar, and drums sounds.  I personally feel that the heavily advertised CFX grand piano voices on Genos sound very thin when compared to its equivalent voices on Montage, MODX, and Kronos 2.  Genos piano voices work great in a mix though.

The voices of Kronos 2 sound much thicker and darker than those of Genos, with great built-in grand piano sounds.  The EXs-17 SGX-2 Berlin D Piano pack alone (standard on Kronos 2) has 8.6GB of PCM samples, resulting long sustains without the need of sample looping.   I personally love the authenticity of the KApro EXs orchestral sound expansion libraries for Kronos 2 - they are expensive and only licensed to one Kronos 2 keyboard, but they sound good.  Kronos 2 is a true music workstation with very extensive sound tweaking, very advanced built-in sequencer, and serves as a good USB audio interface for computers.  I use the V-Console for Genos software developed by John Beesley to combine Genos (as the upper keyboard), Kronos 2 (as the lower keyboard) and a JG3 Tech 24-note MIDI pedalboard as a modern orchestral organ using Genos as the sound source.  I sometimes mix in the local sounds of the Kronos 2 to enrich the musical atmosphere.  This V-Console for Genos combo is a real time killer, so I have to constantly watch out for my sleeping time.

Kronos was first released in 2011, then got updated to Kronos 2 in 2015.  There are rumors of replacement for Kronos 2 in 2019, we may or may not see any Kronos 3 next year if Korg decides to call the updated model something else.

Theoretically Genos and Yamaha's own latest synthesizer, such as Montage or MODX, would be ideal combination.  However, I found that Genos already excels with Yamaha's AWM2 voices, including the SA2 voices that the Montage and MODX do not have.  Montage and MODX have better piano sounds than Genos, and they have killer arps, with a unique Super Knob.  The Montage also supports touch functionality on external touchscreen display, which helps a lot when dealing with the fine details of its screen display.  Montage and MODX are not truly music workstations since they need to work with DAW on computer, they are excellent performance keyboards though.

I found the architecture of the Korg Kronos 2 more sophisticated than the Montage and MODX due to its architecture of 9 synthesis engines, instead of only 2 on the Yamahas.  Most Montage/Kronos comparison reviews favor Kronos for its more advanced architecture and deeper capabilities, at several hundred dollars cheaper than comparable Montage models.  The newer, light weight MODX keyboards are cut down versions of Montage, priced very reasonably, without aftertouch.

The Kronos 2 has built-in KARMA, with various musical phrases that work like simple arranger styles.  There are plenty of song based commercial combi packs for Kronos 2 that are gig ready and turns it into sort of arranger type keyboard during performance.  I see the combination of Genos and Kronos as an excellent pair of performance/production tool.

Thanks,
Paul

[Al Ram]

We have to extensively use registrations on Genos to memorize our preferences of playing, usually a bank of 10 registrations for each song, to simplify our operations. 

Paul

Great review of the Genos. 

In my opinion, Yamaha registrations are one of the superior features.   I love using registrations. For me, they are great for live performance   !!!!!!.  Once I create my song registration and rehearse it, i find that rarely if ever need to use the other buttons, knobs or the touch screen when playing live.    Registrations free my hands to play rather than use the knobs, buttons, screen, etc.    99 % of time my hands on the keyboard keys playing.

I considered other brand names such as Korg but decided for Yamaha in great part because of this registrations feature. (altought i understand that the same concept might also be found in Korg . . . . . )

Thanks

[valimaties]

Well I for one have not experienced any bugs since the last up date. In my opinion a lot of people are asking for things to be added and that is a totally different matter. Have never had any problems with registrations, Making loading or copying. Every one I have played for just love the sound in produces.

Yes Eileen, probably because, as you said a lot of times, you only open your keyboard and play. There are some other players which extends their needs of sound by adding DSP to their voices. This is a major bug of NOT saving all DSP assigned to a voice in registrations. Maybe, this is an omission of Yamaha's engineers from development team, by not stopping the usage of more than one DSP for one voice in assignment screen. Maybe in their minds, after you set a DSP for a voice, the remaining slots are used for other voices/channels. But this is not how it works right now. You can select all slots available for voices by setting up for one voice. Using this type of setting up DSP, you cannot save modified DSPs into registration memory, as we already know and have been discussed a lot of times on this forum. (bug nr 1)

Using of multiple Kino Strings (Right1 + Right2) it gives you something like overloaded polyphony , which is strange for Genos's polyphony available. (some user of this forum detected this bug - bug nr. 2)

When you open (ie.) Style 1 screen, and you touch the volume slider on touch screen, you have to be very careful where you touch it, because the container itself does not have "two steps" of control it, as it has to be, but have only "one-step". What means that?! It means if a non-selected slider is set on volume 20 (so, somewhere down, lower volume) and you press over the middle of control's height, it will automatically change volume to that position of control. The normal way should be to select it on the first touch and to change volume on the second touch. Which does not happens.
This thing is happening with almost every touch screen control. (Bug nr 3)

If you did not encountered these bugs, what means that?! You have another Genos than us?!

I know, for some encountered bug there are workarounds, you will tel me that . For example, for bug nr 3 we can use sliders, but this is a workaround. I speak about using touch controls, not mechanics controls. Because there are some of controls on the screen which has not corresponding controls on physical controls (buttons or knobs or sliders).

There are a lot of Yamaha keyboard players In this world. Every player uses its keyboard as he knows and correspondingly with its knowledge. I cannot be limited to something because another user does not use a feature which has bugs, and, of course, he does not know about that bug. That(those) feature(s) should be solved for those users who use it. (DSP bug, in our case, touch screen controls, etc).

Regards,
Vali

[BenoitM]

Thanks Vali, you perfectly summarized my thought and frustration with my Genos concerning the Registration & DSP problems !

I agree with Eileen with the fact that we shouldn't ask for *new* functionality  (would be nice from Yamaha, but not in their habits, which is very sad if you that into account the -very- high price tag of the Genos) , that's not what we are asking, we just want *existing* functionality to work as expected, this is a very different thing. (or simply missing 'common sense' functionality, like a good search engine, ability to sort a list, and so on...)

Yamaha is clearly not paying attention to its customers. With the Genos, they wanted to attract a broader audience (edm stuff, more dsp power, etc... there's even a word on this in a Yamaha official brochure...) , but they should acknowledge that this broader audience will not only use the 'plug'n'play' approach that worked for the previous customers...

Don't get me wrong, I love my Genos, its great !  But I see it as a great piece of Hardware controlled by a flawed Software ... There's much much much more possibilites than what is exposed thru the U.I. (for example: the inability to display/edit more than 16 parameters of a DSP is ridiculous, since some DSP have more than 16 parameters !!! why do they artificially restriced us the access to those parameters ).

The 'playlist' concept is great, but the search functionality is very basic , we can't sort any list... The fact that nice people are creating PC/Mac software to workaround those deficiencies is a big indicator of the Genos Software flaws imho...

Yamaha will probably release a Genos II somewhere around 2020, and I can bet that the Hardware won't be much different (perhaps a multi touch tiltable screen, USB3, Hdmi output, freely rotatable knobs ...) the big difference will be the Software !
They are conscientiously *not* adding the suggested features and leaving some bugs to the existing Genos, just to sell the Genos II in a few years ... For big features, I think it's perfectly ok, but for Bug Fixes, it's not very loyal to the customers...  Just have a look at what Korg did for the Pa4x v2.0 ! They reward their loyal customers with free new features (and even new piano sounds !), because they know that the Pa5x (or whatever the name) will add significant new features anyway !

Yamaha did it for the Montage (new Piano sound, new significant features) because they want to attract new customers, but for the Genos they think that most of the people buying it are not very demanding people ('shut up and take my money !' style  ) that's why they are not bothered to leave the bugs uncorrected ...

I even saw a post on a forum about a person that sent email to Yamaha Europe concerning Genos bugs... They responded this : "Please stop sending us email, the Genos Software team is very small, they can't correct all the bugs". I understand this as "Shut up and give us you money for a Genos II"    ) 

Anyway, I still hope for a v1.4 firmware that would correct the known bugs...

Benoit

[valimaties]

Hi Benoit!

"I'm in" with your almost entirely comment.

Although, I have to "correct" you with Yamaha email. I am the user which received the sad mail, but they did not told me not to send them mail. They said THEY will not send mails to Yamaha development team, as the team is very small and they don't have time to solve all problems, and let them work on it.
If they don't know about every problem, when will they solve them?!  Strange approach of Yamaha Europe team to stop sending mails.

I think if we had a door directly with development team, (like a bugzilla website) it would be a more good approach for both sides...

I hope for a quickly next firmware release, too...

Regards,
Vali

[EileenL]

Anything here in the UK that is reported to our service department is sent on to the German office where it is then sent to Japan for there engineers and design team to go through and test it. If faults are found then they are put into an update. No one has ever been told the team are to small or to busy. This would almost certainly trigger off sending a letter directly to the bosses.
  As to having lots of screen pushes, the Direct Access Button is one of the most used functions we have. Also the assignable slots and for me a lot quicker to use than on previous keyboards. I also use DSP quite a lot in setting up my registrations when needed.

[pjd]

I received a rather nice and polite reply from Yamaha Europe...

As a guy who once worked in a small development team with a vocal user base (ahem), a small team really can get flooded with messages and requests. We stored bug reports and enhancement requests in a database and used that info to plan and prioritize for the next release/update. It's the only way to keep from going crazy!

I'm hoping/trusting that Yamaha have a similar process in place.

All the best -- pj

[Fred Smith]

Yamaha will probably release a Genos II somewhere around 2020, and I can bet that the Hardware won't be much different (perhaps a multi touch tiltable screen, USB3, Hdmi output, freely rotatable knobs ...) the big difference will be the Software !
They are conscientiously *not* adding the suggested features and leaving some bugs to the existing Genos, just to sell the Genos II in a few years ... For big features, I think it's perfectly ok, but for Bug Fixes, it's not very loyal to the customers...  Just have a look at what Korg did for the Pa4x v2.0 ! They reward their loyal customers with free new features (and even new piano sounds !), because they know that the Pa5x (or whatever the name) will add significant new features anyway !

I disagree. I don't believe Yamaha are "conscientiously" leaving in bugs just to sell a Genos 2. If there are Genos bugs, I believe Yamaha will fix them. Genos has been out only a year, and we've already had 3 updates.

I also believe Yamaha are moving to the Apple model where it's more profitable to provide free additional features to extend the life of a device. We've seen it with Montage, and, to some extent, we've already seen it with Genos. Since the initial release, Yamaha have added search features and Voice Guide.

So Genos 2 is a long way off, in my opinion. The only reason I see for a new model is if they need a hardware upgrade to implement Seamless Sound Switching, which is by far the most prevalent issue facing the majority of users.

I think the main reason power users don't get what they want is that they're oblivious to the impact their requests have on the user base. A good example is when Yamaha added the ability to split off the Right3 voice. This was a great feature for those who knew what they were doing, but a real pain for those who couldn't figure out why their R3 voice wasn't sounding with R1 and R2. You just have to monitor posts to this forum to see the frustration level of many users.

Power users also don't seem to understand the tradeoffs all manufacturers have to make. Just because it's possible to do in software doesn't mean it makes economic sense. Why should Yamaha dedicate time and effort to something that less than 1% of their customers would use, when they could dedicate the same amount to benefit 50% of their base?

Power users would do themselves a big favor if they (1) showed how their request could be implemented without significant impact on the user base, and (2) how their request makes economic sense. Because if they don't do it, Yamaha will.

Cheers,
Fred

[panos]

There are times that you make me feel lucky for having a psr s7xx model
Anyway...
If the question is "If I sell you a PA4(or a Tyros 5) and a Genos at the same price which one would you choose?"
hm....No second thoughts come to my mind.
But that's just me.
Have fun with your keyboard whatever it wiil be 

[valimaties]

1.
Power users also don't seem to understand the tradeoffs all manufacturers have to make. Just because it's possible to do in software doesn't mean it makes economic sense. Why should Yamaha dedicate time and effort to something that less than 1% of their customers would use, when they could dedicate the same amount to benefit 50% of their base?

2.
Power users would do themselves a big favor if they (1) showed how their request could be implemented without significant impact on the user base, and (2) how their request makes economic sense. Because if they don't do it, Yamaha will.

Cheers,
Fred

Hi Fred.

My opinion is this:
1. There are a lot of keyboard players (not only Yamaha, but Korg, Roland, etc) which loves Yamaha's sound, Yamaha's SA and SA2 voices. But they need liberty in editing process, which on Yamaha is very limited. I know some of them. I know players which changed its PA4X and bought Genos, but after 2 weeks get back to PA4x because: they can save their sets (packs) directly from keyboard, they have our Drum Setup directly in live playback of style and they can save their modifications in realtime even if style is playing. High, Mid, Low EQ for each track, different measures types in Style Recorder for each variation, fill, intro, or whatever, 24 oscillators for voices with possibility of editing even the wav file, by cutting it, creating loop, (our) wave cycling (they have it from pa3x)... So, he said, even if Korg does not sound better than Yamaha, he can make adjustments on each room where he plays on every parameter, live, in realtime, without need to stop style. This is a BIG success of Korg.

2. Beeing a power user setting/request, I think it will be an envelope to basic settings (it will cover them), which will NOT do any negative impact to basic user. Tell me, will you have a negative impact if you will be able to save your registrations in realtime without needed of stopping style?! I don't think so. Will you have negative impact if all modified settings of all DSPs assigned will be stored in registrations, not only the last edited?! I don't think so.

... (2) how their request makes economic sense. ...

It's simple. They will have more customers, because will implement functions that are missing, that exist already on other brands, which already other user benefits. It's logical that implementation of new features which exist already on old keyboard of "rival" brands, with Yamaha's sounds (which is the closest to VSTi of any brand) will create a transition of most keyboard players to Yamaha arrangers. Simple.

I received a rather nice and polite reply from Yamaha Europe...

As a guy who once worked in a small development team with a vocal user base (ahem), a small team really can get flooded with messages and requests. We stored bug reports and enhancement requests in a database and used that info to plan and prioritize for the next release/update. It's the only way to keep from going crazy!

I'm hoping/trusting that Yamaha have a similar process in place.

All the best -- pj

Hi PJ.
The sad email I've received from Yamaha, I said it was sad. I did not said they talk to me in an unwanted manner, but the message I understood exactly as the words wrote. The emails are opened as tickets, and come from EU.SupportMI <EU.SupportMI@contact.europe.yamaha.com> , which are the German team of Yamaha.

Quote from email:

No, not much input at the moment. Japan is a bit quiet
On the other Hand, I can understand providing Info takes time and the team is small.
So I stay calm and let them work.

In your opinion, is a good approach?! I've sent them the problems with DSPs in registration (not saving parameters). This is not a "send to" information?!

PS: Genos is a very good arranger, it sounds very good, iMO, but I still missing some things to do a easier job on it. And still have to repair some of the problems.

Regards,
Vali

[BenoitM]

We all have different views because we simply use the same keyboard in different ways, and its great, because it means that Yamaha has (partially) achieved its goal of widening its buyers base ... And I don't consider myself as a 'Power User' of the Genos, I simply use feature described in the Manuals...

I disagree. I don't believe Yamaha are "conscientiously" leaving in bugs just to sell a Genos 2. If there are Genos bugs, I believe Yamaha will fix them. Genos has been out only a year, and we've already had 3 updates.

Concerning my thought about Yamaha conscientiously leaving bugs in the Genos, I know its seems to be a rather controversial statement, guided by feelings more than facts...
But the fact is that the latest Genos Firmware was released several months ago (April 2018), and there's still serious known bugs present today (DSP/Registration, KinoStrings), those bugs were reported many months ago (end of 2017 for the DSP Registration problem(s) , March 2018 for the Voices glitch...) ... and Yamaha released several updates, each time ignoring those bugs...

I also believe Yamaha are moving to the Apple model where it's more profitable to provide free additional features to extend the life of a device. We've seen it with Montage, and, to some extent, we've already seen it with Genos. Since the initial release, Yamaha have added search features and Voice Guide.

If only it was true, it would be a very good move ... but nothing in the facts prove this at the time of writing this...

As I stated in another thread on this forum, yes Yamaha released several updates for the Genos, but the only 'major' features where either 'common sense' feature that should have been there since day 1 (ability to search in list, a very basic operation considering today's standard...) or features that are more 'part of the underlying OS - linux in the case of the Genos - ' than firmware specific : the Voice Guide feature - being a very welcome addition for visually impaired people - was probably added because the underlying OS has this capability builtin ... (yes, it is a half-feeling/half-fact statement  )

Power users also don't seem to understand the tradeoffs all manufacturers have to make. Just because it's possible to do in software doesn't mean it makes economic sense.

I see the act of buying a good as a kind of 'contrat' between us (the buyers) and Yamaha (the manufacturer). I give a good amount of money to have a 'Flagship' keyboard that conforms to today's standard, and before buying it I read the Owner Manual and Reference Manual several times to ensure the it would fulfill my needs. In those manuals, one thing retained my attention more than the rest : the fact that we can freely assign the 28 DSPs to any part, and even have the possibility to assign multiple DSPs to the same part. In those manuals, several pages describe the 'DSP detailed parameters' editable possibility. And elsewhere, it describe the 'Registrations' as a feature that allows to store and retrieve the whole panel settings, including Voices, Styles, and so on...
So, based on this 'promises' I would find very legitimate that all those features are working the way they were designed for. That's  the 'Contract'. And nowadays, the Contract is not entirely fulfilled. That's facts.

Why should Yamaha dedicate time and effort to something that less than 1% of their customers would use, when they could dedicate the same amount to benefit 50% of their base?

This is what they did for the Voice Guide feature. They did it for two reasons :
1) Because it is seen a good thing that such a Big company add a 'free' feature for impaired people. This is what I call 'Communication' (even if it is a *really* welcome addition, I should have been here since day 1)
2) The time and effort for these feature was probably rather low (see my thought about Linux builtin capabilities... )

And if you take into account that Yamaha want to widen its buyer's base, they have to add features that will initially only be used by a small fraction of today's buyers, because those persons will spread the word about those new cool features... 1% could become much more in the future... (it could even attract Korg today's user ... )

Power users would do themselves a big favor if they (1) showed how their request could be implemented without significant impact on the user base, and (2) how their request makes economic sense. Because if they don't do it, Yamaha will.

Sorry, but this is not how the world is working  . We (customers) can (and *should* imho) communicate with Yamaha about what we like and what we don't about Yam products (provide feedback about 'real world usage'), but this is not our role to make a Business Plan for Yam     
And, in the first place, Yamaha should allows us to communicate more easily with them (with an official 'bug feedback' forum for exemple) and more important , should communicate more clearly about all the reported problems ... a simple 'acknowledgment' would be a first step...
It would avoid all the current frustration.

Again, the Genos is a really good keyboard today, but it was supposed to be a new cycle, disrupting the Tyros line of product and adding significant new features... there's still hope for a new firmware, but please Yamaha: communicate !

Benoit

ps: btw, it is great that we can discuss such things on this forum ! 

[pjd]

Hi PJ.
The sad email I've received from Yamaha, I said it was sad. I did not said they talk to me in an unwanted manner, but the message I understood exactly as the words wrote. The emails are opened as tickets, and come from EU.SupportMI <EU.SupportMI@contact.europe.yamaha.com> , which are the German team of Yamaha.   

Hi Vali --

My apologies, I misunderstood. I just re-read and caught your suggestion for a public Bugzilla. Yamaha Synth are using IdeaScale to capture suggestions and such.

All the best -- pj

[valimaties]

Hi Vali --

My apologies, I misunderstood. I just re-read and caught your suggestion for a public Bugzilla. Yamaha Synth are using IdeaScale to capture suggestions and such.

All the best -- pj

You don't have to apologies, my friend pj
I think is a good idea to use such a service to store users suggestions, or as known- eventually bugs...

Cheers,
Vali