August 25, 2008

Rating: 10/10

took delivery 2 weeks ago, havn,t stopped playing since. superb voices, styles, fret sounds on guitar. no aftertouch but i can live without that.reccomended for anyone with the even a little experience- east to set up and with 1400 or so built in song set ups it will keep you amazed for years. stop thinking about it and just buy one.. you wont regret it.

Simon Williams
May 28, 2008

Rating: 9/10

This morning I took delivery of a Yamaha PSR-S900. I needed something lighter to carry to church and practice sessions, something with onboard speakers but without sacrificing too much of what the Tyros 2 gave.

Well, after unpacking the keyboard and delving around the box for the accessories, I was very pleased to see a 'proper' separate switched mode power supply instead of a 'brick in the wall' power supply. The PSU is similar to a laptop, small and light and reassuringly good quaity. Finish on the S900 is amazing, my wife said it looks a baby tyros 2! Nice clean panel, no lettering on the buttons (phew) and no coloured buttons, although the in-built LED's in each button are really neat. I slotted the grey plastic music rest on the back (not quite the solid affair that the T2 provides but it does the job) and connected up my Acoustic Energy Aego M system to the line outs.

First impressions when I played the keyboard was the different "feel" to the keys, more springy and a little lighter than the T2. However after playing for a few minutes I quickly became acustomed to the feel and actually found it easier to play lighter phrases and control the dynamics.

I was eager to find out just how much I had lost from the Tyros 2, but instead I quickly became astonished at just how much was there! Infact all the "bread and butter" sounds were present and sounding just as good as they did on T2. Now I remember when I moved from the Tyros 1 to the PSR3000, expecting a baby T1 but the sound quality of the 3000 did seem to differ from the T1. Not so on the S900, quality sounds and punchy, clean and dynamic. Most suprising were the Super Articulation voices, infact other than the SA string sounds (which if I am honest with myself I rarely used for performance) everything I needed was present. The superb acoustic guitars, the electrics, the brass sounds... Perhaps most amazing were the presence of the power drum kits and latin percussion kits... The S900 doesn't advertise having "live!" drums but playing the power kits manually I suddenly realised they ARE multisampled and sound just as they do on the T2! Incredible! Things seem to be too good to be true!

I suppose if I were to be critical, the display could do with being angled a bit more towards the player as although I can see it clearly from a playing stance, I did find myself bending forward to study the details. Nice display though and controllable for both brightness and contrast. Shame you can't alter the background colours though.

Initially I found having the part R1 and R2 controls on the second row above the OTS buttons took me a bit of getting acustomed too, but now its second nature. You don't get the 3 layers (R1-R3) as on the T2, but the sounds are thick enough to work nicely with just the 2 layers.

Some nice new styles too in the banks, particular enjoyed the Irish hymns and acoustic pop and ballads. Everything sounded great through the Aego speakers, punchy and tight and the cymbals decayed and rung without any sacrifice in quality.

Wonder how my previous midi recordings from T2 will play on the S900? Well I quickly dumped a few dozen of the church tracks I use to a spare memory stick and with in no time I loaded them up... they played beautifully! Other than the T2's cornet being replaced now with a SA trumpet, everything sounded great!

Perhaps the surprising extra for me that I was hoping for (but didn't expect it after reading the online manual beforehand) was the ability to individually name each of the registrations in a bank and see them displayed above the bank name on the main screen. I always found this a great feature on the T2 and was astonished to find I had it on the S900! Another gold star...

So what was missing from the T2? Well I mentioned the SA strings, no big loss though as the S900 still has the beautiful Live! strings and also a nice symphonic strings voice. Quite a few of the pad and lead synth voices not present, but again nothing that's going to be missed sorely. Styles isn't such an issue these days as you can load banks of new ones, and the S900 has enough bread and butter styles to keep you entertained and certainly everything I used from the T2.

I actually prefer the pitch bend wheel on the S900 over the T2, as it has a small projection on it (a sort of handle) you can flick it with a finger. Also felt the USB features were better integrated, particularly the direct to USB sound recorder. I did miss having a front USB port though.

Until now I was listening to the 900 through external speakers and amplifier.. I was expecting nothing marvelous when I decided to turn off the external system and hear the S900 on its own internal speakers... boy was I in for a suprise! Wow! The S900 speaker system is a huge improvement on past keyboards, warm, lots of presence, the sound stage seems to stretch beyond the back of the instrument as you sit there playing. Ok it won't shake the floor with its volume levels, but the sound is closer to a HiFi speaker set up than what you would expect from onboard speakers for a keyboard! The secret I discovered is below... looking at the base of the S900, Yamaha have incorporate solid mdf wooden backs to the speaker cabinet areas within the case, and it certainly does help! No resonating plastic cases, but a warm and solid sound. Another gold star!

I'm sure you can tell that I am very impressed the PSR-S900. It's quite a leap from the PSR-3000 and certainly is a lot closer to the Tyros and Tyros 2 than ever a PSR has come before. I could go on, but I've got to get back downstairs and play this thing!

The S900 certainly has my recommendation, and I expect it will be the keyboard of choice for many arranger enthusiasts looking for top quality sounds and styles, plenty of features but possibly not quite to Tyros 2 level. If you get a chance have a listen and play it, I am sure you will be impressed at this price. It's a great value machine, portable and practical yet isn't a million miles away from Yamaha's flagship model, the Tyros 2. Infact if you are looking for a more portable Tyros 2 and can live without sampling and an internal harddisk ( you can connect an external USB HDD or memory stick to the PSR-S900) and aren't bothered by an aftertouch responsive keyboard, onboard compressor, individual outputs and a few extra sounds, then the S900 could be the answer to your prayers.

Adrian Melgar
July 24, 2007

Rating: 10/10

Bueno! :smile: q les cuento! ah ver este es el nuevo PSR 3000 de yamaha pero la verdad no hay mucha difernecia entre este y el PSR 3000, las novedades son, 1) q tiene la funcion Super Articulation q traia originalmente el Tyros 2 y ahroa el Motif XS q son voces demasiados buenas ! mejor dicho si te gustaron las Mega Voices las SA son aun mejor! las doblan en calidad! 2) q se puede grabar audio en formato .WAV pero atencion a esto y pido ayuda! en lo q aun se no Trae un sampler como tal si no q solo se puede muestrear y grabar audio en un disco duro externo o memoria USB q este conectada al teclado osea q no tiene memoria interna ni RAM como sampler pero si graba no es obvio q tenga RAM? parece ser q por ahora no se puede mapear las muestras como un sampler normal pero si se peuden reproducir fichereos .WAV con un boton algo asi como un play esto seria la gran novedad pero si se pudieran disparar los samples del teclado, ah otra funcion de esto es q se muestrea a si mismo osea puedes grabar loq tocaste o adicional tienes 3 entradas de audio externas para conectar microfno y guitarra a la vez tocar el teclado y grabar todo en un archivo .WAV, osea remuestrear jajaja esto es muy bueno! ojala algun dia se pueda mepaer por el teclado los archivos .WAV o si alguien sabe q lo hace digame por favor y me compro uno ya mismo!!!!

Bueno por lo demas es igual al PSR 3000 este es un poco ams delgado y moderno aunq entre gustos no hay disgustos y a mi me gustan mas los botnos del 3000, cuando conseguire este juguetico en Colombia? y cuanto valdra? el tiempo lo dira! ojala no cueste mucho. :cool:

jubin roy
May 25, 2007

Rating: 10/10

The Yamaha PSR-S900 is the best of psr series keyboard with Mega-Voice-Technology which lets you explore new and fantastic keyboard worlds.

All in all more than 800 instrument voices are built in the Yamaha PSR-S900. It also offers voices which feature various playing and performance sounds, like finger slides and fret noises reproduced when playing a guitar. These particular voices are mainly used in several of the 205 internal accompaniment styles and are compatible with all XT-Song-Data and Style-Data (TYROS (1)).

For each Style there are four One Touch Setting so you can the perfect instrumental setting by pressing just one button. The OTS-Link-Function allows you to change automatically through the One Touch Setting just by changing the Style-variation.

If you want to play a certain style of music within a specific song and don’t know which settings to choose, the powerful Music Finder feature can help. Simply select a song title or a keyword, all appropriate panel settings are reconfigured to match the genre, including the appropriate voices, style and effects. Music Finder+ also works with the Internet Direct Connection (IDC) feature, giving you instant access to additional free Music Finder records and collections to help when your favourite song or music isn’t on the instrument.