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The birth of the Arranger Workstation
The birth of the Arranger Workstation
The design of the PSR-7000 says "I'm big and mean!"
Introduction – This is new, isn’t it?
We’ve seen that the PSR-6000 was actually much like a PSR-5700’s update, and that no relevant novelties or enhancements were introduced in Yamaha’s arranger line since 1992. But things would become very different with the release of the next flagship model in 1995: the PSR-7000. This time, we can really talk about important changes in almost every dimension, from the external looks to new features and technology. It could be said that the PSR-7000 was the first Yamaha’s model which would fit into what could be considered as an “entertainer keyboard”, in the sense that this label is still used today. Moreover, the PSR-7000 sets the basis of the technology and features used by Yamaha’s premium arranger line for the years to come, at least until the release of the Tyros.
As there are many, it’s indeed difficult to highlight all the changes, enhancements and new features introduced by the PSR-7000 when compared to previous models, but the following list would be an attempt to point out some of the most remarkable ones:
The number of preset voices is massively increased. Whereas in previous models there were usually 100 or 128 preset voices, there are now 464 preset voices and 9 drum kits. On the other hand, though, there’s only memory for 32 user voices.
The number of styles is also increased, although to “only” 120 preset ones (the PSR-5700 had 36 and the PSR-6000 had 50), and room for 32 more custom styles. New fingering options are added and for the first time there’s a full keyboard chord detection mode. It’s now possible to change the voices of the style tracks (style revoice).
A new, more powerful and flexible sound generation technology is used (more o this later).
The effects section is greatly improved, not only in quantity (there’s a third DSP effects processor with many different types of sophisticated effects, such as rotary speaker simulator, guitar amplifier simulator, pitch shifter, etc.; and also a digital equalizer), but, most importantly, in quality. The new effects section sound much better than before and can be considered as truly professional.
There is a dedicated engine for Hammond-like tonewheel organs, with discrete control and adjustment for the different elements such as the level of each tonewheel, percussion and the like.
For the first time, the keyboard includes a microphone jack to mix the signal with the internal sound output. Reverb an chorus effects can be applied to the incoming signal.
Also for the first time, there’s the option to have a hard drive installed for a massive storage of songs, custom voices, styles and so on.
The synthesizer functions are very comprehensive and allow for a total control of the sound, including the selection of the oscillator’s waveform. Moreover, it’s even possible to use new, external waveforms (not included in the waveform ROM memory) to build up custom sounds.
It’s the first Yamaha’s arranger model since the PS-6100 with aftertouch, and this time it’s properly implemented 😉
And there are also many minor or more “incremental” enhancements, such as a better polyphony (now it’s 64-voice); the sequencer has now 16 channels instead of 8; the number of registrations increase to 128 (16 banks of 8); there are more temperament/scaling options; amplification power increases to 2 x 20 watts; etc.
Looks and design – Meant to be big
Beyond the matters of personal taste, the external design of the PSR-7000 is pretty different from all the previous models and seems clearly focused to catch the attention and for stating that it’s not another “mere” keyboard.
It’s a quite bulky keyboard; certainly, it’s much bigger than what its 61 standard-sized keys would require, with an extra length both at the left side (for pitch bend and modulation wheels) and the right side, where the floppy disk is located (instead of being placed below the keys as in previous models). In total, it’s over 105 centimeters long (nearly 42”). It’s also quite deep (almost 45 centimeters, over 17”). The control panel is inclined towards the player, and gets gradually higher from the keys to the big speaker box of the rear side, where it reaches its maximum height (almost 18 centimeters or 7 inches). Most probably this height and depth is needed for having a good air capacity for the powerful speakers, and it truly contributes, especially when seen from the rear, to the image of a “big”, serious keyboard.
Despite its size, the PSR-7000 is not particularly heavy (14.5 Kilograms, less than 32 lbs.), which is a very similar weight as the PSR-5700/6000 models, and certainly much lighter than the monstruous PSR-6700. This is mostly due to the fact that it’s all made of plastic, with no metal parts, although the build quality seems very good. The rounded design lines give also a distinct and more original look.
The user interface follows the path started with the PSR-6000, with a big 320 x 200 dot matrix screen surrounded by 8 selection buttons at the sides and 8 round encoders at the bottom. The buttons of the interface have a nice feeling of quality and most of them have leds to indicate when they are active. There is not a rotary encoder, but it does not feel necessary either.
Sound generation technology – It’s time to look to the future
When looking to the internals, there are very relevant changes in the PSR-7000, compared to its predecessors. Although sound generation follows the same scheme of PCM-based subtractive synthesis (which even nowadays is still the most common one), used at least since the PSR-5700 (and, to some extent, since the PSR-4500/4600), the core of the sound engine is the ‘new’ YWM275-F, more commonly known as the SWP20 chip, instead of the previous GEW9. The SWP20, together with its less powerful “brother”, the SWP00, were the basis for the “new” (then) Yamaha MIDI standard, the XG, used in countless gear. However, the PSR-7000 is NOT compatible with XG, and in fact it might be considered as some kind of a “prototype” of the forthcoming XG standard, started with the MU-series of synthesizer modules.
Albeit some of the specs seem inferior on paper when compared to the GEW9 (for instance, the SWP20 is “only” 32-voice polyphonic, instead of having 38 voices), it’s a significantly better technology. Most importantly, the SWP20, as many other more recent high-end Yamaha sound generator chips, can be coupled in pairs, with one “master” and one “slave”, to double the polyphony, while accessing the same waveform memory, in a similar way to the ancient GEW5 (PSR-4500/4600 and PSR-6700). As you might expect, the PSR-7000 has this two-chip configuration to reach a total of 64 voices.
Some of the advantages compared to the GEW9 are that sound patches can now have up to 4 elements (each one with its own oscillator waveform, filter, LFO and so on), allowing for more complex and sophisticated sounds, and also that they can access a larger amount of waveform data. As the PSR-5700 and PSR-6000 were limited to 6 Megabytes of waveform ROM (most probably, the limit of the GEW9 chip), the PSR-7000 has 8 Megabytes (32 megabits) of samples. This is quite a respectable amount, although to be honest, it’s not particularly impressive for a flagship keyboard, even in 1995.
On the other hand, it’s worth to mention that, for the first time in the arranger line, there’s a specific engine for the emulation of Hammond-type organs, which Yamaha calls “Organ Flutes”. Besides the “normal” preset organ sounds, generated by PCM synthesis (samples), the user can design her own organ sounds in a similar way as in a real tonewheel organ, by controlling individually the level of each one of the nine different drawbars (each one corresponds to a specific frequency, as in the real hardware). There are also some parameters for controlling the characteristic “percussion” sound, which can be assigned for every key press or only for the first of a legato sequence, adding more realism. All this, combined with a proper DSP emulation of the rotary speaker, makes the organ voices to sound undoubtedly better than in previous models.
Another key element when speaking of sound quality is the effects processor(s) section. And, at this point, the PSR-7000 really shines when compared to older keyboards. Previous models, as far as the PSR-4500 from 1989, used the YM3413 (LDSP) to provide reverb and other basic effects. To be honest, the sound quality of the LDSP wasn’t very good, and previous Yamaha arrangers were very limited when it comes to effect editing, as, at most, it was only possible to set the effect send level for each channel, but the user couldn’t edit the parameters of the effect algorithm itself (for instance, the delay time in a delay effect).
The PSR-7000 uses instead the HD62098 chip (known as MEG or “Multiple Effect Generator”), which provides three different independent effects processor: reverb (16 types), chorus (10 types, including flanger) and “DSP effect” (56 types, including many different effects such as reverb, chorus, flanger, tremolo, autopan, delay, phaser, rotary speaker, distortion/overdrive, amplifier simulator, wah, pitch shift, compressor, etc.). Not only there are many more, but they sound noticeably better (they are of truly professional quality at that time), and, most importantly, they are much more editable or configurable. Each single effect algorithm has up to 16 different parameters, although most of them are only accessible through MIDI sysex (System Exclusive) commands, and the control panel usually allows access to three, four or five parameters, although this is much more than what it was possible before. If we take, for instance, the “Delay L,R” effect algorithm, the following parameters are editable: 1) L channel delay time; 2) R channel delay time; 3) Feedback delay 1; 4) Feedback delay 2; 5) Feedback level; 6) High damp; 7) Dry/Wet balance; 8) HPF cutoff; 9) LPF cutoff; 10) EQ Low frequency; 11) EQ Low gain; 12) EQ High frequency; and 13) EQ High gain. From the panel, though, only 5 parameters are accessible.
Moreover, in previous models it wasn’t possible to do any kind of sound output equalization from the keyboard itself, having to use external equipment, such a mixer or an external processor, to do that, but the PSR-7000 also includes a dedicated digital equalizer (independent from the rest of effects processors) to shape the overall sound.
What about the sounds?
Although it’s clear that the PSR-7000 is technically superior to its predecessors, this wouldn’t automatically imply that it has better sounds. As already stated, the waveform ROM memory is of 8 Mb, which it’s just 2 Mb more than the PSR-5700 and PSR-6000. And, since the number of preset voices is much higher and they all share the same wave set, it’s not evident that the sounds have to be better than before. In fact, many of the presets sound very similar to the PSR-6000, and makes me suspect that many of the PSR-5700/6000 waveforms are also included in the PSR-7000. The grand piano voice is a good example of this, as it sounds quite good and similar to the previous models (but not better). Fortunately, other categories receive a good update, such as electric pianos (which were rather poor in all previous Yamahas). Of course, there are quite a lot of new sounds, although a careful listening reveals that many of them are actually based on the same waveforms. Anyway, the more sophisticated synthesis engine, with up to 4 elements, and the much enhanced effects, make the PSR-7000 sound superior to the PSR-6000 and previous models (as expected, BTW). Electric guitars, for example, thanks to the new DSP effects processor and the algorithms for overdrive, distortion and amplifier simulator, among others, although still far from good, now can sound more convincing and much less cheesy or fake than before.
There are, on the other hand, some changes in the organization of voices, that actually resembles the past times of the PS-6100 and the PSR-6300. On those old animals, there were separate “upper”, “lower” and “solo” sections, each one with its own sound palette. The PSR-7000 brings the concept back to life, and there are different voice selectors for “right orchestra” (which in fact comprises “right 1” and “right 2” voices, with 246 presets), “left orchestra” (205 presets), “organ flute” (18 presets) and “lead” (126 presets), which, like the ancient “solo”, is monophonic (noooooo!!!). You can stack up to 3 parts for the right hand (R1, R2 and lead) and split them with another voice for the left hand. The organ flute cannot be combined with either the right and/or the lead voices, but can be split with a lower voice for the left hand.
A really good point of the PSR-7000 is that it includes a proper and comprehensive synthesizer section. Previously, only the PSR-6700 had a synthesizer section which allowed to tweak (almost) all the elements and parameters of the voices, including the basic ones: the oscillators (waveforms). But as far as the synthesis engine of the SWP20 (PSR-7000) is much more sophisticated than that of the GEW5 chip (PSR-6700), you have access to many more parameters, allowing for more flexibility and creativity. For instance, while the GEW5 didn’t have filters, in the PSR-7000 you can edit not only the cutoff frequency and the resonance level of the filter of each element (up to 4), but also the envelope (which has 6 stages!). Of course, there are parameters for the pitch, the amplitude envelope, the LFO, the controllers (remember that this keyboard has also aftertouch), effect sends, and so on. In sum, the PSR-7000 is not only an arranger, but a synthesizer in its own right. It would be greatly advisable that Yamaha included a list of the waveform oscillators in the user manual, as there are several hundred and it is very tedious to scroll through the list searching for the proper wave to build up a voice. Another annoying aspect is that every time you select a different wave, all the other parameters (filter envelope, LFO and so on) are reset, and it’s not possible just to listen how the voice would like just with another waveforms, without having to re-edit all the other parameters.
It’s remarkable, on the other hand, that you can select not only a ROM waveform as an oscillator, but also a custom one from disk. Sadly, this is more a theoretical possibility than a real option. After a quite in-depth research, I’ve been totally unable to determine the required sample format. Certainly, it’s not WAV or any other of the most usual ones. Probably it’s a proprietary format from Yamaha. The only source of new waveforms I’ve been able to find are the almost impossible to obtain special floppies that Yamaha (supposedly) released; according to the manual, there were 18 packs released, with weird reference codes such as “EMS PK27Sxxx” (where ‘xxx’ stands for a number between 001 and 014) and “SP-27xxYE” (where ‘xx’ stands for a number between 01 and 05). I haven’t found any of those floppies even in the second-hand market.
Here there are some examples of the voices of the PSR-7000 (some of them have some edition of the effects):
And a couple of the factory demos:
The Styles: a step backwards?
The core feature that makes a keyboard to be an arranger is the realtime accompaniments or ‘styles’. In theory, the better the arranger, the better the styles. Following this logic, the styles of the PSR-7000 should be better than those of the previous models. But is that really so?
On the one hand, there is an important increase in the number of styles, from 51 in the PSR-6000 to over 120 in the PSR-7000. As usual, all of them have two intros, two endings, and different variations and fill-in patterns. On the other hand, though, since the PSR-5700 (including the PSR-SQ16 and the PSR-6000), all the flagship models had at least four different sections, namely to “verses” and two “chorus”, plus a “solo” section in the PSR-5700 and PSR-6000. In the PSR-7000 there are instead only two variations, called “main A” and “main B”. The “solo” section is gone, and honestly this makes sense, as its utility was quite dubious, but going from 4 different sections per style to only two seems a step backwards. At least, the styles benefit from the enhanced sounds and effects, and, for the first time, there’s a new full keyboard chord recognition method. It’s quite surprising that, while being only two variations per style, there are four “OTS” (One Touch Setting). Also, the odd “Interactive Accompaniment” (IA) function of the PSR-5700/6000 is gone, but honestly, I don’t regard this as a great loss 😉.
To be fair, there are also some relevant improvements, such as the “Style Revoice”. At last, the user can freely select the voices for each single part of the accompaniment style, to get more flexibility, or simply to adapt the style to her own taste.
Here there are few examples of some of the styles of the PSR-7000:
Other Features and Functions
The PSR-7000 might seem quite limited and dated by today’s standards, but when it was released it included several minor (and not so minor) enhancements and new features compared to the previous models, to the extent that it could be considered as a new concept of keyboard, closer to what nowadays we could consider as an “arranger workstation”. The inclusion of not only a floppy drive, but also a hard drive (although as a factory option only, though, because it’s quite difficult for the user to add a hard drive, as it requires opening the whole lower part of the case), allows for a massive storage of songs, voices, styles, OTS, registrations and so on, right at hand, without having to mess with slow and unreliable floppies. The microphone input with effects is very suitable for performing live on stage, going beyond the “home keyboard” concept.
Other minor enhancements include more polyphony (64 voices), aftertouch, 16-track sequencer (the PSR-5700 and PSR-6000 had just 8 tracks), memory for external samples (although almost unusable in practice), a great increase in the total number of registrations (128, when the PSR-6000 had just 32), and a better amplification and speaker system (2 * 20 Watts, two-way speakers with 16 cm woofers). The PSR-7000 can sound really loud, although low frequencies are not as good as the size of the speakers and the speaker cabinets might suggest.
IMHO, perhaps the greatest drawback of the PSR-7000 is that despite the fact that it has all the technology (and probably also the waveforms) of the “new” Yamaha’s XG MIDI standard, the keyboard is not XG compatible. This is a pity because it cannot benefit from the thousands of XG-compatible MIDI files and the tons of editors and software for this standard. Instead, all the settings and adjustments must be done manually from the panel, and this is quite boring and annoying. It makes also harder to use the keyboard for sequencing in a DAW.
Here there are some examples of MIDI sequencing with the PSR-7000:
Verdict
The PSR-7000 is a relevant step forward in the line of Yamaha’s arranger keyboards, with new features that clearly lean towards the concept of an “arranger workstation”. It could have been even better with more waveform ROM memory and more complex 4-section styles, though. It’s a shame that it’s not compatible with the XG standard.
Pros:
· New enhanced sound generation and great quality DSP effects
· Greater polyphony
· Several other enhancements such as hard drive, sample memory, microphone input w/effects, aftertouch, a better sequencer, etc.
Cons:
· Accompaniment styles have only two sections
· The amplification system is powerful but lacks a bit of bass
· Disappointingly, it is NOT compatible with the XG standard
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