Yamaha’s Genos2 Story – Behind the scene video is now available on Youtube.

As you might expect, it’s a combination of useful, factual information and sales puffery. So, here is my summary of the actual informational content minus marketing B.S. 🙂

00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:04 Martin Harris, R&D Center London
00:03:41 Junichiro Murata, DMI Strategy Planning Group
00:05:25 Stefano Ivan Scarascia, Design Laboratory
00:06:20 Yoshiyuki Hirai, Mechanical Design Group
00:07:53 Ryuichi Izumi, Mechanical Design Group
00:08:29 Tomoya Michiba, Hardware Design Group
00:10:00 Martin Harris, R&D Center London
00:12:45 Kyoko Ohno, Sound Design Group
00:16:08 Taichi Hiyama, Sound Design Group
00:19:19 Ending

R&D Center London is an extension of the Sound Design Group in Japan.

The sound development process is roughly:

• Planning which instruments and their playing techniques to develop
• Sampling using different microphones and articulations
• Mix-down from the different microphones
• Denoise the samples
• Loop the samples
• Map the samples to the keyboard
• Sound design (tweak voice parameters, add DSP effects, etc.)

New samples in Genos2: pianos, electric pianos, brass, tuned percussion, orchestral percussion and more. More layers, longer time before a loop.

Genos2 adds Style Dynamic Control: Full energy control over auto-accompaniment. Dynamically adjusts both velocity and volume.

Tilted the main screen to improve visibility by the user. Mitigate sun glare using anti-reflective film. Added LED lights to see the slider position on a dark stage. 360-degree rotating knobs use the set values as the starting point for control. Slider catch function to prevent jumps in value.

Industrial design: Try to adhere to the graceful lines of the original design. Increase visibility of the main screen and subdisplay.

Different shapes and coatings. Increase quality. The biggest problem in mechanical design is to accommodate the protrusions on the upper case (necessitated by the tilted displays). The case is created using two large molds. The top and bottom must be carefully aligned.

The LED lenses are designed to minimize light loss. The lens shape is optimized on the order of 0.1mm and allows light to disperse efficiently.

Electronic design of the audio output required a lot of experimentation. They tried so many different components, they wore out (broke) the PCB! The goal is to present the internal waveforms faithfully without distortion (good trackability). Designs are evaluated by listening and electrical analysis. Listening was performed in venues of different sized. Genos2 includes an USB audio interface.

FM synthesis adds dynamic capabilities. FM has seemless dynamic curve.

When the Yamaha LSI (SWP70) was designed, they wanted multi-timbral tone generation using both AWM and FM voices together to generate sounds.

Super Articulation and Super Articulation 2. SA2 voices use Articulation Element Modeling (AEM) tone generation. [SA2 demonstration] The SA2 voices were almost all recorded in Japan. To honor Japan, the team added Shakuhachi. The acoustic instrument tone seems to be constantly in motion, posing a challenge for sound design. You need to leave the original instruments flavor in the voice without making it intrusive.

Every waveform is evaluated for quality (technical check): presence of noise in the waveform or deficiencies in timbre, style, or voice parameters. Then, the waveform is evaluated musically, i.e., is the processed waveform musically natural? The behavior of an instrument must be realistically reproduced. Finally, there is a consistency check: Do the timbre and style data work together consistently.

Sound designers consider the musical genres to be played. A voice must perform musically whether its played by a musician or an auto-accompaniment style — even when the musician uses the voice in an unexpected way. Playing techniques are taken into consideration to determine the articulates to be sampled.

Genos2 waveform memory is big. It allows all 88 piano notes to be sampled. A little bit of noise in each note adds realism.

The new Genos2 drum samples leave more atmospheric components (a kind of noise) in the sound. A key decision is how much “noise” to leave in.

Copyright © 2023 Paul J. Drongowski

Key features:

• Steinberg’s REVelation reverb
• Over 1900 voices
• Over 800 styles
• Style dynamics control
• Ambient drums
• FM synthesis
• Three assignable buttons (above the 3 articulation buttons)
• Updated playlist features and interface
• Bluetooth audio
• Support by Rec’N’Share app
• HDMI port
• Front panel buttons for Chord Looper
• MIDI song to style converter (computer-based application)

Let’s get the bad news over first: $6,599 USD (MSRP), $5,700 (MAP).

Style dynamics control: Increase the energy and dynamics of each style section in real-time by turning a knob. Instrument parts may be added or subtracted by the player with a single gesture. This is similar to the Adaptive Style idea (DGX-670) except the player has explicit control over the busy-ness of the auto-accompaniment.

Ambient drums: Use a live control to adjust the microphone distance from the drums. This adjusts the dry and ambient sound in real-time. The drum sounds have recorded drum ambience.

FM synthesis: Genos2 has both AWM2 and FM synthesis. Yamaha finally unlocked the FM engine in the SWP70! Genos sound designers are still on a 1980’s kick begun in Genos (gen 1). Now we get all of the DX7 classic sounds with real FM. And, of course, layered with anything and everything else.

Styles: Over 200 styles are brand new employing the new voices and dynamic drums. More 80’s: Throwback Pop, 80’s Sunday Pop, 80’s Funky Soul, 80’s Love Song, 80’s Soft Rock, 80’s Dance Pop, 90’s Dream House, Broadway Production, Action Anthem. The 80’s Funky Soul style is cool — especially if the unnecessary orchestration is backed out. Oh, no, more Schlager, but Yamaha do know who butters their bread!

Yamaha have finally improved style creation with the MIDI song to style converter application. I’ll have to take a closer look at this! 🙂 This application lets the user select the measures which are mapped to MAIN, FILL IN, and so forth. It’s about time.

Pianos: The CFX has more dynamic (velocity) layers. A brand new 80’s played-in, “German” character piano. The U1 upright has been updated. Genos2 adds more ethnic instruments, to pursue global sales, no doubt.

New voices: These new voices include Shakuhachi, nylon guitar, pop brass, orchestral brass, steel drums. Martin Harris handled the live stream demos — all very nice and well-played! I’m sure the golden agers are all digging the 90’s “four on the floor.”

There is a new Yamaha web site dedicated to Genos2. What is the URL???

Don’t forget to accessorize. Genos2 is going to maintain backward compatibility to Genos (gen 1). Customers get a five year extended warranty after registration. There are two new Genos2-focused expansion packs: DX7 pack and Genos complete pack. The complete pack contains Genos (gen 1) styles and voices not included in Genos2.

Comments and outstanding questions

I must give credit to Yamaha for re-working the Genos2 Owner’s Manual. The illustrations and descriptions are much improved. Good work! More vendors should pay attention to written documentation. [I’m talking to you, Hammond Suzuki.]

The other bad news for organ-punters like me — Genos2 did not get the new rotary speaker simulator. Genos2 is the same as Genos (gen 1) as far as B-3 organ is concerned.

The screen is tilted, but not tilt-able. The display is touted as “brighter and anti-reflective.”

Yamaha upgraded the CFX piano, but did not give Genos2 Virtual Resonance Modeling. In other words, Yamaha have once again maintained their product line silos. No cannibalization from Clavinova is allowed! The Genos piano collection is good: CFX, character grand, cinematic grand, felt piano, C7, U3 upright, and U1 upright. Still, not as good as Montage M. I love that felt piano, BTW.

The triple pedal is not supported. The Genos2 accessories include the FC4A sustain pedal which does not support half-pedaling. So, I doubt if Genos2 itself supports half-pedaling. The mystery back panel connector is for a subwoofer.

The new FM and ambient voices are described thus:

FM Voices: Characterized by dynamic changes in sound that cannot be achieved with PCM sound sources, since this is using a FM tone generator that is synthetic sound sources.

Ambient Drums, Ambient SFX Voices: Provides realistic and lively drum sounds that are difficult to achieve with DSP effects. When these Voices are used in a selected Style, you can adjust the ratio of wet (reverberant sound) and dry (unprocessed sound) sound in real time by using the Live Control knob/slider to which “Ambience Depth” is assigned.

As to slider behavior:

An LED meter on the right side of each slider displays the current value of the parameter corresponding to the slider, in the current Slider Assign Type. When any slider is operated, LIVE CONTROL view automatically displays the current Slider Assign Type and current values. When the slider’s position and the current parameter value are different, the current parameter value will be held until the slider’s position matches (catches) the value. Once they have matched, the slider’s position will be reflected to the parameter. When additional Slider Assign Types for Organ Flutes Voice are selected, the “catch” behavior described above does not apply and the slider position is always directly reflected.

The Genos2 Data List downloaded as a ZIP file containing an XLS file. What the what? And what is the bloomin’ URL for the Genos2 Web site?

The Yamaha USA site has Genos2 product pages.

Key Genos2 specifications

• Keyboard: 76 key, Organ (FSX), Initial Touch/Aftertouch
• Main display: TFT Color Wide VGA LCD, 800 × 480 dots, 9 inch
• Sub display: VA LCD (LIVE CONTROL View), 512 × 48 dots
• Polyphony: 128 for Preset AWM Voices + 128 for Expansion AWM Voices + 128 for FM Voices
• Voices: 1,991 Voices + 75 Drum/SFX Kits
• Styles: 800 (720 Pro, 69 Session, 11 Free Play)
• Expansion voice memory: Approx. 3 GB
• Internal memory (USER Drive): Approx. 15 GB
• HDMI display: 1280 × 720p max.
• Dimensions (W × D × H): 1,234 mm × 456 mm × 151 mm (48-9/16″ × 17-15/16″ × 5-15/16″)
• Weight 14.2 kg (31 lb, 5 oz)

Copyright © 2023 Paul J. Drongowski