Synth Site |  Yamaha |  AN-1X

A disk drive would be nice for storing voices because you could load and reload whole banks of sounds quickly rather than depnd on a sequencer. A dedicated midi recorder would make this an ideal traveling synth.

The real great feature on this synth is the control panel. You can assign the eight knobs to control aspects of the synth engine. There are 3 main synth sections: VCO, MIX/VCF and VCA as well as the Effects section.

You can ync the VC0s and create FM sounds, Ring modulation and more.

Many parameters can be controlled in real time.

Negatives: Sounds cut off when they change. This is really disappointing for many types of music.

Small display. This should be bigger and better.

Lack of user Arpeggiator styles or patterns. The sequences seem rather lacking in appeal.

Poor MIDI setup. The arpeggiator does not work if I have a MIDI In connected. The arpeggitor is supposed to be sent on a different channel but seems to be linked to the source sounds on the AN1X. You neeed to send the arpeggiator output by itself to another midi module without playing the AN1X. Otherwise you end up with the arpeggiator output embedded in the AN1X voice midi track.

Best use for this synth is to record the output to MIDI, edit the track(s) and playback sending the line out into your audio sequencer or hard dsik recording device. You can soon build up masive layers of complex sounds and control the EQ in real time if you choose. Record everything to midi on one computer and playback to an audio recorder or other computer with audio tracks. remember to mute previous tracks before recording the current one via midi.

MIDI playback on my setup was not eactly as it sounded when I recorded it. The movement of the knobs as you record is supposed to be sent out as MIDI data but plaayback seems different to me for some sounds. I think you need to reset a voice by selecting it after you stop recording midi data. rewind the sequencer and then select the voice again by selecting the next voice and then re-select the voice you want to start playing back the sequence.

You could change voices during a sequence but you would need to wait for a quiet passage as the sound chop off the previous sound. This would not be a problem for short sounds like persussion or bass perhaps.

The sounds are excellent and can easiy be modified and stored. You could program 256 different sounds using both scenes within each voice as a unique sound. This would be silly as you could load new banks from your sequencer.

There are templates for basc sound creation. You can copy parts of sounds from one voice to another.

There is a 4 track free form generator for each voice as well. This will record your control movements for four aspects of the sound.

Each voice stores every feature such as the arpeggiator pattern, efects settings and so forth. This is a great aspect of this synth.

There are many great fetures to explore and you can spend hours just playing with the controls. After 2 weeks I have yet to explore the effects in depth because I m too busy playing the sounds.

There is a noise generator for percussive sounds and wind / breath type sounds.

The overall impression for this synth is that it has great sound and a flexible and powerful synth generation engine. It is like a modular synth without all the wires but with great memory facilities and digitl stability. The analog type feel of the sounds is truly amazing.