The

Yamaha Yamaha may refer to: * Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, established in 1887. The company is the largest shareholder of Yamaha Motor Company (below). ** Yamaha Music Foundation, an organization estab ...

''Music Synthesizer'' S90 is a

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

and a

MIDI controller A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They mos ...

in one unit, released in 2002 to supersede the S80. As such, it is part of the S series together with the S03 and S08. It was superseded by the S90ES in 2005, itself superseded by the S90XS in 2009.

Overall features

Keyboard

The S90 provides 88 fully weighted keys, the number equivalent to a standard

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

, emulating the pianistic mechanism.S90 – Products – Yamahasynth.com
/ref> The keyboard naturally provides initial touch, but also

aftertouch Keyboard expression is the ability of a keyboard instrument, keyboard musical instrument to change tone or other qualities of the sound in response to velocity, pressure or other variations in how the performer depresses the keys of the musical k ...

response and has a 64-note

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

with 16

multitimbral Monotimbral (from the root prefix ''mono'' meaning one, and ''timbre'' meaning a specific tone of a sound independent of its pitch) is usually used in reference to electronic synthesizers which can produce a single timbre at a given pitch when pre ...

parts providing a maximum of 4 performance parts.

Presets

There are 384 normal (e.g. instrumental) presets and 48 drum kits. The S90 also includes standard GM presets. User presets are 128 normal and 16 drum kits. Presets may be expanded through up to three plug-in boards allowing a bank of 64 presets for each plug-in slot.

Expandability and memory slot

The S90 can be expanded through plug-in boards at three plug-in slots, thus providing additional presets, polyphony, effects and synthesizer functionality. Also, a memory slot is included for

SmartMedia SmartMedia is an obsolete flash memory, flash memory card standard owned by Toshiba, with capacities ranging from 2 MB to 128 MB. The format mostly saw application in the early 2000s in digital cameras and audio production. SmartMedia m ...

(3.3 V) cards up to 128 MB.

Physical appearance

Visual description

The S90 is a large black synthesizer with brown side panels and might give the impression of a digital synthesizer with its green display. 71 push buttons are distributed across the front panel, save for the power switch on the back. Pitch bend and modulation wheels are placed above the keyboard aligned to the left.

Measurements

''Metric ( SI)''
Dimensions (mm): 1,357 (W) × 386 (D) × 163 (H)
Weight (kg): 23.0 ''Imperial, English, United States customary, etc.''
Weight (lbs.): 51
Dimensions (inches): 53 3 /8" (W) × 15 1 /8" (D) × 6 3 /8" (H)

Panels and connectors

''Front Panel''
The front panel features a standard setup of a

pitch bend In electronic music, a pitch wheel, pitch bend or bender is a control on a synthesizer to vary the pitch in a continuously variable manner (portamento). The first synthesizer with a pitch wheel was the Minimoog, in 1970. Alternatively, pitch ben ...

wheel, a

modulation In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a periodic waveform, called the ''carrier signal'', with a separate signal called the ''modulation signal'' that typically contains informatio ...

wheel and a master volume slider. In addition there are four assignable control sliders and one 'rotary encoder'. The display is a 240 × 64 dot graphic backlit LCD. ''Back Panel''
Output: L/mono, R ( 1 /4" Jacks)
Assignable output: L, R ( 1 /4" Jacks)
Master Equalizer (5 bands)
Phones ( Stereo 1 /4" Jack)
2 × Foot controller
2 × Foot switch: Assignable, Sustain
Breath
MIDI IN
MIDI OUT
MIDI THRU
USB
ACINLET

Sound generation and effects

The synthesizer uses AWM2, a " Modular Synthesis Plug-in System" and 21 types of filter. Table 1 shows an overview of the S90 factory effects. ''Table 1. List of Onboard effects'' ¹ available for Performance/Song mode

References

External links

SNinety.com

S90 Forum
{{Yamaha S90 Polyphonic synthesizers Digital synthesizers