A few Yamaha EX5R performances 

Absolutely !!! a Bladerunner's heaven :-))

Oh yeah!!!

As a big Vangelis fan this patch made me buy my EX5R

Indeed so. Truly divine!!

It comes from the Yamaha CS80.

Yeah that was one of my favorite patches when I owned this. I plan to buy one again someday. I now own a JX3P and Yamaha SY-77 but the EX is unreal. Warmest filters you'll ever hear on a digital synth

@@capferrat6058 NO JX3P here but very glad i have a TG-77 and a EX5R, great combi together with two analog Deepmind 12 modules and two digital JD-800 synths :-))

It comes from the Yamaha CS80.

+Dave Kuhn Absolutely true. The EX5 is a gem. I use it very often, first choice for pad sounds and I will never ever sell it. Cheers from Berlin ♫

Im Looking For An EX5 NOW

One of the best things Yamaha made. Both the EX-5 and EX-5r

I read that the AN1X is polyphonic and the EX5R has only a monophonic version of the VA...I hope that I am just repeating another baseless internet rumour

EX5 does AN1 stuff polyphonically - it's just monophonic with VA sounds which the AN1 doesn't even have - so apples and oranges

Thank you

I would like info on the swap..thanks

Yes I just bought another EX5 on eBay. I bought one new back in the day but that one had a sad and tragic ending. It was stolen from the club I played two weeks after I bought it and found smashed in the alley behind the club, beaten to bits. I basically knew who did it. Being the savage hot head that I was back in those days, I found the miserable drunk that did it and beat him within an inch of his life with a tire iron. Not really so much that way these days :) I've got about 20 days before my EX5 arrives from Japan but it is WELL worth the wait. Being that it is from Japan though, I had to buy a step down transformer to convert 120 to 100v

Cool - does it use a CF/SCSI converter so you can use flash cards?

I love the sound of my Motif ES8 (I think it's far from plasticky and sterile) but I'm planning on getting the EX5 once I have the money soon. It sounds like the perfect companion to my ES, Trinity, and JD-990 - totally unique from all of those... though it does have the same clarity and beauty of the 990! It's really hard to find synths that sound *this* pretty.

thanks

Or own both!! (in my case) EX is a very special multi-engined synth, still love & using it!! 😉🎹🎵🍻

+Ave Mcree (CeeMurda DaBasedgod) Down, W5/ W7; up, any of the Motif racks. I might actually sell my EX5R on eBay soon.

+Ave Mcree (CeeMurda DaBasedgod) cs6r or s30 or s80. or any motif

SynthMania hmm you got me interested Ive actually video blog about your channel alot lol. matter of fact Ive actually bought rack based soley off your video like the trinity rack and the JV1080

+SynthMania How is a Motif a step up from this? They dropped FDSP, AN, and VL synthesis on the Motif and turned it into a run-of-the-mill rompler. I got my EX5 with full flash memory and RAM and a Zip drive (lol) for $350 Canadian and I can't imagine selling it. The only downside is that it's a "limited edition" so it's nasty silver plastic. There's one for sale in Toronto for $1000, and has been for like a year if anyone's interested.

+Poindexter Frink True, they dropped the extra synthesis methods, but it's also true that for sampled sounds, a Motif XF in Performance mode sounds pretty darn great compared to a synth from 1998 like the EX5.

+gallen ar Personally I wouldn't make such a drastic statement. There are great things on both the EX and the Motif line.

+SynthMania i have a Motif Rack (1st version) and an EX5R, and can definitely say that the EX5R is a more unique and interesting instrument. The Motif has a lot of great Bread and Butter sounds and better polyphony. But the pads on the EX5R are unique and stunning and the physical modelling really makes a difference on the brass and analog synth sounds. I'm glad that I have both, but I'd get rid of the Motif first (if I had to), as it isn't nearly so distinctive and powerful. The Trinity Rack or Fantom XR could easily replace the Motif, but not the EX5R. The EX5R is still underrated, and many of the DSP effects like the "underwater" sounds are hard to copy even today.

+geoffk777 Totally agree! Nothing beats the EX5 pad sounds. I often try to use other sounds but always find myself coming back to "Warmer" - the ultimate pad sound imho :-)

I have also the feeling that dx7, sy77, and ex5 sound better than later offerings. I am after another one for my strings and pads... (i had a tx802 for a while)... would you recommend sy/tg77, or better to chase a ex5 ?

I'd say go for an EX5 and an SY 99, both are great sounding instruments and will always be.

So I suppose your EX5 is much smaller then the rack now ? :-))

Yeah but you need the face/control area anyhow....

@@deauvillevrienden There's the little issue of the 76-key keyboard...

Heavy as fuck too for some reason. I guess the metal casing alone

Stupid me, after reading all the comments here I just find out that the "Celebration" patch on 6:33 is a factory performance sadly overlooked by this ignorent guy :-o I layered it with a performance "Abyss of the Sea" from my MOX6 and Vangelis heaven begins

+Jörgen Fredrikssen Thank you, these are the stock performance patches on the machine, if you don't have them you can easily reinstate them from the factory disks

@@SynthManiaDotCom Could you advice me where could I find for downloading the files from the factory disks?? Thanks,

+kurokuragawa I was just improvising, however it's a typical Italo style sound - like Spagna

thank you for your reply

+kurokuragawa 1:34-1:53 That got an upvote, catchy tune.

Same technology

Yamaha in general had the best presets IMO. I feel like Roland had the worst - they just had a thousand variations of the same sound. Korg was also good before the bland Triton (Trinity comes to mind).

It really depends. Pure synth units often have big sounds to show them off. Something like the EX5 was aimed more at players, hence the huge keybed, multiple expression wheels etc.

This EX5R is one of the few pieces of equipment that I bought brand new when it came out (I usually buy used or a long time after they come out, for bang for the buck). The EX series was fantastic when it came out (still is). Wow, it's already been twenty years

Google "yamaha ex5 factory disks". Third result in page.

+Larry Wilson personally own the trinity rack and I don't think its on the same level as this. No arps (though I can just set my midi options in FL studio to do that) and it lacks in my opinionated taste for synths. Its great in everything else though

+Ave Mcree (CeeMurda DaBasedgod) I have a Trinity Rack (two, in fact) and an EX5R and they sound very different. I really love them both, though. The arpeggiator on the Trinity is nice, and, if you get a MOSS board and expansion ROMs, it can do some unique sounds of its own. It still doesn't sound like an EX5R though--nothing else really does.

the motif doesn't compare to the EX5 - yamaha took a wrong turn somewhere

​@@antigen4 Was well chuffed when I bought my (now named 'Classic') Motif 7 back in 2001, couldn't have been happier ... until I found out about the EX5/r predecessor which had just been pulled by Yamaha 😭 Gutted.. The Motif is not a patch on this utterly brilliant all-bases covered synth. I truly believe they threw all of their latest future tech at it (remember it was bottomless wallet time end of 80's then for R&D spend) and then realised they had nowhere to go technically, so reigned in spec on Motif with optional expansion boards for each technology ie. AN, VL, FM, to get the $$$ in. Imagine they lost money on the EX launch. Finally sold up the '7 and hunted around for the EX5 board, which I actually drove about 100+ miles to collect. Replaced since by the rack, now fully loaded with every mod possible - never selling this beaut!! 😁👍🎹

@@theaudioeng No FM tho...i just ordered one on Eday.Used to have one years ago.

Did you buy it? Lol

@@fnonaka No.

Thank you, I did the military service in Pistoia (183mo Nembo) --- The sample part of the A4000 will be similar, but you won't have the other types of synthesis which were unique to that workstation... but if you add some good FX it will definitely sound good - although personally I used to own an A4000 back in those days when it came out, and sold it because the SCSI transmission was slow.

@@SynthManiaDotCom Thank You! The 183 Nembo Is still there and It was in piazza del Duomo ten days ago for celebration with the inhabitants! I don't know if the EX5 has the same editing Power but I have read that we could use a fast memory card adapter instead the old slow peripherals. I have to purchase one! If You come here for the next Nembo celebration tell me here, let's meet and have a beer!! Ciao!

These are the factory performances, apparently. You can still download them. There's not much point in me trying to say where from, because my comment would get deleted, but they're still out there.

Look for: Yamaha EX5 Factory Demo Disks (4 disk set)

Google "yamaha ex5 factory disks". Third result in page.

@@SynthManiaDotCom Found it, thanks a lot.

You're welcome.

Yes. Same patches and firmware ROMs, in both. Some of the names of the patches were changed, in later firmware versions, for legal reasons, but they're still the same sounds. Look for the EX5/5R Data List, to get a list of them and the full MIDI spec details.

Love it

Yes, the EX5 and EX5R have the same sounds, and even the same firmware ROMs. Look for the EX5 / 5R DATA LIST. At some point they changed the names of some of the sounds / patches, for legal reasons, so it depends which firmware version you get how some of them are named, but they're the same. There are different editions of that data list. I've found the 2nd and 3rd editions, so far.

Mmmmhhh, I am afraid that It will be maybe in several years, as for the Dx7. Some good souls made a free software replica for Virus synths, no ROM's but You can find on the web. For same copyright issues It would take a loooot, I am afraid....

I bought this in 1999, so almost the year 2000.