The design is great. Insane all that it offers, even things unique to this type of synth...especially for the price. Love that there's no screen but quick access. it's not to small but perfect for the built iin speaker. The midi & sync controls are exactly what I need. Velocity! Didn't know that till now.
My big WISHLIST is that Liven supported an SSD card, or USB stick to do data storage. It's a bit furonic to use SYS X, which strongly implies a computer, which this device is fairiy independent of. So to HAVE to save/backup/load (especially with samples on Liven Lofi12) via sys-x over midi, instead of via some sort of removable memory card, is a little weird IMHO ;-) As you have USB on it already, maybe you can add a MODE to the USB port for data storage (Roland do this on one of theirs). SO adding a removeable storage device of some kind, wold really revolutionise the Liven's for me...
FM groovebox... Yamaha manufactured few, with subtractive filters too. While browsing the Liven's XFM manual I found it qute simillar to RefaceDX. ReDX is a kind of, "Make FM synth friendly" too, but I miss some features of classic DXs. Talking about reDX audio qualities... it's definitely 21st century. Hope Liven XFM can sound better than it's gamebox demos.
Sysex has nothing do to with midi really just means system exclusive and is just systematic changes to a particular system. Can use a midi cable to do it sure but sysex is just sysex. NRPN does use midi and is a just form of CC. A normal control change message has a resolution of 128 steps, a NRPN has a resolution of 16384 steps. That is what dude should have said about NRPN. Anyhow.. Not that important...XFM is gonna be sick. New FM architecture to explore! :-D and if yall need some midi work done we are for hire. Lol
Their Malaysia factory has to operate at reduced capacity because of covid lockdowns. If you click around in the Liven XFM page on sonicware's site, they do weekly updates about the situation and progress. As of this week's update, they expect to start shipping out first round at the end of June, and plan to ship second round immediately after.
