Yamaha CS6X and plg150 AN board

[corndogssg]

I have a cs6x with a plg 150 an board in it. I read that it is basically half of an anx1 board so I am wondering if adding a 2nd an expansion board will give you a full fledged anx1 keyboard inside your cs6x or will it simply be a waste of the 2nd expansion slot???

[rob_lee]

I have a cs6x with a plg 150 an board in it. I read that it is basically half of an anx1 board so I am wondering if adding a 2nd an expansion board will give you a full fledged anx1 keyboard inside your cs6x or will it simply be a waste of the 2nd expansion slot???

I have that board in my CS6X but never really had it out the box for a year or so but here's a bit about it below, think i'll dig mine out of storage its a great synth and better with the plg 150an.
Features

PLG150-AN – Analog Physical Modeling Plug-in Board

Reproduce the fat and resonant sounds of vintage analog synthesizers. This board gives you a synth engine similar to the one featured in Yamaha's amazing AN1x analog physical modeling synthesizer. It provides a full array of classic synthesizer components, including fat resonant filters, LFOs, oscillator sync and FM, as well as distortion, 3-band EQ, arpeggiator and step sequencer. For even more expressive synthesis control, it features a powerful "morphing" function and programmable envelope generator with which you can freely draw your own custom envelopes for various parameters. With the PLG150-AN, creating the classic analog strings, brass and bass sounds of the '70s and '80s is incredibly easy, making it the ideal plug-in board for producers of contemporary pop/rock music or modern electronic dance music.

What is the Modular Synthesis Plug-in System?

Powerful Expansion Boards That:
Expand your sound generation capabilities
Increase your available polyphony
Give you more multitimbral parts and effects
Can be controlled from the host keyboard
Come bundled with PC software for detailed voice editing

Once a plug-in board is installed, you can directly access any of its voices and edit them from the front panel of the host synthesizer. You can also use a PC-based software editor (bundled with each plug-in board) to edit any of the voices in detail. Many voice parameters can be controlled by a MIDI sequencer, which enables you to record realtime edits, such as filter cutoff frequency and effect levels, for automated voice transformation during playback.

With the Modular Synthesis Plug-in System, you can customize your Yamaha synthesizer with the exact synthesis or processing power you need … whenever you need it.

Note: Bundled editors are software plug-ins developed for XGworks sequencing software (Windows 95/98.

Offering new synthesis possibilities ranging from physical modeling to FM synthesis, these high-quality plug-in boards cater to specific synthesizer needs of professional users. Each plug-in board within the PLG150 Series comes bundled with special "Plug-in Voice" data that makes full use of the exclusive features found on the S80, S30, CS6x and CS6R synthesizers.

PLG150-AN– Analog Physical Modeling Plug-in Board
PLG150-PF– Piano Plug-in Board
PLG150-DX– Advanced DX/TX Plug-in Board
PLG150-VL– Virtual Acoustic VL Plug-in Board

Note: PLG150 Series plug-in boards and the PLG100-VH and PLG100-XG plug-in boards can be installed together in any combination in the S80 or CS6x/6R. Using previously released plug-in boards (PLG100-VL and PLG-DX), however, may result in 1) loss of edited voice data when the power is off, or 2) no sound output; therefore it is recommended to install the tuned-up versions (PLG150-VL and PLG150-DX) in these synthesizers.

Specs

Voices

Tone Generation Tone Generating Technology AN (Analog Physical Modeling Synthesis)
Multi Timbral Capacity 1
Polyphony Number of Polyphony (Max.) 5
Preset Number of Voices 256 Preset 128 User

Link:

YAMAHA PLG 150 AN

Rob

[meatballfulton]

I used to own the Motif ES which could link multiple PLGs for greater polyphony (up to 3 for 15 voices max).

I'm not sure if the CS6x allows that with it's two slots, but it should be easy to find out by reading the manual.

[corndogssg]

1st off I just want to say I love your mop head pic meatball, heh. made me remember weird al's u.h.f. show with Kramer "my mop"! lol

2nd I don't have a manual for it yet, as I just got this bad boy off of ebay, so i'll be finding a pdf file for it or even buying one if it's dirt cheap, (wich btw is what I paid for my great condition cs6x board

3rd thanx for the fast feedback u guys, god I love this website, I feel like I am on the mother ship with all the rest of the synth freaks from outer space!

and lastly 4rth, wich just like in july is the best! so I got a great deal on this keyboard. I have been wanting a Yamaha keyboard for a while ( I used to own the 1st gen motif, until my x/baby mama sold it to pay for her drug debt) I have been narrowing down to 3 over the last 6 months to the an1x, the cs6x and the ex5. But after finding out about the plg150 boards I went for the cs6x I wanted the an board and was gonna get a cheap one on ebay probably by buying an an200 for cheap and yanking it out of it. well imagine how happy I was when I got my cs6x keyboard in the mail and opened it and realized it had a plg150 an board installed in it! as it wasn't even mentioned in the ebay add at all. now imagine how happy I was to unscrew the back and find out that not only did it come "free of charge" with 1 an board, but it came with 2!

this is one reason why I love ebay, people who don't know what they are selling or how to list correctly and finding kickass deals. I got this keyboard yesterday literally on my way out the door to work, so I had to wait to get home to unwrap it and start making sexy time with it, no joke I didn't sleep last night, just stayed up exploring my new cs6x/an1x hybrid synth, and now it is 3:26am and I am starting to get delirious, but the patch tweaking is seriously making it hard to go to bed (no i'm not on breaking bad tweak, just pure organic no g.m.o. synth tweak

so glad I found this cs6x board! it's not like dating identical twins but perhaps fraternal twins who are both sexy hot, and who want to compete for my masturbatory reflex skills! boooyahshocka yahmaha!! respect!!!

[meatballfulton]

Yamaha Manual Library has PDF manuals available for all of Yamaha's synth products.

Download AN Patch Editors for Windows (only).

[corndogssg]

thanx meatball!!! really man. that was mighty cool of yah

[xandertreffers]

Congrats with the CS6x - PLG150-AN combo!

I got two CS6x's and each has 2 PLG150-AN's installed.

Yes, it has use: you can link them so that you'll have 10 voice polyphony and next to that, you will have an extra bank to store CS6x PLG150-AN voices in.

In case it's your first time working with the PLG boards: the sounds from the PLG are actually similar to the WAVs of the CS6x itself and these "PLG-WAVs" can then be used as OSC in a CS6x-PLG voice. You will get 256 preset "PLG-WAVs" and will have place for 128 "PLG-WAVs" to create yourself.

Yamaha complicates it by calling these "PLG-WAVs" "Voices", as if they are Voices like you have in the CS6x preset, internal and card memory. I prefer to call them Board-Sounds.

It's all quite comlicated how it works, how you can save sounds and how you can make sure the sounds are still there when starting up the CS6x.

I just wrote something about this on another forum. I'll copy it below, Hopefully it's useful to you!

-Xander

[xandertreffers]

-------------------------------------------------------
1) BASICS
-------------------------------------------------------

See the AN Board as a board that has extra WAV data for the CS6x. You now have two type of sounds (next to the phrase clip sounds):

1) AWM Voives: the normal CS6x voices that use the WAVs from the CS6x as OSC.
2) PLG Voices: the CS6x PLG voices, which use the sounds on the PLG150-AN board as OSC.

To cause confusion, the sounds on the PLG150-AN board are also called "Voices". But try to see these "Voices" as "PLG-WAVs". They are just like the WAVs on the CS6x, only then modelled by the PLG board. I'll refer to these "PLG-WAVs" as "Board-Sounds".


-------------------------------------------------------
2) ACCESSING CS6x PLG VOICES & BOARD-SOUNDS
-------------------------------------------------------

The CS6x PLG Voices can be found by pressing PLG1/2 button, release and then and then selecting a bank/number. You'll have 64 voices, in bank A, B, C & D.

The Board-Sounds can be found by pressing and holding the PLG1/2 button. You can now choose the bank with the +/- buttons.

INTERNAL = the 64 CS6x PLG Voices
036/000 & 036/001 = PRESET Banks 1 & 2 of the PLG150-AN Board-Sounds
036/002 - USER Bank where you can save your own created PLG-150-AN Board-Sounds.

(the other banks are made from same sounds, but organized for XG use)

Changes in the USER bank will disappear when turning off the CS6x! More about this below at "SAVING SOUNDS FOR STARTUP"


-------------------------------------------------------
3) EDITING CS6x PLG VOICES & BOARD-SOUNDS
-------------------------------------------------------

The CS6x PLG Voices can be edited by selecting one and start editing. You can choose a Board-Sound to use as OSC, do some basic editing of the Board-Sound and throw CS6x effects as well as EQ's/Filters etc over it

The Board-Sounds can only be basically edited on the CS6x (or any other Yamaha synth). To do full editing you'll need to use the Expert Editor Software. You can save your edits in the 036/002 bank, but they'll be lost when turning off the CS6x


-------------------------------------------------------
4) SAVING BOARD-SOUNDS FOR START UP
-------------------------------------------------------

To make sure that the edits that you made will be there when starting up the de CS6x, you will need to use a SmartMedia Card and save a file on it that will be automatically loaded when starting up the CS6x:

Press [CARD]
Select SAVE Card
Set TYPE to "plugin"
Name your file, in root directory AUTOLD1.S2B for PLG1, or
AUTOLD2.S2B for PLG2

These will be loaded automatically by the CS6x when starting up.

I hope this explains things a bit!

[meatballfulton]

Good post, xandertreffers

The way PLG boards work inside Yamaha synths is actually linked to XG, Yamaha's extension of General MIDI. It can be daunting at first to make sense of how a PLG voice exists inside a CS6x (or Motif or whatever the host Yamaha synth is) voice.

There are 256 presets in ROM inside the PLG board and 128 RAM slots for your own sounds. The bad news is the RAM is not backed up so you have to reload it every time you turn on the CS6x, this is helped by what Yamaha calls autoload. You store the voice data on a Smart Media card inserted in the CS6x. At power-on the CS6x reads the contents and loads it into the PLG RAM for you.

Where it gets really weird is you can access the raw voices (ROM or RAM) directly, even though the manuals pretty much don't bother to explain how to do this, or you can insert them into a CS6x voice which has access to the arpeggiator, effects processors, etc. I'm not sure about the CS6x, but on a Motif you can only have 64 "PLG voices" so you can't actually point to all 384 of the patches on the board unless you do the undocumented direct access method that xandertreffers described using MSB/LSB bank numbers (036/000, 036/001, 036/002).

Editing of the PLG board's internal voices requires software, it cannot be edited at all from the host synth itself. However the CS6x "PLG Voice" can be edited although not 100%...no changing of the osc waves or programming the step sequencer for instance.

Once you understand how this all works it's a pretty cool setup but you are tethered to a computer which runs an obsolete OS for editing since the boards were discontinued almost a decade ago. Editor support stopped at Windows XP and Mac OS9 You also need a Smart Media card and these have not been made for (again) about a decade. When you see them for sale on eBay or NOS sellers the prices make no sense compared to newer memory cards, how about $78 for 128 Mb!!! Think about how many GB of SD cards you could get for $78

There were a number of other PLG boards offered, the only other one most people are interested in is the PLG150-DX, this is a complete DX7-II ...it supports the layering that was added in the mkII...and can actually load DX7 patch banks via the editor! But it has the same editor and "PLG voice" issues as the AN board.

[Percivale]

I am going to be owner of a CS6X soon. May need some guide/tips from VSE folks here

[corndogssg]

thanx to both of u guys, very helpful posts for me I gotta say!!!

yeah I have spent over 60 bucks for a 4mb smart media card for my roland jx 305 groovesynth.
for that price I can get at least a 32 gig if not a 64! kinda pisses u off, but I understand the whole not many around anymore blah blah, and at least in Yamahas wisdom they let you put up to an 8th gig card in your cs6x! roland didn't think about making there groovebox/synths hold more than a 2mb/4mb cards. although a 4 mb card could hold up to about two dozen songs using the sequencer, so in that sense it was worth it to me.

but about the plg an board, I have had it for about a month and am just in love, oh and the cs6x is a great synth too! if I didn't have 2 an boards in it I would probably grab a dx. btw if u get one of the groovebox's Yamaha makes the an200 and dx200 u can get the card out of them (usually much cheaper than the card itself, on ebay) and slap it into your Yamaha keyboard.

I say f yeah on the plg 150 boards, if your keyboard takes em, give them some thought. I am really digging my hybrid anx1,cs6x thanx to my 2 plg150 an's

[corndogssg]

oh btw my parents are getting a new computer (their current one has windows xp) I told them I don't want it, but now I am gonna tell them I do, just to have to run the editor programs

[sepiakeys]

Sorry, I did not quite understand it jet. I guess I know how to do the backup on the SM-Card, but cannot figure out how to store my pathes in the synth before doing this backup.

I have made some patches and stored them into a bank as a "AN Expert File (.ANS)" on my computer.

Performing a bulk dump from the editor to the synth or selecting a patch in the editor makes the selected voice sound in the synth, but the patch name in the display of the synth does not change (it remains to be e.g. "Metallic").

You can store 64 patches in a bank called "PLG1 INT" (which exists beside the banks "036/000 to 036/002) on the synth. But when I perform the store, the voice turns back to be the one according to the patch name in the display (e.g. "Metallic").

Can anyone help me out here?

Thanks!

[sepiakeys]

Got it!

The "AN1x Editor" from Yamaha's website does the job.

It can read ".ANS"-Files, reorganize banks, copy voices within different banks and transmit voices or banks to the PLG bank "032/002" in the synth. Much better and more functional than the standard PLG-Editor!

The "PLG INT" bank just referres to the banks "032/000" to "032/002" and only stores the edits one can do from the control panel of the synth. It does not store patches itself.

[brianmccalla]

So, the AN software, originally released under Windows 98 and ending with Windows XP still works great under Windows 10 as of 2018.

I know, about 4 years later to the discussion, but it seems timely now as ever.

I have (and use) the software for the PLG150-AN, CS6x, AN1x, CS2x, CS1x, and XGWorks for the RM1x and the all of the previously mentioned synths. I run it on a modern Dell Laptop which is a 64 bit machine with the latest generation i7 processor and on a Microsoft Suface Pro 2017 (Surface Pro 5) also with an i7.

No compatibility problems other than you'll need to install as an administrator and often run as an administrator.

Beyond that (and I think I only have to do that with one of the programs), they all work fine with a decent MIDI interface (I use iconnectivity devices such as the MIO10 and the iconnectmidi4+ and 2+).