I've heard a lot of great demos of the Yamaha CS-50 and I've seen them turn up for sale often for a decent price and although the CS-80 is the end goal I'm wondering if a CS-50 could get the sounds of the CS-80 (like the Blade Runner brass) and other than the Polyphony what are the main differences between the two?
Re: Is a CS-50 "close enough"?
Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 9:16 am
by synthparts
The closest you can get is actually the CS70M. It's the only other one besides the 80 that has the dual-patch layering and uses all the same voice chips. It's also a lot easier to service, and has extras like autotune, unison mode, real patch memories, key split mode that allows for playing 4 patches at once, and a built-in step-time or real-time sequencer.
Re: Is a CS-50 "close enough"?
Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 9:53 am
by ppg_wavecomputer
The CS-50 is fairly close in terms of timbre (perhaps even nicer in some respects). Of course, you don't have polyphonic aftertouch and a velocity-sensitive keyboard, no ribbon controller, and no memories either but, to me at least, the 50 very nicely adds that "big CS polyphonics" flavour to the rig.
Many of the 80's famous sounds were layered patches (e. g. the Blade Runner Brass) so you would have to use multitracking to achieve a similar effect. The keyboard interface was what made the 80 stand out, the way you could articulate volume and timbre by using polyphonic aftertouch. The 70 demo above nicely captures some of the timbral qualities of the 80 but the way you could modulate the sound by using aftertouch is what makes the difference -- and this is where the 70 obviously falls short (and also the other smaller CS polyphonics).
Unfortunately, the 50 has become ridiculously expensive as of late, and the 60 even more so.