Yamaha PLG150 card synth options

[awepittance]

So Yamaha made these PLG150 series of plugin synth voices for a series of open ended keyboards and sound modules, including the motif. They include DX (an fm synth card) AN (an analog modeling card) and VL (a physical modeling card, obvio my favorite).

I obtained a PLG150-VL card, the puzzle i'm trying to solve right now is what kind of yamaha unit can i stick this in for a low price if all i care about are the VL voices? I don't need a new keyboard or any extra bells and whistles, and yamaha has over 10 different options it seems of what i can use these cards on. Ultimately i'd like to be able to use more than one PLG150-VL card inside of one motif or something else that can handle 2 cards, but i still am not certain if id be able to use 2 of the VL cards duophonically or even multitimbrality (it may be they are limited to not just one voice at a time but also one card at a time)
i just need some basic answers to these questions so i can get basically the equivalent of the power of a Yamaha VL1 or VL1m for 1/5th the price.

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/music-production/plugins/plg150-vl/

edit: the ideal setup would be to fit two cards into something very physically small that still has midi in and the full range of midi functionality

[Grain Bastard]

I may be way off but I'm sure my mate used to use those cards with his SW1000XG audiocard - daughter boards he called them!!! Those cards are cheap now but not 64bit so probably not the ideal solution unless yoiu like using old shit PC's as sound modules.

 

Anyway, I'd probably say a CS6R if you could find one.

[awepittance]

here is what i ended up finding out. and the following would be useful info for any watmm musician wanting to get a very powerful analog modeling or Yamaha FM synth on the cheap as well (this isn't just for phys mod junkies)

Yamaha also makes a PLG150DX card which is technically (as far as i know) the most advanced Yamaha FM synthesizer engine short of an actual FS1R or a TG77 (its a lot newer than a TG77, so in some ways it might be more advanced, and in other ways less)
The only unit I know of that actually used this 'engine' is the DX200, an enticing but ultimately frustrating FM synth since it has no full patch editing capability. Now with the ability to use a PLG150DX card in something else, I believe you have access to the full fm synth engine to edit.
PLG150DX cards can still be obtained for about $100-$200. You need a Yamaha mother unit to use them in, and I would recommend a Yamaha MU128 a small double rack sized box that can take 3x PLG150 cards. You can easily assign them to 3 different synth parts making it essentially a $500 almost FS1R level yamaha multitimbral synth.

[modey]

nice! Looks like the MU128 is an XG sound module as well? I've been looking for a good yet potentially cheesy/tacky sound module. I'm heading to Japan again in September so I might keep an eye out for one.

[awepittance]

you will definitely run into an mu128 in japan. I saw like 3 of them in various 'Hard off' and other used electronic stores. In fact i got mine from a japanese ebay seller. works like a charm, haven't even tried the built in sounds yet, just maxed it out to a 3xvoice PLG150VL (3 voices of physical modeling when used with my polychain reaktor patch)

[MisterE]

i have a mu128 and was going to suggest that to you as a thing you could get to use that card you were asking about in the 1st post, but then i looked it up to double check and i thought i saw something about that the mu128 is compatible with plg100 cards, but not so much with plg150 ones. or that if you use a 150 in the mu128, you won't have access to all of the features. could be wrong but when i first saw this thread i looked into it and thought i saw something like that, so i didnt say anything.

 

on that topic, since ive had my mu ive looked into the card stuff every once in a while, but the ebay prices are NEVER a bargain (not that i've seen), they always expect at *least* 150 dollars. and the thing is, i got a tx81z for $25, maybe 8yrs ago or so. i'd look up the cards available and always decided they werent interesting enough to me to warrant spending that much money on them. theres a voice synth thing which i think was only released in japan and that one looks maybe among the more interesting ones. theres a vocal harmonizer thing that i always thought sounded like it might be awesome for some great fx but when i looked into that closer something about it seemed very NOT exciting. at all. its not what you'd expect from a 'vocal harmonizer'. dont remember deets but on close look it wasn't amazing and even seemed like its marketing was intentionally misleading. theres the analog synth VA thing but beh, 150-200 for that? no thanks.

 

i think the fm one didnt sound interesting to me either but thats because i already had a tx81z and what i saw made it sound like it was just basically a dx7 on a board. maybe that was the plg100dx i was looking at though. the one you described sounds maybe cool, but i think itd be worth looking closer to make sure its actually compatible/fully compatible with the mu128, or if you dont need something higher end.. maybe it depends on the specific plg150 card if you have full access to the features on it. i might have to look into this again myself now.

[awepittance]

the mu128 is compatible with the plg150 series, you can use the earlier cards but not all features work. Someone on another forum was speculating about using the PLG150 vocal formant synthesis card + 2x PLG150DX cards to basically have something similar to an FS1R but im not sure if the guy decided the result was satisfactory or not. I could be totally off about my assumption of the power of the PLG150DX card, but technically speaking I think its more 'advanced' than anything yamaha did before the fs1r but yeah could be absolutely dead wrong on that.