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The fourth edition of the Mofit range is probably Yamaha's best workstation yet.

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The Motif has been a big name in the workstation world since its launch in 2001 and it's good to see Yamaha has not forgotten the workstation concept just yet. However much has changed in the studio world and unlike the first Motif, computer integration is shaping the way workstations are now built.

USB is now standard for data transfer (and to communicate with the included Cubase and free editing software), plus now there's a FireWire card option, allowing you to record up to 16 tracks of audio directly into your DAW from the XF - turning the XF into a suitable audio interface.

"The XF is one impressive bit of kit. It's pricey but there's a lot under the hood and it's quality throughout."

We have to say that the XF is, without a doubt, one of the best looking keyboards Yamaha has made in a long time and it looks and feels classy throughout. The only slight concern is that it's easy to leave greasy fingerprints on the black front panel, but a good microfibre cloth soon sorts that.

The model for this review is the Motif XF6, which includes a five-octave synth-action keyboard. This is well-balanced light-touch action, which is equally at home for piano and synth sounds. Weight-wise for gigging, the XF6 is just about on the right side of portable.

Ulterior Motif

The front panel is laid out in familiar Yamaha style and anyone that has owned previous Yamaha boards will feel at home. Sure, the XF is a powerhouse under the hood but for once, it's surprisingly easy to navigate.

The colour screen takes centre stage and though it's not a touch screen, (which is a shame) it conveys a lot of information in a pretty elegant way, though it does take a while to get used to the way the menus are laid out in relation to the function keys below.

All things considered, the interface is probably the best we've encountered on a Yamaha workstation to date.

Sound-wise, the XF has a lot of patches and the wave memory has been upped to 741MB from 355MB (giving 3,977 waves to work with). Many voices are the same as outgoing XS models though there are plenty of new sounds, including 128 voices and eight new drum kits.

We've always been fans of Yamaha's sounds and the XF contains just about everything you could wish for, for any style of music. What's most impressive is the level of expressiveness that can be coaxed from its sounds.

Using the performance sliders in conjunction with the expanded articulation feature, (plus the dials, wheels, ribbon, aftertouch and pedals) allows you to control pretty much any parameter you can think of directly.

While we don't find the acoustic piano, organ and clav presets to be the most authentic around, they are nonetheless expressive, inspiring and playable and getting stuck in to sound tweaking is a pleasurable and ultimately rewarding process.

In terms of sound shaping, there are 18 filter types onboard (these sound great and for once on a digital workstation are smooth and without stepping artifacts) plus amp pitch and filter envelopes, EQ, lashings of high quality effects, modelled amps and a decent vocoder (though as ever, too many of the presets are swamped in huge reverb).