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Use the faders to tweak parameters on the fly during playback.

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So what about them waves then? The XS ticks all the right boxes when it comes to acoustic pianos, guitars and organs. A fine grand, cool electrics, and a versatile Hammond that’s at home whether it’s praising the lord, or selling its soul to the devil.

The guitar library is especially impressive with an abundance of articulations and playing styles that have been captured with clarity and detail right down to squeaky string slides. Rock, Pop and Fusion are all well covered with this beast.

The symphonic sounds are very grand, and coupled with the rich reverbs, they can be layered in a very convincing way to form a huge backing orchestra with precise placements in the stereo spread.

That said, we've never been convinced by the lead saxophone and solo electric guitar patches created through PCM sample and synthesis, and this hasn’t changed our minds.

There simply isn’t enough scope to capture all of the lyrical qualities and tonal freedom from the instruments the XS serves up, but that said, for backing purposes, these patches are just fine. And on the synthetic side, we were impressed with the more abstract cinematic sounds, which on the whole are very playable and are programmed with interesting and unexpected tonal changes.

The strongest performances were the Hip Hop/ R’n’B combos, even when used as a basic starting points the XS programming was a lot more authentic sounding here than Techno, Trance and House offerings, which all sounded rather uninspired.

The good news is that for Chillout and New Age-style music, the Motif is an excellent choice. When the synthetic washes are combined with real acoustic timbres and bathed in silky effects, it really makes some exceptionally luscious sounds.

The patches

There are a hell of a lot of patches to get through, and in Performance mode, the XS can stack up to four voices across the keyboard in any combination of zones and splits. Many of these have a selection of preprogrammed arps to bring the sounds to life and also use the two assignable knobs to add what Yamaha call ‘XA’ - expanded articulation.

During voice editing the large colour screen is a real advantage as it keeps things clear and easy to distinguish. There are plenty of envelope, filter and LFO modules - in fact much more than we expected - and the level of detail in which they can be programmed really contributes to the creation of realistic-sounding patches. For example, sounds can be triggered through note on as well as note off messages - perfect when you’re trying to recreate guitar nuances and more.

Envelopes can use the pedal input to directly affect the levels, just like the sustain pedal on a real acoustic piano would. Synthesis fans will take pleasure in exploring the 18 different filter types, which include a whole load of dual band varieties such as MS20-style high- and low-pass combinations for the sonically adventurous. They can be cranked into self-oscillation but this can be a bit harsh. As far as analogue emulations go, they definitely sound more convincing at mellower resonance levels.