The best musical instruments start with top-quality sounds, and the S90 XS/S70 XS delivers all that - and more. The S Series features all the Voices, Performances, arps and Virtual Circuit Modeling effects found on the flagship MOTIF XS Music Production Synthesizer. Plus we've added a huge 142 megabytes dedicated exclusively to high-quality piano waveforms, for a total of 456 MB of instrument samples. Foremost among these new piano sounds are the new samples taken from Yamaha's world-renowned S6 concert grand piano. These fully capture the richly textured sound of that wonderfully expressive instrument, and provide a warm concert grand piano sound unavailable on any other keyboard. For variation, the MOTIF XS piano based on a Yamaha CFIIIS is also available. Conventional keyboards in the past had their sounds designed primarily for the listener. This time, however, our development team set out to primarily satisfy the player instead. We reasoned that when the performer hears and experiences the best possible sound, the performance would be the best possible, too! The result? The S90 XS/S70 XS is a genuine musician's instrument, one that truly inspires and stimulates the live performer as well as the music creator and arranger. 

The S90 XS/S70 XS also lets you quickly and conveniently create your own custom Performances, with the amazingly fast and easy Performance Creator feature. It's never been easier to select a Voice, then quickly program Layers and Splits - even assigning a Drum Voice complete with arps to create your perfect Performance. Let's say that you're playing a piano Voice and you want to layer a string sound on top of it. Simply press the [LAYER] button, then select the desired Voice category and Voice, and store your new Performance - just a few button presses and you're there! Plus the panel controls of the S90 XS/S70 XS have been designed and positioned for optimum, intuitive operation, especially for live performance. For example, you can quickly select a Part, turn it on/off, set Arpeggio on/off, switch Arpeggio Hold - all done easily with the top panel controls - and instantly tweak important synth parameters via the Knobs and Sliders. The perfect Performance has never been easier to create and control. 

The S90 XS/S70 XS has a host of other features that live performers will appreciate - such as the combo input jack that accepts mic input. Simply plug in a microphone, tweak the INPUT GAIN knob (while checking the convenient PEAK lamp), and you're all set! Plus, you can use the Control Knobs to finely adjust the volume and even directly apply reverb or chorus to the sound. 

If you've got a USB memory device or thumb drive, you can plug it into the S90 XS/S70 XS and record your performance as audio data. This remarkable feature lets you instantly capture what you play on the keyboard - including arpeggio playback - to your USB device. If you've connected a microphone or guitar, you can even record your singing or playing as well. You can also record audio directly to the internal flash memory (192 MB) built into the instrument, without the need of a memory device. And keep in mind that anything you've recorded to the memory device, even audio files created on your computer, can be played back on the S90 XS/S70 XS - which means you can create your own custom audio backing tracks and perform along with them on the S90 XS/S70 XS. For example, you can create a basic song track beforehand, then sing and solo over it during your performance. Or add guitar parts and vocal harmonies to be played back with your live performance. There's also a useful Song Chain function that lets you string together separate recordings and create a convenient backing track "set list" for your gigs.