by Joe Waters

Your PSR can pretend to be a LOT of different instruments.  On first look, one might think of it as a small, portable, piano because it has keys that look like piano keys and, in fact, when you press those keys, a piano sound comes out of the speakers.  But you can also press those keys and here a guitar, or a trumpet, or a flute, or, for that matter, an entire orchestra.  And many of these various instruments sound incredibly realistic!  And so here you find one of the key features that distinguish one model keyboard from another -- the sounds that the keyboard can produce.  How good are those sounds, that is, how well can the keyboard imitate the sound of a real guitar, or piano, or saxophone?  And, how many different instruments, referred to as voices, can the keyboard emulate?

PSR Preset Voices

The PSR-3000 has 829 voices. This is 91 fewer voices than the Tyros. It is even lower than the number of voices in the PSR-2100. However, the total number of voices doesn't tell the whole story. What counts is the number of voices you actually use and the quality of those voices. Table 1 below compares the number of "voices" available on the TYROS, the PSR-3000/1500 and the PSR-2x family of keyboards, by "type" of voice. I am distinguishing the drum kits from the other preset voices. Most models have the same number of Drum & SFX (special effects) kits. Only the Tyros and 3000 have Live! Drum and SFX kits, although the Tyros has considerably more Live! Drum kits than the 3000.

Table 1. Comparison of Voices by Yamaha Keyboard and by Voice Type

A Comparison of Voices in the PSR-3000 and PSR-1500

38 More Voices -- only 5% More in the PSR-3000

With a 829 voices, The PSR-3000 has only 38 more voices than its junior sibling, the PSR-1500, less than 5% more. Considering the cost differential, that doesn't seem like much of a difference.  But examine those numbers in a more detail.  Both instruments include 480 XG Voices.  The Yamaha XG Voices, which are an extension of the General MIDI (GM) voice specification, do sound very nice.  But all Yamaha keyboards have this identical set of 480 XG voices.  These voices are normally used in defining styles for your arranger.  That is why Yamaha styles can be freely interchanged among Yamaha keyboards.  The XG voices that are incorporated into the style are available on the low-end, midrange, and high-end keyboards.  Your PSR-3000 and the PSR-1500 can play styles from the Tyros, the PSR-2100, the PSR-9000 or from the PSR-550 or even from the CVP-209 Clavinova series. It can also play styles from older Yamaha models like the PSR-620, PSR-740 or PSR-8000.

Panel Voices

Take those XG voices out of the comparison, and also, for the moment, ignore the drum/sfx kits. Most of the Drum and SFX kits are identical in both keyboards although the 3000 has an additional Live!Drum Kit and two additional Live!SFX kits. That leaves us with what are known as panel voices.  These are the voices that make the instrument shine. They are produced from sample sounds of the real instruments.  The larger the sample, the more realistic the sound. This is how the Sweet!, Live!, and Cool! voices are produced.  But larger samples take up large amounts of limited internal  memory,  This means there is always a trade off between a few stunningly realistic high-quality voices and a larger number of less realistic voices.  As you spend more money on a Yamaha keyboard, or any arranger keyboard for that matter, the number and quality of these panel voices is one of the things you buy for the extra money.

35 Additional Panel Voices -- 12% More than the PSR-1500

The PSR-3000 has 332 panel voices whereas the PSR-1500 includes only 297 panel voices.  The difference is 35 voices.  Measuring just the panel voices, these additional 35 voices in the PSR-3000 represent an 12% increase over the number available in the PSR-1500.

Sweet!, Live!, and Cool! Voices - a whopping 264% Increase over the PSR-1500

Some of the best voices on the PSR are what Yamaha has labeled Sweet!, Live!, and Cool! voices.  The PSR-3000 includes 51 of these; while the PSR-1500 has only 14.  (For comparison, the PSR-2100 has 33 of these voices.) These are the solo voices that so many have marveled at.  The 37 additional Sweet/Live/Cool voices in the PSR-3000 represent a 264% increase over what is available in the PSR-1500. But how is that possible? There were only 35 additional panel voices. How can the PSR-3000 have 37 more Sweet!/Live!/Cool! voices? And we're not even counting the Mega voices. The PSR-3000 has 10 Mega voices and the PSR-1500 has none. That's a total of 47 more "special" voices on the PSR-3000! Once again, the "total" doesn't tell the whole story. The composition of the voices in that total is very different. The PSR-1500 has a 12 more "regular" voices than the PSR-3000 and that accounts for the difference in the two totals (47-12=35).

So the PSR-3000 has 12 fewer regular voices. What are the "missing" voices? Whoops, not so fast again. Out of the 261 regular voices on the PSR-3000, only 225 correspond to voices on the PSR-1500. There are actually 36 regular voices on the PSR-3000 that are not on the PSR-1500. And, of course, the opposite is also true. There are 48 voices on the PSR-1500 that are not available on the PSR-3000. We provide detailed tables showing the voices available in each category on each machine. You'll have to examine those table carefully to see what is actually available on each machine. Basically, the PSR-3000 gives you many more special voices than the PSR-1500, but it gives up a number of regular voices in order to accomodate the extra memory used up by the Sweet/Live/Cool/Mega voices.

I have included a page showing all of the PSR-3000 panel voices and another page for all of the PSR-1500 panel voices.. Voices are listed by voice category (see below) and also indicate the particular panel voices that are not included in the other keyboard. You can find similar pages for the PSR-2100/1100 and the earlier PSR-2000/PSR-1000 models in the PSR-2100 lessons section..

Voice Categories

Yamaha groups the available panel voices in a number of different categories. The available categories are shown via buttons right on the keyboard.  The VOICE buttons are located just to the right of the main screen. The individual voice pages here will show you exactly what voices are included under each category. However, while we are comparing the PSR-3000/1500 keyboards, the table below is provided to show you the total number of voices, by category. The "Special" category below includes Sweet!, Live!, Cool!, Mega voices. I've included the OrganFlutes in with the Regular voices..