Music Software Forum • Re: YAMAHA XGWORKS

There is some information about Peter Wierzba at psrtutorial:
https://psrtutorial.com/util/wierzba.html

Aah, Michael Bedesem's old project. That explains it, thanks!

Here is a site that may have some interest:
xg-central.com/xgc-software.php

The XG-Central website is still up, and some of the classic software and drivers are still there, but the site hasn't been updated since 2020. I would encourage you to also visit the XG-Central FaceBook group if you can; It doesn't have too many active users these days, but XG fans can find some additional goodies there.

YAMAHA XGWORKS
The best editing prog Yamaha ever made, IMHO.
Last update Yamaha made in 2002.

Yes, worldwide support of the original XGworks product line ended with the release of the patches, that allowed V2 and V3 to work on the WinXP platform. Development continued for the Japanese market, though:

• 1996: XGworks V1 (Win95)
• 1997: XGworks V2 (Win95)
• 1998: XGworks V3 (Win95/MacOS 8 - the last international retail version)
• 1999: XGworks V4 (Win98/WinNT - Japan only, but a translated version can be downloaded here)
• 2001: SOL (Win2000/XP - Japan only)
• 2003: SOL2 and XGworks ST (WinXP - Japan only)

The retail SOL ("Sequence Object Linking") sequencer was built from the ground up, and modernized to the point that I would classify it as a DAW (I tend to view it as "XGworks on steroids", since it also carried over most of the tools associated with XGworks). A cheaper retail version of SOL2, with some audio functionality taken out, later appeared as XGworks ST ("SOL Technology") to target the XG die-hards. In addition, a highly stripped-down version named SQ01 was shipped for free with certain Yamaha instruments and studio gear worldwide.

Yamaha acquired Steinberg at the end of 2004. Steinberg (probably) had zero interest in XGWORKS.

Certainly true for the technically outdated Win95-era XGworks series, but less obviously so once you take the full history into consideration. Yamaha actually continued supporting and updating their SOL-based sequencers until 2006. Some of the technology developed for SOL would later emerge in Cubase (e.g. their OPT Plugin standard, which never took off on its own, but together with Studio Manager became the foundation for Steinberg's Studio Connections).

Yamaha have never made an upgrade after 2002. Why not ??? Yamaha never answered that question. Many people asked for an upgrade.

Variants of this question always seem to pop up at some point when discussing XGworks, even more than two decades on. Let's leave wishful thinking aside and stick with reality here; There's a cost involved when developing software. Attempting to keep a software product up to date, and doing so on multiple computer platforms and in multiple languages only adds to this cost. Any product that doesn't sell in numbers that justify these expenditures would be a loss to the manufacturer. This is of course the real reason why Yamaha decided to pull the plug on XGworks outside of Japan; There were simply not enough people buying it elsewhere. XGworks and its offspring enjoyed a market among hobbyists/enthusiasts in Japan for a few more years still, and Yamaha could adjust their bottom line by developing for this market alone, but that too came to an end eventually.

There's also the technological aspect of it. Computer hardware and operating systems evolve continously; At some point, your software core becomes too outdated, and can no longer reasonably be modified for compatibility with the computers that your customers actually own. You then have to decide whether to burn more cash by starting the development cycle all over again, or to take your money elsewhere and call it quits. I think the latter is exactly what happened.

- H -

Statistics: Posted by Henry — Thu Sep 26, 2024 10:40 pm

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