User Reviews : Yamaha AN200

1. Yamaha AN200 - 1 year ago
Purchase year : 2003        
This is a solid box, the knobs are very well made and the rubber type buttons used to program the patterns or to trigger them are illuminated from the inside.
It is ergonomic in design and pretty easy to work with after a short time. The sounds are distinctive and not generic as some of the earlier and less expensive Yamaha Synths. This box is able to produce some really nice sounds when used alone, having an ADSR, filter section and several effects as well as a nice LFO. It can be heard in a mix and thats for sure.
Some of the synth sounds are merely the typical Rom playback type of wave forms while others are virtually modeled. It features the typical sawtooth and other basic waveforms as well. The basic synth board inside fits nicely into a more expensive Yamaha synth keyboard and as an add on costs quite a lot. Many of these were stripped so if you buy one make sure the board is inside it and not just the drum card.
The drum machine section is pretty nice. This machine has been called a "groove Box" although that may be a good thing to some people and is one of several similar boxes manufactured by various companies, however the AN 200 is still in a special niche as it was not made for a long time. Listing for about 650$ or so it was discontinued early on and the remaining units sold for about 200$. On Ebay this machine has sold for a bit more than 200$ and it may well be a classic synth for collectors.
Sadly, the buttons are NOT velocity sensitive but the midi function is well done. The Machine came with a CD wave editor software that reaches many subtle places to go deep into the sound design. The 18 knobs are great for rapid tweaks but using the software opens up the machine. The basic pattern are fairly short and it is easy to make retro analog style patterns. There is a free envelope generator that can be assigned to 2 sounds for the filter effects and 2 sounds that you can morph between while triggering patterns or recording into a song. Song construction is very easy as are patterns. Programming this is really a blast! I personally enjoy the FM depth knob and the osc sync mode, something missing in many units. I give the AN 200 a 5 star rating based on it's exellent sound and construction quality and interface. The stereo out and lack of a data slot kept the box from being considered as a professional machine but it has been spotted in some successful musician's set-ups. If you know anything about Yamaha you will not be surprised at this synthesiser's ability. A few more functions and this would have been priced mcuh higher as virtually modeled sounds were 'cutting' edge in the year 2000 and knobs were also just beginning to make a comeback.