Yamaha PSR-S950 Synthesizer Information, Specifications and Resources
Author: Andy Merrett / Data Driven
Overview
The Yamaha PSR-S950 is a synthesizer released in 2012. It is aimed at musicians wanting to create and modify their own sounds.
The PSR-S950 has 61 synth/organ style full sized keys with touch sensitivity but no aftertouch. It has 128 notes of polyphony. It has hundreds of on board sounds including pianos and real world sounds, accompaniments and rhythms, and a sustain/damper pedal.
It uses Yamaha's AWM sound generation. Advanced Wave Memory is a classic high-quality sample playback and layering engine.
It has the ability to record and play back user performances. It has built-in MIDI capabilities. It offers an on-board learning system. It has no built-in speakers which means you will have to connect it to external amplification and speakers in order to hear it. It runs from AC power.It's a part of the PSR family of instruments, whose models span from 1984 to the present day. Its release year of 2012 has it launched in the main years of PSR production.
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Specifications
Form
Number of Keys: 61Key Weight: Synth
Key Size: Full
Touch Sensitive:
Aftertouch:
Sound
Number of Voices: 1299Polyphony: 128
Sound Generation: AWM Stereo Sampling
Piano Sounds:
Real World Sounds:
Sounds Editable:
Accompaniments:
Extra Features
Recorder/Sequencer:Tutorials:
Communication
MIDI:USB:
Tablet Connectivity:
Power
AC Power:Batteries:
Audio
Speakers:Audio Out:
Audio In:
Pedals
Sustain Pedal:Soft Pedal:
Expression Pedal:
Release Info
Year: 2012RRP: $2499
Description
Acoustic instrument-specific articulations, nuances and dynamics are challenging to reproduce. As the world's largest musical instrument manufacturer, Yamaha has perfected both the science and art of this process to bring you the most sophisticated, musical-sounding and easy-to-play instrument Voices.
Super Articulation (SA)
Super Articulation Voices reproduce the performance characteristics of acoustic instruments so authentically, you'll feel as if you're playing the real thing. Best of all, SA Voices intelligently add just the right expressive nuances to your performance without having to learn a bunch of tricks – just play!
Mega Voice Style Technology
Mega Voices feature various playing techniques and performance sounds like guitar and bass finger slides, brass falls, vocal effects, etc. When used in Styles, Mega Voices provide some of the most realistic-sounding and dynamic accompaniments.
Powerful, pro-quality accompaniment available at the touch of a button
Playing a Style is like being the conductor of a band that always plays the chord and arrangement you tell them to play. The new PSR-S950 has a huge set of 408 built-in dynamic Styles. Yamaha Styles are created by the world's best programmers and mixed by professional studio engineers to ensure unparalleled quality.
Audio Styles
Audio Styles take one step further by adding an audio recording of studio drummers, percussionists and percussion ensembles playing in various recording studios from around the world. This adds the natural feel, ambience and warmth to the drum and percussion parts of the Style, giving your performance greater expressive potential. Yamaha Time Stretch Technology allows the audio to follow your tempo changes without changing pitch, so everything stays in perfect sync.
Guitar-Enhanced Styles with Mega Voices
Guitar-Enhanced Styles not only reproduce the sound of guitar playing, they reproduce the actual chord voicings used by guitar players. This adds to the overall realism of the Style.
Vocal features create a new depth of fun and productivity
Whether you sing for fun, enjoy karaoke or are a singer/songwriter, the PSR-S950 provides everything you need to perform or write. Just plug in your mic and sing!
Vocal Cancel
A powerful Vocal Cancel function effectively cancels or suppresses signals like vocals and solos that exist in the center of an audio file, allowing you to make your own “minus one†track and sing “karaoke†style with just instrumental backing.
Microphone input / Vocal Harmony2
The PSR-S950’s microphone input lets you connect a microphone and sing along with your keyboard performance, Song or audio file playback. With Vocal Harmony you can sing along with three of your own virtual background vocalists. Vocal Harmony2 takes that a step further with new pitch recognition and stability controls. A convenient real-time Mic Level indicator is included in the main display, and a new intuitive graphic user interface makes it easy to experiment with your own mic settings, effects and harmony types. To get you started, PSR-S950 includes 44 exciting Vocal Harmony presets, including male, female Voices, SFX settings.
Score, Lyrics and Text display
The large LCD display can show lyric, music notation or text. You can even display this information on an external monitor.
Yamaha’s renowned audio and DSP technology provides great live and recorded sound
In music production, the key to creating great sound is in the way the song is mixed. The mixing console lets you mix your music like a studio engineer; including balance, panning and professional studio Digital Signal Processing (DSP) borrowed from Yamaha’s renowned professional recording and live sound products.
Real Distortion
Real Distortion effects are based on digital models of classic guitar amplifiers from the 1960's and 1970's. There are also digital models of legendary analog guitar effect pedals. The result meticulously reproduces the frequencies and dynamics of real distortion guitar sounds.
New Speaker and Speaker Box
A larger speaker box gives the PSR-S950 a full, powerful sound with deep lows and clear highs.
Digital amplifier
The PSR-S950 features a Yamaha manufactured digital amplifier with a superb signal to noise ratio. Because of its fully digital, highly efficient design, the amp delivers high performance while significantly reducing energy consumption.
Experience the new, versatile high performance audio engine
The PSR-S950 is capable of playing back and recording audio files. It also has a number of audio manipulation features you can use to create “karaoke†style “minus one†tracks in the key and tempo of your choice. It can also play back audio files from its Multi Pads, great for triggering loops, vocal phrases and sound effects.
MP3 playback
The PSR-S950 conveniently supports MP3 and WAV audio file playback.
Time Stretch and Pitch shift
Left : Time Stretch, Right : Pitch shift
Not all singing voices have the same range. The PSR-S950 can put your favorite song in the key of your choice with a powerful pitch shift feature that lets you change the key without changing the tempo. If you do want to change the tempo, you can use the time stretch feature to slow down or speed up the tempo without changing the pitch.
Audio Link Multi Pad
Audio Link Multi Pad function lets you link your own audio files (sound effects, vocal phrases, and so on), and trigger them from the Pads as you perform.
Audio Recording
Record your songs and performances as high-quality, uncompressed WAV files to share online or burn to a CD. Connect a microphone or guitar to the instrument and enjoy recording a guitar and keyboard performance together, or record your singing along with song playback.
Voice and Style Expandability keeps your instrument up-to-date
Voice and Style Expansion ensures your instrument can always be updated with new high-quality Voices and Styles from around the world. Best of all, you can sample many of these expansions for free at: https://services.music.yamaha.com/vse/
Voice and Style Expansion (VSE)
Thanks to Yamaha’s new Voice & Style Expansion packs, players can take advantage of a wide and ever-increasing selection of authentic sounding Voices and Styles from around the world. Load them to the PSR-S950's built-in FlashROM (64MB) and instantly play authentic sounds, rhythm and backing in the musical style of your choice!
A Portable keyboard that’s mobile device friendly
The PSR-S950 connects interacts with your mobile devices and tablets. Plus, Yamaha’s growing number apps for iPhone, iPod and iPad bring new ways to.
Aux in
Use the auxiliary line in jacks to play along with apps like Yamaha’s “NoteStar†digital sheet music with real audio backing tracks. Or, just play along with your favorite tunes from your music library.
iPhone/iPod/iPad connectivity
With Yamaha’s i-MX1 MIDI interface for iPhone, iPod and iPad, you can experience a new dimension of MIDI control with apps like Yamaha’s Scale Tuner, Piano Diary or Faders & XY Pad.
Specifications
Size/Weight
| Dimensions | Width | 1,002 mm (39 7/16") |
| Height | 148 mm (5 13/16") | |
| Depth | 437 mm (17 3/16") | |
| Weight | Weight | 11.5 kg (25 lbs., 6 oz.) |
Control Interface
| Keyboard | Number of Keys | 61 |
| Type | Organ | |
| Touch Response | Hard 2, Hard 1, Medium, Soft 1, Soft 2 | |
| Other Controllers | Pitch Bend | Yes |
| Modulation | Yes | |
| Multi Pads | 126 banks x 4 Pads | |
| Display | Type | Color LCD |
| Size | 5.7 inch (320 x 240 dots TFT QVGA ) | |
| Color | Color | |
| Contrast | - | |
| Language | English, German, French, Spanish, Italian | |
| Panel | Language | English |
Voices
| Tone Generation | Tone Generating Technology | AWM Stereo Sampling |
| Polyphony | Number of Polyphony (Max.) | 128 |
| Preset | Number of Voices | 786 Voices + 33 Drum/SFX Kits + 480 XG Voices + GM2 + GS (for song playback) |
| Featured Voices | 62 Super Articulation Voices, 23 Mega Voices, 27 Sweet! Voices, 64 Cool! Voices, 39 Live! Voices, 20 Organ Flutes! | |
| Expandability | Expansion Voice | Yes (approx. 64 MB max.) |
| Editing | Voice Set | |
| Part | Right 1, Right 2, Left | |
| Compatibility | XG, XF, GS, GM, GM2 | |
Effects
| Types | Reverb | 44 Presets + 3 User |
| Chorus | 106 Presets + 3 User | |
| DSP | DSP 1: 295 Presets + 3 User, DSP 2-4: 295 Presets + 10 User | |
| Master EQ | 5 Presets + 2 User | |
| Part EQ | 28 Parts (Right 1, Right 2, Left, Multi Pad, Style x 8, Song x 16) | |
| Mic Effects | Noise Gate x 1, Compressor x 1, 3Band EQ x 1 | |
| Vocal Harmony | Number of Presets | 44 |
| Number of User Settings | 10 | |
| Vocal Effect | 23 | |
Accompaniment Styles
| Preset | Number of Preset Styles | 408 |
| Featured Styles | 25 +Audio, 1 FreePlay, 350 Pro, 32 Session | |
| Fingering | Single Finger, Fingered, Fingered On Bass, Multi Finger, AI Fingered, Full Keyboard, AI Full Keyboard | |
| Style Control | INTRO x 3, MAIN VARIATION x 4, FILL x 4, BREAK, ENDING x 3 | |
| Other Features | Music Finder | 2,500 Records |
| One Touch Setting (OTS) | 4 for each Style | |
| File Format | Style File Format, Style File Format GE | |
| Expandability | Expansion Style | Yes |
| Expansion Audio Style | Yes (approx. 64 MB max.) | |
Songs
| Preset | Number of Preset Songs | 5 |
| Recording | Number of Songs | Unlimited (depending on USB flash memory capacity) |
| Number of Tracks | 16 | |
| Data Capacity | approx. 300 KB/Song | |
| Recording Function | Quick Recording, Multi Recording, Step Recording | |
| Compatible Data Format | Playback | SMF (Format 0 & 1), XF |
| Recording | SMF (Format 0) |
Functions
| Registration | Number of Buttons | 8 presets/bank (unlimited number of banks, depending on USB flash memory capacity) |
| Control | Registration Sequence, Freeze | |
| Lesson/Guide | Lesson/Guide | Follow Lights, Any Key, Karao-Key, Your Tempo |
| Performance Assistant Technology (PAT) | Yes | |
| Demo/Help | Demonstration | Yes |
| USB Audio Recorder | Playback | .wav, .mp3 |
| Recording | .wav | |
| Overall Controls | Metronome | Yes |
| Tempo Range | 5 – 500, Tap Tempo | |
| Transpose | -12 – 0 – +12 | |
| Tuning | 414.8 – 440 – 466.8 Hz | |
| Octave Button | Yes | |
| Scale Type | 9 Presets | |
| Miscellaneous | Direct Access | Yes |
| Text Display Function | Yes | |
| Wallpaper Customization | Main, Lyrics | |
| Voices | Voice Creator | Yes |
| Harmony/Echo | Yes | |
| Panel Sustain | Yes | |
| Mono/Poly | Yes | |
| Voice Information | Yes | |
| Styles | Style Creator | Yes |
| Style Recommender | Yes | |
| OTS Information | Yes | |
| Songs | Song Creator | Yes |
| Score Display Function | Yes | |
| Lyrics Display Function | Yes | |
| Multi Pads | Multi Pad Creator | Yes |
| USB Audio | Time Stretch | Yes |
| Pitch Shift | Yes | |
| Vocal Cancel | Yes |
Storage and Connectivity
| Storage | Internal Memory | approx. 6.7 MB |
| External Drives | USB Flash Memory, etc. (via USB to DEVICE) | |
| Internal Memory (for Expansion Pack) | approx. 64 MB | |
| Connectivity | DC IN | 16V |
| Headphones | Yes | |
| FOOT PEDAL | (optional) Switch or Volume x 2 | |
| Microphone | Yes | |
| MIDI | In/Out | |
| AUX IN | Yes | |
| OUT PUT | (R, L/L+R) | |
| VIDEO OUT | Yes | |
| USB TO DEVICE | Yes | |
| USB TO HOST | Yes |
Amplifiers and Speakers
| Amplifiers | 15 W x 2 | |
| Speakers | 13 cm + 2.5 cm dome tweeter (x 2) | |
Power Supply
| Power Supply | PA-300C or an equivalent recommended by Yamaha | |
| Power Consumption | 16 W | |
| Auto Power Off Function | Yes | |
Accessories
| Included Accessories | AC Adaptor | PA-300C |
Multi Pads
| Preset | Number of Multi Pad Banks | 126 banks x 4 Pads |
| Audio | Audio Link | Yes |
FAQ
What year was the Yamaha PSR-S950 launched?
This instrument was launched in 2012
What other models did Yamaha release in 2012?
- ARIUS YDP-142
- ARIUS YDP-162
- ARIUS YDP-S51
- CVP-601
- EZ-220
- EZ-J220
- KB-290
- KB-291
- KB-90
- PSR-S750
- SKB-J700
- Tyros4
What models did other manufacturers release in 2012?
- Casio AP-450BK
- Casio AP-450BN
- Casio CTK-6300IN
- Casio PX-150BK
- Casio PX-150WE
- Casio PX-350MBK
- Casio PX-350MWE
- Casio PX-750BK
- Casio PX-750WE
- Casio PX-850BK
- Casio SA-46
- Casio SA-47
- Casio SA-78
- Casio XW-G1
- Casio XW-P1
- Korg Krome 61
- Korg Krome 73
- Korg Krome 88
- Korg Kronos X 61 note
- Korg Kronos X 73 note
- Korg Kronos X 88 note
- Korg Kross 61
- Korg Kross 88
- Korg Pa600
- Korg Pa600QT
- Nord C2D
- Novation MiniNova
- Roland BK-5
- Roland RD-64
- Roland VR-09
- Roland VR-09-B
- Roland VR-730
What other synths were released at a similar time?
- Alesis HYDRASYNTH
- Arturia MicroBrute
- Arturia MiniBrute
- Casio WK-225
- Casio WK-6500
- Casio WK-6600
- Casio WK-7500
- Casio WK-7600
- Casio XW-G1
- Casio XW-P1
- Ketron AUDYA 5
- Korg KingKORG
- Korg Krome 61
- Korg Krome 73
- Korg Krome 88
- Korg Kronos 61-key
- Korg Kronos 73-key
- Korg Kronos 88-key
- Korg Kronos X 61 note
- Korg Kronos X 73 note
- Korg Kronos X 88 note
- Korg Kross 61
- Korg Kross 88
- Korg M3
- Korg M50
- Korg M50 61 key
- Korg M50 88 key
- Korg microARRANGER
- Korg microKORG XL
- Korg microKORG XL+
- Korg microSTATION
- Korg microX
- Korg MS20 Mini
- Korg OASYS 88 key
- Korg Pa2XPRO
- Korg Pa3X 61 key
- Korg Pa3X 76-key
- Korg Pa500
- Korg PA500ORT
- Korg Pa600
- Korg Pa600QT
- Korg Pa800
- Korg Pa900
- Korg PS60
- Korg PS60
- Korg R3
- Korg X50
- Kurzweil PC3
- Kurzweil PC361
- Kurzweil PC3K6
- Kurzweil PC3K7
- Kurzweil PC3K8
- Kurzweil PC3LE6
- Kurzweil PC3LE7
- Kurzweil PC3LE8
- Kurzweil PC3x
- M-Audio KeyStudio 49i
- M-Audio ProKeys Sono 61
- M-Audio ProKeys Sono 88
- M-Audio Venom
- Moog Little Phatty Stage II
- Nord Electro 3 61-key
- Nord Electro 3 73-key
- Nord Electro 3 HP
- Nord Electro 4 HP
- Nord Electro 4 SW73
- Nord Electro 4D SW61
- Nord Lead 2X
- Nord Lead 4
- Nord Piano
- Nord Piano 2
- Nord Stage 2 73-key
- Nord Stage 2 76-key
- Nord Stage 2 88-key
- Nord Wave
- Novation Bass Station II
- Novation MiniNova
- Novation UltraNova
- Roland A-300PRO
- Roland A-500PRO
- Roland A-500S
- Roland A-800PRO
- Roland AX-Synth
- Roland BK-9
- Roland E-09
- Roland E-50
- Roland EXR-46 OR
- Roland FA-06
- Roland FA-07
- Roland FA-08
- Roland Fantom-G6
- Roland Fantom-G7
- Roland Fantom-G8
- Roland FP-7F
- Roland GAIA SH-01
- Roland GW-8
- Roland HPi-6F
- Roland HPi-7F
- Roland JUNO-D
- Roland JUNO-Di
- Roland JUNO-G
- Roland JUNO-Gi
- Roland JUNO-STAGE
- Roland JUPITER-50
- Roland JUPITER-80
- Roland Lucina AX-09
- Roland PRELUDE
- Roland RD-300GX
- Roland RD-300NX
- Roland RD-700GX
- Roland RD-700GXF
- Roland RD-700NX
- Roland SH-201
- Roland SYSTEM-1
- Roland V-Synth GT
- Roland VP-550
- Roland VP-770
- Roland VR-09
- Roland VR-09-B
- Roland VR-700
- Roland VR-730
- Waldorf Blofeld
- Yamaha MM6
- Yamaha MM8
- Yamaha MO6
- Yamaha MO8
- Yamaha MOTIF XF6
- Yamaha MOTIF XF6 WH
- Yamaha MOTIF XF7
- Yamaha MOTIF XF7 WH
- Yamaha MOTIF XF8
- Yamaha MOTIF XF8 WH
- Yamaha MOTIF XS8
- Yamaha MOX6
- Yamaha MOX8
- Yamaha MOXF6
- Yamaha MOXF8
- Yamaha MX49
- Yamaha MX61
- Yamaha PSR-A2000
- Yamaha PSR-S550B
- Yamaha PSR-S650
- Yamaha PSR-S710
- Yamaha PSR-S900
- Yamaha S03 BL
- Yamaha S03 SL
- Yamaha S08
- Yamaha S70 XS
- Yamaha S90 XS
- Yamaha S90ES
- Yamaha Tyros3
- Yamaha Tyros5-61
- Yamaha Tyros5-76
Have your own question about the Yamaha PSR-S950? Email us and we'll research it for you.
Resources
- Yamaha PSR-S/PSR-SX Series Comparison: All nineteen models compared
- Yamaha PSR PortaTone Models 1984-2026
- Old Yamaha keyboard models: an overview of vintage
Reviews
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Purchase Links
Buy the Yamaha PSR-S950 on Reverb
Find Yamaha PSR-S950 Deals on 
More Info
- Manufacturer Product Page: https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/keyboards/arranger_workstations/psr-s950/?mode=model
