Also don't be turned off by the poly issue if you're not a heavy sequencer. I do really indepth orchestral work sometimes. Lots of instruments going at the same time. Orchestral music will eat up poly on 64 note synth in Performance Mode really fast. I choke the living sh$t out of my Roland RS-70s poly all the time when doing orchestral work

So if you're doing some more modern styles like Hip Hop, R&B, ect, the MO will work great for you, even for traditional styles. You just have to be cautious when using the arps. Using arps and a sustain pedal will eat the poly on any synth, but if you're limited to 64 notes.., well I'm sure you can do the math

Crap I almost forgot to mention the OS or "User Interface". If this is your "first synth" and you buy the MO8 ya might want to have a bottle of Advil close by. It's not a bad OS, but if you're new to synths it may confuse the hell out of you in a few places. Even though the MO is a baby ES it's LOADED and I mean freakin LOADED with features. Newbies at times get bogged down by all the technical terms too. The manual isn't written for newbies either. So the terminology will be pretty heavy.

I had no problem running the MO8. However, I did have the upper hand as I also owned one of the EX series synths from Yamaha (older brother to the Motif line). Similiar OS between the two.

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 03-30-2007).]