The thing about electronic drum samples is..... that tastes change, constantly. What is the hip and happening drum sound this year (or month!) is passe by next year (or month).

For arranger manufacturers, this leaves them with a big problem. Firstly, their research shows that these products are mostly bought by people with VERY little interest in electronic music. Secondly, what little they DO want to play is much older, by now 'classic' dance hit styles. So what are these poor people to do? Load their new arranger up with banging beats and phresh sounds that only a fraction of their customers actually want, or make it into a 'greatest hits' collection of sounds that has little chance of sounding contemporary (or whatever is contemporary when they release the model. not two years later during it's product life!).

No... The REAL problem comes about because, not only do they saddle you with a sampler that is too slow to load for most practical purposes, but they completely hobble it by making it close to impossible (or definitely more work than anybody would want to do) to import drum kits from Akai format, the de facto standard for sample migration.

Most other samplers, up to and including the samplers in Korg arrangers (not to mention the über-expensive software/hybrids like MS and Wersi) can read the Akai format. Most workstations can read Akai. Most Software samplers read Akai..... Why not Yamaha?

A WORKING sampler solves ALL your problems. Banging beats for the dance crowd (and replaceable when they go out of fashion), better pipe organs for the church and theater organ crowd, darker pianos for the classical and jazz fans..... etc., etc..

But do you bitch at Yamaha constantly to fix this awful problem....? There's little chance it will be addressed if you don't complain, publicly. If Yamaha don't think that hardly anyone actually USES the sampler much, they don't have much incentive to improve it on the next Tyros. And, to be honest, if you are not complaining about the sampler, and it's closed, proprietary system and glacial save and load times, well, you probably AREN'T using it, are you?

Maybe Yamaha have a different policy, but the Roland community has gotten a LOT of OS changes, new features, re-designed old ones, and given a LOT of user input as to what we would like to see on the NEXT G-series. Maybe Yamaha users think that Yamaha don't care for this input, or that it is futile to try, given past unresponsiveness, but trust me, if you DON'T voice your complaints, you have ZERO chance of getting what you want.

So speak up about the T2 sampler. Wouldn't it be nice if was actually of any real use...?