Ziggy. I know where your coming from BUT i do not agree with you in some of what your saying.. Firstly, let me say that I certainly DO agree with you when you said that GEM produce Midi Files/Songs better than anyone else... Ive got both the WX2 and WK6 at hand when wanting to use it for a good Karoake session, no other keyboard can play songs the way that GEM can do it, i just dont know how they do it because if you load up a standard midi file on the GEM, it sounds poor at first, but load up a GEM specific song, it sounds like the record.. amazing... Ive also got some Ketron specific songs for my X1, and although they also sound amazing, i still think GEM just do it that little better...

But onto where i do not agree with you.. If a person goes into a keyboard shop and they try out 2 keyboards in a similar price range (as in this case the Tyros and Genesys), they ARE judging it fairly because that person is dedicating a small amount of time on both units... so first impressions DO definately count. Its also obvious that if you spend 3 weeks on the Genesys im sure you can make it sound amazing using all its tweaks.. Same was with my X1 when i bought it, for about a couple of weeks i was using it without any effects until i found the options to boost it up.. then it just sounded so much better, especially when finally finding sounds in later banks not obvious at first... so when judging new kbs, i think there is a balanced judgement.. its only when you look at one of them deeper than the other that the judgements can be distorted...