to spalding...its not just an arpeggiator, its four, yes 4 of them all playing there own arps at the same synced time..the es has only one arpeggiator...add chord recognition and its essentially a quasi-arranger..another benefit is you could change the feel of a piece simply by changing the drum arp, and the new arp is played in perfect sync with the existing arps...same goes for any of the other arps too...then add the SA voices to the already superb ES voices, vocoding harmoniser built-in, bigger brighter colour screen, there is more, but thats for another place...imho the hype for the XS is well justified...as soon as it hits Oz i will be demoing one, with a view to trading my s90es for it..
to nick...that price is high..U.S. prices are marked at about $2900, so out here about 3300-3500 i would imagine, my rep at music store where i shop at called yamaha and they said they had no firm pricing for Oz as yet...prob early may..
cheers
dennis