Alex,
I have to disagree with this statement:
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Second, the Motif and any other "workstation" is essentially useless for playing music in real time, unless you are a budding Wendy (Walter?) Carlos. While most today's workstations have a complement of real, musically useful sounds (some of them quite good), the vast majority of their sounds are musically useless, and you have to wade through a lot of crap to find the good sounds. In fact, band usage notwithstanding, the only way to make music with a workstation is to record it track by track in the sequencer. Hence, having a large sequencer for a workstation is a necessity.
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That's not true. These workstations such as the Motif are recording POWERHOUSES compared to arrangers, and would work quite well for playing music in real-time. Just because they don't have styles and you record the music (yourself) doesn't mean they're not geared for live (solo) performance. There's one feature on synths that I can't believe people haven't caught on to yet that you can use in a way to trigger chord changes. It's acutally simple. I remember doing this on my EX-7. It just requires the user to record their own parts.

The comparison I did was soley based on specs for the price. Soundwise I still think the Motif is above the 3000, it also beats it in recording, build quality, ect. Even though this board is older than the PSR-3000 it still blows it away in many areas and sells for less.

Also you don't have to wade through a lot of sounds to find something good. Synths are now using "Category Search" for accessing sounds.

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An arranger keyboard, on the other hand, can make real music right out of the box, thanks to having good quality, easily accessible sounds, and musically useful styles, even when played by a relatively mediocre player like myself. It is definitely worth a lot more in musical terms; besides, those styles must cost quite a bit to record, which also adds to the price of the instrument.
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So can a synth. Especially today's synths. They now come with preset patterns and phrases for the user to record with (essentially) making it easier to make music right out of the box. A synth is for not only creating sounds ect.,but also for making music as well.

So maybe the prices are jacked because of the "instant gratification" hype....

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It is only we the buyers can get a change by not buying new and very expencive arrangers with very few add-ons
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AMEN TO THAT! That's an excellent point genesys. Take a look at what Casio did with their new WK-3700/3200. They increased the number of sounds, and improved the sound quality, added more patterns, and cleaned up the drum kits a bit, and they added more sample memory (twice the previous models). They added these few things and DIDN'T charge a penny more. The new models are the same price as the old models.

I honestly think one (expensive) useless feature on the PSR-3000 is the color screen. Seriously has the ability to read a simple and intuitive screen such as the ones on the PSR-2000/2100 gotten so bad that we now need color?????? I know (3) of my friends who returned keyboards they bought that had color screens on them. One of my friends actually owned the PSR-3000. He didn't like the screen because he felt it was too busy and too many colors to look at. He said it was much easier on his eyes using the screen on his PSR-2100. The other 2 bought and returned Roland Fantoms.

Take that color screen off the PSR-3000, and you can shave off a HUGE portion on the price. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Yammie uses that screen to jack the price.

I like arrangers and always have. It just that cost on them anymore is getting out of control. Excellent example: Look at the Roland G-70. Now a halfway decent arranger is going to set you back nearly $1,500. I just think that's outrageous considering many arrangers still don't have the voice editing power and sequencing power of a synth. It's like you're paying all that money just for a few decent (acoustic) sounds and some styles. Not everyone needs the vocalizer, and the color screen is just an expensive addition.

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even when played by a relatively mediocre player like myself.
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This is a good point here. It's understandable that one can say arrangers are also designed to help aid those who like yourself consider themselves to be a "mediocre" player, but what about those of us who are not mediocre players. I don't want to be charged a higher price. I'm not a mediocre player.

Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 09-24-2005).]