Hi everybody, hi Marek

I have posted this review in another thread as a reply but I hope its of use as a new post:

Last weekend I checked out both, the PSR 9000 and the X1 at home through my own active speaker system at home (Remember it´s just songcomposing I want to use them for, not live performance): I have reported before in this forum, but here some more:
The X1 has more drumkit variation than the PSR 9000 (not only numberwise but also concerning the different sound, eg "progressive, techno" etc.), but the stereo sampled kits (Standard and Funk) of the PSR 9000 rock! They have much more punch than the kits in the X1. I guess thats why thhe Yamaha uses them in many of its styles. The rest of the PSR-kits are okay and do not sound as interesting as the ones in the X1. Sadly enough I believe the X1 has no stereo drum samples and you can hear that. I was a little disappointed with the tom sounds of the X1 too: Very thin, no punch at all!

The styles of the X1 are definitely more interesting than what the PSR has to offer. And when you go through different sections like 8-beat, 16-beat you will again hear more variety and surprise within this section. And even if the PSR 9000 has very good guitars: The X1 makes better use of its guitar riffs and strums. This is before you listen to the fills. And there was my biggest concern after I heard all the rave in this forum: Many fills of the X1 are completely overdone with tomstrikes and some of them loose this certain live-character the main A, B, C, D are known for. I would send a drummer home if he did fills like that! Sometimes you can hear the quantizing (can you say so?), sometimes you believe, the rhytm is not quite on time (software version 3.0) But this part is exactly where the PSR 9000 impressed me: Even if there are no sampled grooves used, it has very, very good drum fills and breaks. And it has a lot more of them than in the X1. That means: You use fill 2 between e.g. two main Bs. When you use in the same style fill 2 again between - lets say - two main Ds, you will have a DIFFERENT fill! And that adds much to the quality of a song.

The sounds: I only compared the new voices (live, sweet, cool) of the Yamaha, not the XG-sounds. Both of them have their certain strengths, the PSR 9000 shines with a lot more variety, the X1 is in some parts more natural sounding. The piano in my opinion is definitely better in the X1. I was expecting a much better keyboard in the PSR 9000. I can´t understand why they dare to offer this sound in that pricerange! I found as well the brass section of the X1 more natural sounding. Overall the Yamaha has definitely more punch!

Grooves: The X1 offers more than thirty grooves, sampled drumloops that means, from Tambourine to congapatterns etc. They are mixed to the styles to make them more natural sounding. I listended to them without the styles around them: latin stuff is musically well done, but they all lack sound quality. They sound like lofi samples, not crisp at all (shurely small datafiles because they adapt to the tempo of the styles immediately, but still: the sound is poor!)

Oh well: Now I´m really stuck: The more versatile X1 with its interesting styles against the Yamaha with compact sound and much better and more fills. One thing that speaks for the X1 is the chance to load new drums, grooves and styles via Ram Card ( Will they ever offer stereo sampled drums?).

Question 1: The PSR 9000 would be of much more use to me if it had more drum kits (13 is very limited!), the ability of saving user drum kits and voice edit for single drum sounds like tuning a snare etc. Will this be added with the new systemsoftware in april?

Question 2: Has anybody heard PSR 9000 styles on the X1 - how do they sound? The fills should be a lot better than the ones in the X1, but may be the poor tomsounds of the X1 would not equal that?

(Danny, before I took the 9000 and the X1 home, I had another go for the Korg I30, because some people are raving about it. They have done a good job with the styles, but to me they are to much song than style and thats not good for composing I think. Besides: I was more than disappointed with the sounds, the brass section was completely inacceptable to me, but I guess its just another keyboard generation of ´97.)

Okay, these are just my opinions, but this is what this forum is about.
Comments and help very welcome

Marek, I try to explain what I meant by the many more fills in the PSR 9000 that exceed the number of fills in the X1:

First of all: The X1 and the PSR 9000 both have 3 fills and 1 break. But there is a difference:
With the X1, play a certain style, change the variations A,B,C,D, and use the fills/break between: Fill A will allways be the same, fill B as well and so fill C and the break. Quite normal so far.
But its not like that with the PSR: Changing variations within a style and using the fills between reveals that some fills are not always the same within one style. Fill B for example (the one with the circle on it, which is used to combine the same variations) has different versions: Using it between Variations A gives you different results than using it between two variations D. And this is musically speaking logical, when this fill is supposed to laed back to the same variation where you came from. This is something the X1 does not offer!

Now the piano sound of the X1 and the PSR 9000: I heard them thoroughly (?) and compared them side by side through the same speakersystem (not the onboard speakers) - I must say to my ears the X1-piano sounded far superior: Not so sharp and thin, a bit like a mellow piano, but very realistic. On the other hand: The E-Piano sounds were better on the PSR.

Within this week I will decide which keyboard to buy. The price is the same here. But as You can see, its a very difficult decision. I haven´t made my mind up yet. Unfortunately both keyboards have no means to expand the number of drum kits (with new samples, not user kits), solton hotline told me today. I thought that should have been possible with the Ram Card.

Sorry for the long posting!
Best regards to all

Heinrich