The Fantom XA is in my opinion the most powerful arranger of the three. If you plan on doing synth and pad voices more than orchestrial the Roland if more in your ball park. Roland has always had fantastic OS making it a breeze going through the sounds, sequencing ect. Its basically the same thing as the Fantom-X, but it looses in the tiny screen, 9 small buttons (no velocity or after touch on them i think) Everything that the X could loose to save money is what the XA is. Same Fantom sound engine, same Fantom sounds, same effects processor ect. I would strongly reccomend looking at the Fantom-S, same thing as the X, but four shade lcd screen, 64 polyphony, 64mb wav rom. The XA is exspandable to 192 rom with 2 SRX boards (that X allows 4 boards)

The Motif is is very good workstation, I was contemplating between that and the Fantom-S for a while. It all came down to the Motif has a small screen, I wasnt big into orchestrial playing, the OS was what ive heard somewhat difficult to learn but all in all fully functional. 85mb rom is very nice, however I dont think its exspandable. I would highly reccomend savign your money, and sticking with the original Motif, there arent enough changes that is worth the extra grand, especially with the Fantom-X worth the same amount.

I dont have much knowlege about the Triton LE, it looks like a very nice board, however IMO overpriced, id far rather get a used Fantom-S which is even cheaper than a new LE. Like the Roland, Korg does way more pads, synths, ambient ect. However if you have not played a korg before id reccomend playing one just to feel the keys, because just for me the key feel would make me never want to buy a korg, they just feel very weak, and you cant get any emphasys into the sound.

The Triton Extreme looks way cool, im not a fan of the OS but the thing is loaded, and has some very cool features, if you have a CG or something around you its worth the trip to drive there, play them all and decide from that.

All in all I think the best value for what you get would be a Fantom-S, used perhaps, no more than 900 bucks, exact same thing as the X, but less rom, no color screen... and well thats about it. For a thousand bucks less, the coice is obvious.

Phil

[This message has been edited by Pennywizz6 (edited 03-27-2005).]