Hello!

Two weeks ago I went to my dealer and I had a chance to play the PA80 and PRO9000 and now I would like to write my opinion about these two keyboards here but first I would like to say something. At the moment I have PSR9000 and I have had it for a year now. I am glad that I bought it then because now the price of this keyboard came up 2900 finnish marks. So the PSR9000 costs 22900 mk and the new PRO9000 costs 25500 mk. I knew about the PRO9000 when I was looking for a new keyboard but the PSR9000 was my choice because I really need the internal speakers and I don´t need so much the added features which the PSR9000 does not have. Also the PRO was more expensive and another bad thing is that the PRO doesn´t fit to our car so it would be inpossible to carry it. Last autumn I started to play in our business college band and we have had few gigs so now I also now more about playing on stage "live" in front ot the audience. About the Korg I don´t have much to say. I have only played the Triton and the i3 some years ago. The only thing what I can say is that they are good keyboards but here is my review:

The design and the user friendliness

To my eye the PSR9000 is the best looking keyboard of the three. Also the PRO9000 looks nice but not as nice as the PSR9000. Some of you will disagree about this but the PSR9000 is the most beautiful. The PA80 doesn´t look so nice but it doesn´t mean that it is ugly. It only means that the Yamahas look a bit better. The 9000s are also more user friendly than the PA80. The difference is not big but still.

The sounds

I heard rumours that the PRO9000 would have better sound than the PSR9000 but this is not true. The sound are the same and the only difference is that the PRO9000 has few Live!, Cool! and Sweet! sounds more. I have heard that it would be possible to have these added sounds on the PSR9000 on a sample CD or OS update. Has anyone any more information about this? First I have to say that all the three keyboards have great sounds and it is not very easy to say which one has the best sounds. The "Triton" sounds on the PA80 are fantastic and very realistic but Yamahas sounds have always been my favourite so what can I say? They are equal or maybe the 9000s have only a little bit better sounds to my ear. It is very difficult to say which sounds. The clarinet sound could be better on the PA80 but the flute is better on the 9000s. This is tooooooooo difficult.

The styles

The quality of the styles is the same. About the beat it is more difficult to say. The PA80 has better dance, ballad and 8 & 16 beat styles but the 9000s have better jazz, country and rock styles. This is what I found out. The PRO9000 has few more styles but it is possible to have these styles on the PSR9000. You can download the from the internet. I did so. If we compare to styles we don´t have winners or losers. Some tyles are better on the PA80 and some are better on the 9000s.

The internal sound system

The PRO9000 is the loser here of course. The PSR9000 has the best sound system. The internal speakers are fantastic and they can go very loud (I don´t never play loud). The sound system on the PA80 is not so good compared to the PSR9000 but still it is ok. The quality of the speakers on the PA80 is fine but nothing compared to the PSR9000. On both keyboards I could hear distortion at very high volumes but this doesn´t bother me because I really don´t play loud.

The features

The PA80 doesn´t have a sampler and also the vocal harmoniser and the video interface are optional. On the Yamahas these features are in the keyboard and they are not options. Also the 9000s have more connections than the PA80 like SCSI, dual MIDI, PC keyboard and on the PRO9000 you also have more audio sub outputs and connection for the lamps and one the 9000s you can install a hard disk up to eight gb instead of the two gb on the PA80. On the PRO9000 you also have two card slots for more sounds and on the PA80 you can add more sounds on a PCMCIA card. This is something that the PSR9000 doesn´t have but on the PSR9000 you have a lot more weight especially compared to the PA80 so carrying the PSR9000 is a very good sport so it keeps you fit like I have told even before

Micco