Micco, Paul, and Blinkers,

I've had my 9000PRO for a week now, and love it. The synth-weighted keys are a HUGE improvement over the PSR9000 (owned one for a year).

The 9000 pro has 50% more voice memory than the PSR9000, (mostly used by some terrific new Live! voices). It has 848 voices in total, (342 panel voices, 480 XG voices, 24 Drum Kits, 2 SFX kits). There are 32 custom voices (user programmable) and 20 organ flute voices (10 preset, 10 programmable). The 11 new voices are: a stereo Live! Grand piano voice, Aloha guitar, Santana sounding "Carlos guitar", a distorted lead guitar, Live! Arco strings, a sweet muted trumpet, a sweet flugel horn, Live! Horns, Live! Brass, Live! Octave Brass, and two synthesiser pad sounds - Pro Heaven and Sunbeam. There also 8 new drum kits.

The 9000PRO styles are identical to the PSR9000, with just 2 extra styles pre-loaded in the flash banks (Vocal Swing and Jazz Singer). A few new styles are on disk including a "Western" style (John Wayne-ish), an Orchestral ballad (James Bondish), a Club Latin, and some new 8-beat and 16-beat styles.

The 9000PRO's organ sounds are VASTLY superior to the PSR9000. I've got all of the old PSR9000 sounds on the PRO and I can play them side by side and there is simply NO CONTEST - it's not even close. The physical modeled organ sounds are AWESOME.

The 9000PRO accepts the new Yamaha piano plugin (haven't got it yet) that adds 136 piano sounds. The new piano sounds are stereo sampled and the plugin actually adds another 64 notes polyphony to the 9000PRO. It should make a big difference (but we'll see).

Hey, I'm not telling you to upgrade. I'm just saying that I did, and am extremely glad I did. Minor improvements have been made everywhere, making the 9000PRO more roughed and overall much superior to the PSR9000.

As far as speakers go, George Kaye has a small satellite speaker system (2 mini speakers and a subwoofer) that are very reasonably priced. I play the 9000PRO through my Samson EX20's - great sound.

Paul, you haven't listed an email address on SynthZone's profile, so I can't email you some confidential info. Email me.

Steve

PS. Upgrading isn't as expensive as you might think . . .



[This message has been edited by Stevizard (edited 02-12-2001).]