I would suggest that if you prefer the Triton soundset that you do check out the PA80. I own it. I also have logged a lot of hours on a friend's Triton and have spent a good bit of time with the Karma when I was wrestling over the decision of whether or not to purchase one. I totally disagree with the assessment made by KN. I find that if we're talking acoustic voices in many cases the ones on the PA80 sound better than their counterparts on the Triton. I'm not very impressed with the soundset on the Karma for some of the acoustic patches either, although most of the synth patches sound excellent to me, and with some editing you could probably get some better acoustic voices.

This may be a little too much of a generalization, but in my way of thinking this is because of the way DSP's are set up between the boards and that arranger players seem to focus a little more in general on emulating acoustic instruments than the average player of today's workstation. Judging by the way their workstations and arrangers are set up with their bread and butter patches, Korg and Yamaha seem to recognize this as well. The Triton / Karma seem to be geared a more toward todays dance / synth /electronica sounds. These are very tastefully done in the Triton and while it's possible to match some of them on the PA80, the effects engine is not of the same quality as Triton's. The same is true of the Motif vs the higher end PSR's / Tyros. The Tyros overall has better acoustic instrument sounds than my Motif does, ( this I could easily tell after only 2 hrs on the Tyros ) but will not match it for user made synth sounds, as it does not have the same editing capabilities.

An important key to measuring the sounds in any of these boards is to compare them through the same sound system if possible.

AJ



[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 01-20-2003).]