Hi Sean,
George is right in what he says. If performing and song writing is your goal, then the answer to your question is both yes and no. It depends upon how you want to get there (and by this I mean how much time and effort you wish to contribute). Let me try to explain ....

When I arrived at the decision to buy my first keyboard (not the 9000PRO) I had to go up a very steep learning curve to understand (appreciate) the differences in the many types of keyboards available. All this was done before I knew about this wonderful group of people at SynthZone. Through my many questions, and I really think that at the time I taxed to the limit the patience of some of the store people I asked, I zereod in that I needed either an arranger keyboard (Yamaha PSR or Roland ) or a Synth (Roland or Yamaha S80) and not an "electric piano". My biggest problem at the time was getting the information in a form that I could understand (relate to). Many of the stores people new what I was asking but could not answer it in simple man's terms. They did not ask the obvious questions - "what do you want to use it for?" and "what do you think it will do for you?"

The bottom line was that if I wanted to put together arrangements of songs quickly to use immediately, then an arranger keyboard was my choice. If on the other hand I wanted to mainly work with a band and contribute all the sounds and effects that these instruments can, and as a side operation "take time" to craft and "write songs" using the syth's tools which work from the ground up, rather than quickly write using the styles (arrangements) of an arranger keyboard, then the synth was for me.

I chose the arranger because, yes I wanted to "write songs" but more over I was not continuously working with a band - mostly there was just me - so I needed the flexability of being able to quickly bring songs together through arranging rather than working on them from the ground up (which is what I would have had to do with a synth).

I realise that I have not answered your question via a definative feature / advantage comparison of the two instruments. I think that if you downloaded the manuals for both, after a few hours of study you would be far clearer on the issues than reading any amount of rambling I could do in this post.

However if you decide at a high level, along the lines that I have outlinned, to determine what YOU want to do with the instrument and what you want IT to do for you, then I think you will have your answer as to which would work best for you. I hope that this helps.
Jon.

[This message has been edited by JonPro (edited 07-25-2002).]