Donny, what's a 'real' synthesizer? Acoustic emulation is only one small part of keyboard playing. They've been using strong synth sounds on records since the 60s (and before if you want to get academic!)

In fact, there's barely any need for acoustic emulation for most modern electronica and dance musics. Squeak's kind of pointing out the move BACK towards acoustic emulation as more specialized 'virtual' synths get popular.

When it comes to keyboard emulation, well, that's a little bit different that, say, sax emulation or strings.... First of all, there are very few players using the 'real thing' to replace. And if a Rhodes sound or clavinet sits in the mix indistinguishably from a real one, well, job well done! No need to get worked up about that...

And as to emulation of other, non-keyboard sounds, it all kind of depends on how much time and attention you can put into phrasing, bending, blowing, etc., while you are still trying to input chords with your left hand. If you don't have to deal with all that (by using SMFs, mp3's, or Chord Sequencers), it's pretty amazing how close you can get to fooling the discerning listener.

I guarantee there's a ton of TV scores and even film scores that you have no idea that's a keyboard player you are listening to. You're thinking, nice oboist, or flautist, but it's all these Giga sized orchestral libraries. The SA technology has been around for quite a while in some of the Giga 'triggers', and the only thing you have to do to make it really authentic is to make sure you get inside the head of the player you are trying to emulate, just make sure that your lines are idiomatic.

After that, don't be surprised that no-one can tell the difference....!

I think sax is the final frontier.... It's definitely the last instrument to get really close by emulation. It just has such an enormous timbral range, and some VERY non-linear things that happen as you go from one note to another. Yammie's SA sax is the first thing I've ever heard that gets the inter-note transitions well, but it still can't quite get the full range of timbre. But a huge step in the right direction, and given that it is VERY new technology, I expect we'll see it get better and better over the years.

Getting inside the head of a sax player, now THAT's the really hard part. These guys spend their entire lives thinking ONLY about the line, the melody, one note at a time. It's a real challenge as a keyboard player to get THAT focused on just one note at a time!

As to ROMplers getting back to more 'acoustic' sounds, squeak, I think that's hardly surprising, as 'virtual' analog synths do a FAR better job of synthesis emulation, now the bar is so high that good samples just don't cut it. The new MotifXS unfortunately doesn't have the slots for the 'virtual analog' board any more, do they? So it's ROM wave sample emulation, nowhere near as good as virtual analog....