If I might make a few comments here regarding the sound quality of the Genesys, I would like to give you my opinion of the Piano sounds compared to the sounds of the Ketron SD1, Yamaha 9000pro, PSR2000, Korg PA80 and Roland VA76. I cannot give you my view of the tyros since I only had it for a few hours several months ago and although I don't remember it now, it did strike me as sounding like the 9000pro when I played it.
I just had a customer buy a Genesys yesterday and one of the things he insisted on doing was to compare the "best" Genesys piano to the "best" SD1 as well as the others I mentioned. This customer bought a VA7 from me two years ago and wanted to upgrade, first the sound quality and second the style variety. He always liked his VA7's piano, but he mentioned that when many of his friends listened to the VA7, they found it to be lacking in dynamics from soft to loud as a real piano does. After 4 days of trying out all the different products, he decided on the Genesys. At first, he thought the piano to be not as "real" as the Ketron SD1 until I showed him that he was selecting the Piano choices out of the catagory called "Piano" and not from the catagory called "Real". This is the piano sample taken from the Generalmusic Pro Mega 3 keybaord, which as many of you know, was just reviewed by Keyboard Magazine and given an excellent review of especially the acoustic piano sound. Yes, the Pro Mega features physical modeling along with the sample, but the Genesys Piano is the sample portion of the promega and sounds very real from warm to bold in actual testing. In the individual voice catagories, where you find all 1300 sounds, there is another piano called "L Piano". My first guess was this is just a voice to use for the left hand side of the piano, but it is a very warm, almost Roland VA7 sounding piano which sounds great throughout the entire length of the keyboard. This voice is not used as a "preset" and I've made a user preset of this voice so my customers can also quickly find this piano sound to listen to.
After several visits into my store this is how my customer rated the acoustic pianos for his needs. (these are his evaluations, not mine! although I tend to agree in most cases)
1)Genesys
2)Ketron SD1 (very close but the Genesys "real grand piano" had a little more realism in the upper octaves where the SD1 had a little more depth in the lower octaves"
3)Roland VA7 or VA76 (Very nice mellow piano but lacking in a Robust sound when playing hard)
4)Yamaha 9000Pro (this piano has a slightly brighter sound, like if you might have microphones placed very close to an acoustic piano as opposed to the others which sound more like a piano in a room that is not mic'd)
5)Korg PA80 (Sounds like a Piano but way to bright for this customer's tastes)
I find that listening to many MP3's of keyboards around the internet usually don't do justice to the actual sounds when heard in person. Although it is a great way to hear how good the styles might be arranged, sounds are often not what you really get!

[This message has been edited by George Kaye (edited 11-19-2002).]