Rolandfan,

I don't know much about the EM55, but I do own a G1000, and it is an excellent-sounding keyboard to my ears. I believe it has 24 MB of sound ROM for its 1600 odd sounds. The VA- series has 48 MB ROM for about 3500 sounds, and I guess it sounds a bit better. The fact that EM55 has only 20 MB for the same number of sounds tells me that they probably use shorter-length samples than either the VA or G1000. If I were you, I'd try to listen to the instrument very carefully, and not rush to make a buying decision.

In my experience, the newer sound sets contain some (fairly few) sounds that are better than before, but the rest of the sounds are very similar to their predecessors, even if they may be resampled.

A word of caution - with Roland, more sounds does not mean better sounds. What they do is they arrange sounds in the banks (one for SC55=E70, one for SC88=G800, one for SC880=G1000) for backward compatibility, so that a style from, say, G800, based on the older sound set, would play correctly on a newer G1000, EM or VA instrument. They organize the new sounds into the next sound bank (which you use by default) by groups (e.g. piano, guitars, strings, brass, winds, etc.), and intersperse unrelated sounds into those banks, so you may find a Oboe3 sound in the Piano group. I often find it difficult to find the sound I want in my 1600 sound set. You may have even more trouble with the 3500 sound set, especially since the EM55 has a smaller screen than the G1000.

I don't know about the EM55 sequencer or part volume adjustments - on G1000 there is a 16 track sequencer, and it is fairly easy to adjust part volumes.

REgards,
Alex