Hi there,
With respect, I think you have missed the main point,

a, b and c)
That is exactly what I was describing with a usb comms link, backup to laptop, pc, and then cd from the pc or whatever, much cheaper, faster and more reliable. There is no reason to backup the keyboard hard drive from a keyboard cdrw - you are hardly likely to want to do this on a gig - plug it into your laptop/pc and use your existing equipment.

I have a usb2 external hard disk, this is faster than firewire, and could easily handle realtime 96kHz multitrack audio, as I mentioned, something your cd writer could not. The comms link would meet every one of your criteria, much cheaper and far faster than a cd writer built into the keyboard, without spending money duplicating equipment you already have. Backing up the data on hard drive is not an argument; you can have the data on keyboard hard drive, laptop hard drive, pc hard drive, and still make backup cds in the pc or laptop.

Likewise all of your other possibilities are taken care of by the same argument. My point was that if the money was spent instead on inbuilt flash memory, you could fill the board with your own setups, patterns and midis, easily having enough to satisfy the pros since this would be the equivalent of the combination of the presets and the programmables of today’s top models, and surely enough for a weeks playing, let alone a night. And with a link erase the entire keyboard of styles, setups and songs, and replace from your laptop or pc in seconds (but not on stage ). If you discount sampling, it is possible that a hard disk is not essential if you have enough flash, since the money saved would give much, much more flash memory; look how many manage with the tiny amount on the psr2000, how much better would 10 or 20 times as much flash be? This is money saved, spent on in-built flash.

A flash card slot (or three) would just be an inexpensive addition from the manufacturers point of view (since compact flash has the controller built in), and give the customer even more flexibility if he wishes.
You could have a couple of flash cards with hundreds if not thousands of songs for last minute requests, so you do not need to plug in the laptop.
You are wrong; you can use flash cards with a computer very easily and hot pluggable. I have a pcmcia adaptor for the laptop (cost $5) and a usb plug in for the pc or laptop (cost $25). I look on flashcards as replacements for floppy disks, not hard disks. I often use a flashcard to transfer hundreds of MB of data from laptop to laptop because it is so quick.

Obviously for sampling, you will need a keyboard hard disk to cater for the file sizes, but again all arguments for backup and transfer are catered for by a fast comms link to your existing equipment, far faster than cdrw. If you have a hard disk already in the keyboard, no-one is going to use the cd on a gig to load samples, you’ll have them all on the hard disk anyway.

You can’t seriously be saying in a) and b) that the preferred method of backup is to make a cd in the keyboard, transfer it to your pc, and then copy it to your pc hard disk, when you could plug a cable in and transfer the same data in a minute? This is possible as existing data transfer from hard disk to hard disk; if it was switchable to 44.1 kHz you could play your audio in as a wave file direct to Sound Forge or whatever with no quality loss whatever, without needing a hard disk in the keyboard, bringing this feature to a far lower price band than Genesys. And again, like the 9000 sampler, you will never have the editing available in the keyboard to a standard of depth and ease of use available from programs on your pc.

So my argument is basically why pay more and more, to duplicate equipment you already have, for features in the board that are nowhere near as easy to edit as your existing programs on the pc anyway? I just don’t see the point of paying twice for something that’s done much better on the laptop/pc with stuff you already have?

I agree it all depends whether you want an all in one box or not. I’m just wondering whether you could get the same sound quality of the Genesis for 2 or 3 grand, and still have all the features with your existing gear, and probably, particularly for making audio cds much easier to use and providing higher quality results?
Respect.