Thanks for the info Terry. Yes, the ES has many arps, and some good ones. That's a big plus. Ease of editing, and the just fact that Fantom now allows user arps is another consideration though.

Quality is more important to me vs quantity. As I said, the Mo has some very good arps, but I have to go through the step of recording and saving each to a midi file if I want to edit the presets. I prefer to use an external sequencer, so more steps... Not particularly intuitive is it ?

Worse yet is trying to use the sampling function. I'd love to take some of those stunning Moog Modular /SV80 sounds and add them to the Motif soundset, to have available for live work. The Es, even with the AN150 plug in, can't closely imitate some of the sounds in those two Vsti's. I was able to add samples of one of the Moog patches and it sounds excellent played through the ES, but the time and effort it takes to do it just isn't worth the hassle.. not for me anyway. It would be a whole lot simpler to just bring along a laptop with a good soundcard and the appropriate software / softsynths lloaded in.

Yep, those Motifator guys are a different breed. Heaven help the poster who questions or offers constructive criticism for their "perfect" ( not ) machine....

One other feature that's important to me, if not a "must have", in any potential replacement for the ES, is the ability to use a breathe controller.

Tom,

Roland fell to the bottom of the pile for me with their recent offerings vs what the other major players have recently put out there. That changed instantly the day I tried the V synth out. I haven't been very inspired by Roland's "variphrase" technology either, until I saw it's application on the 'V'. Based on the demo's, and what I did like about the Fantom S, I think the Fantom 'X' may also be very much to my liking. That said, in the spirit of the original topic, I'd probably still be a little annoyed had I bought the 'S' a few months ago, and it was already being replaced. It's almost as if the 'S' was a failed experiment, doomed by Motif ES and TS II. Maybe that's totally inaccurate, but still how it looks and feels to me.


AJ




[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 02-09-2004).]