The Yamaha S08 will be featuring the Yamaha Balanced Hammer Effect Keyboard found on their Motif 8 but without aftertouch. There are over 700 sounds and 24 bit Digital effects. There is a built in USB midi interface and a SmartMedia card slot and SMF playback sequencer. Secquencing software and voice editing software is included and the retail price is $1495.00.
The Roland styles are not nearly as exciting as the SD1 or X1 styles. They are however, very musical and very easy to work with. The sounds, once you know how to get into the 4 maps are quite good. The sad thing I saw at NAMM was that people would switch the map from the fourth or "new" map to map number 1 which is sound canvas or map number 2 which is G800 and the people trying out the keyboard doesn't know that they are not listening to the sounds from the XV5080. On a side note, I was selling a PK5 Roland pedal board last week to a salesman who works at a Roland CK store and he told me they never have sold even one VA7 because they could never figure out how to choose between the 3600+ sounds. Guess what, I didn't tell him either! How mean of me!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene