Dead right - I'm a Roland VA-76 owner of some 2 years standing ;-)

Someone else suggested that it might be the MP3 coding on the demo, but I don't think so. Judging by my VA, Roland's tones seem to lack subtle detail in some odd way and the overall sound of their keyboards is very smooth & sort-of polite.

Their instruments do seem to have a nicely rounded, rich and full bass end, but the higher frequencies seem too simple, hard to describe the effect in words. Almost like a shortage of harmonics that only register subconciously, but which make a big difference to overall clarity and punch.

Korg's sounds generally seem to have more "air" around them within the instrument's overall mix, and are well defined as a result. Roland's, on the other hand, seem to merge together so that each tone tends to get lost a bit within the total sound of a track.

I find the VA a totally none-inspirational instrument. Always have. It gets used only to set it up for gigs, for occassional recording, and on the actual gigs themselves. Otherwise, it stays in it's flight case. The idea of sitting down at it for pleasure rarely occurs....... It seems a very old fashioned sounding thing, and is a complete joke as a live arranger. Unusable. It does fulfil the specific purpose I bought it for.

In comparison, I previously owned a Korg i3, which almost got worn out through being played to death, as it was such a pleasure to jam with in true arranger mode. It was a proper MUSICAL instrument.

Just so you don't think I really am too biased, I also bought a Korg i30HDD not long after they came out, but again found that -whilst it had some very good individual sounds inside - it's overall sound was somewhat dull & muffled in comparison with it's older brother (it seems that I'm not alone in this opinion). That, plus various other backward steps in it's design, rather negated the obvious improvements Korg had made over the earlier i3.

I eventually got fed up with the i30HDD and sold it, having never gigged the thing. Meanwhile the ancient i3 kept coming up with the goods.

My ideal instrument would probably be an arranger with Korg's sounds & styles, plus Roland's midifile handling abilities and intelligent use of storage for seamless on-the-fly access to files.

Oh - and could we have the old i3's nice big start/stop, style variation, break and into/ending buttons back please - right in the middle, where they belong (that should provoke some debate, if nothing else does)!