I think you pretty much nailed it, Bill...

The thing for me is, as a horn player, while the tone of the horn is quite important, what you do with it is the primary thing. Occasionally, you'll hear a genius sax player (a little Bird tells me) playing quite a lousy horn (Bird recorded some amazing stuff on a cheap plastic horn). It's pretty much an ideal illustration of the fact that the horn's tone, though somewhat important, has next to nothing to do with a great performance.

So, to do the best job of imitating a horn PLAYER (rather than a horn), the ability to articulate, to put expression (or motion, if you will) into something that is essentially static is of primary importance. Yes, ideally, we would all love to see the marriage of Korg's tone with Yamaha's SA technology, but the nature of patents and competition make this unlikely. But, getting too hooked on the tone, at the expense of the playability can only limit you to what you want to play. If you HAVE to play a certain line, because that's the only way the horn samples will work without starting to sound like a keyboard, that tone starts to become a liability, rather than a strength.

Yamaha's SA sax is the first thing that I have ever heard that allows you the freedom to play what YOU want to play, rather than what the horn sample will allow you to play. A certain amount of tone sacrifice for that ability is a price I am more than happy to pay.

I have always wanted to sound like a sax PLAYER. You work with a dozen sax players, they got a dozen different tones. Some better than others, and often the better player may not have the best tone. HE'S the guy I want to sound like...