the SD5 does support USB by using a serial cable to a USB Midi adapter and Ketron USA does provide one free of charge if needed. The pattern expansion chip allows for up to 200 patterns to be loaded in rather than about 40 without it.
The part that bothers me about the SD5 is just about price. I feel that a keyboard with these features (no vocal harmony stock, no USB device stock, 61 keys, only a single track sequencer for recording songs) is price to high at close to $2500.00. When announced to me over 2 years ago, I was told it would sell right around the price of a Yamaha PSR3000. This never happened. Today, it's closest competition would be the PSRS900 which comes with all the above mentioned features for around $1000.00 less. If you add the vocal harmonizer and hard drive to the SD5 it becomes $3000.00. I also think it is time for Ketron to improve upon their displays. The new Auyda has an interface display that looks more like Korg and Yamaha. The SD5 looks like the X1.
The SD5 is built very well and like Don says, you can program it to behave in just about any way you like and then save all this as a "power on set up".


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George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California
818-881-5566
www.kayesmusicscene.com