I think the PSR-S550 is going to be a winner! A model like the PSR-S550 is something that (I DO) like about Yamaha in that every so often they pop out a model packed with some very useful features for a low end unit. This unit picks up in areas where the S-500 was seriously lacking.

Here are some of the additions I consider to be a major upgrade from the S-500

1-Poly increased to 64 notes (that's twice the poly of the S-500)

2-Seq trks increased to 16 (again twice the S-500)

3-YAYYYYYYYY STYLE RECORDING HAS BEEN BROUGHT BACK!!!!! Full style recording too, with quantize and so on. (the S-500 has no user style recording)

4-Part Mixer.., you can now adjust the volume, pan, ect on user songs using the part mixer.

Reading the manual and looking at the voice list..., I can't see any Mega Voices carried over (unless I just completey missed them). However, they sure as hell gave you enough sweet/cool/live voices to make up for those.

Man.., now I'm against the wall here. I'm going to be adding an arranger to my synth setup, but don't need something as full featured as the higher S- series or the PA series, and I was strongly considering the new Roland GW-8.., but my gripes with it are (no part editing for user songs), MFX are real-time effects ONLY, and no style recording. The S-550 doesn't have voice editing, but it records user styles, has post song editing, and records DPS to the seq. AGHHHHH decisions.....


[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 09-03-2008).]