Hi
I saw that you had seen my reply to sigma about the XP:s and that you were planning to buy a XP-80.
Iīm not going to say that you shouldnīt buy one but I have to warn you about the problems Iīve had myself. (Specially when you say that youīre going to make large arrangements and need the 64 voices)
For some time ago I was recording some songs and I found out that the workstation had some problems with the seq./voice polyphony, and I wasnīt exceeding the limit of the 64-voice and seq.polyphony.
The problems showed up in different ways: the timing went up and down; an instrument disappeard or sounded strange for a short while; an instrument (BD, SD, HH) got completly out of time for itself.
Here is an example I have on a disk: I use only three tracks whit bass, drums and piano. I play four notes (keys) at the same time on the piano track (I use no sustain pedal and I don`t play any new [4]notes before the previous ones have fade out). Everything is very simple and I donīt play fast att all. The max. used polyphony comes up to about 25-voices. This in not exactly a large arrangement!! but when you listen to it the drums are already out of time. If you put on more tracks the drums gets worse and worse.
I was wondering why this only happened to to the drums so I did an experiment and let the drum track play another instrument (instead of the rythm set) but the problem was still there.
This means that the problem is maybe happening on the other tracks but itīs just more difficult to hear it on other instruments.
This is very complicated and it takes time to find out so I donīt think that so many people knows about it, and besides everyone isnīt using the sequencer.

I prefer workstations to computers but I donīt understand how they will compete in the future. A seq. program on a computer has an unlimited number of tracks and sequencer voices. The Roland workstations has only 16 tracks and it doesnīt work properly!!

Maybe the new Korg-Triton is something to wait for?!
I hope that you find something to make your music on whitout having any troubles.
Have a good time =)

PS: Iīll write some more information about those problems some other time