I used to routinely spend 5-15,000 dollars for an organ, not to mention leslies, dollies, and trailers to haul them in. And those dollars were probably worth at least twice what they are today. An organ cost way more than a new car!
ALL these keyboards are tremendous bargains. I don't believe Ketron has priced the Audya yet, though everybody seems to think they have. I think it would be hard to do since they haven't finished producing it.
Even after the first arrangers came out and I could finally quit lugging organs around, it was necessary to carry so much extra gear.
For example, I had an early PSR, maybe 6100 or 6300. It was midied to an external drum machine (Alesis, I think), a Yamaha SPX 90 that I used for pitch shift on the vocals, of course midi foot pedals were necessary to control it. Then add DX7 for decent lead sounds, an Yamaha TX81Z tone module, and FBO 1 piano module, external effects modules, huge heavy PA system, etc., etc.
All this added up to WAY more than any of the top-of-the-line arrangers and my Bose L1 system. Plus this stuff weighs a fraction as much and sounds better.
Just think, with most of the new boards, you get a sophisticated mixer, harmonizer, several effects units, midi file player, maybe MP3 or WAV player, sequencer, recorder, text display, video outputs, virtually unlimited storage, big easy-to-read displays---the list goes on and on. They are all bargains!!
By the way, the lowly PSRS900 has almost everything listed above, for what, $1,500?
A Ketron Midjay is an amazing piece of gear for the same price. My Roland E50 is even less (of course it does less, but sounds great.) It's just a matter of which one best suits your needs and a matter of priorities as to where you spend your money.
A new bass boat like mine costs $25,000. I bought mine a couple of years used for $5,000. Just think, I have $20,000 I "saved" to spend on music stuff!!!
DonM