I wish I knew what people meant when they say that Yamaha arrangers sound "CD" like. Being a professional recording engineer and producer for over 25 years I have never once recorded anything on CD that sounds like what I've heard on Yamaha's arrangers. Thank God! Even their TOTL arrangers with the exception of a few SA instruments aren't even close in sound to live instrumentation that I've recorded. Yamaha's weak drum sounds have already been talked about here ad nauseam so certainly Yamaha hasn't seemed to hit the mark in that department either which is a shame given their excellent Custom Series Drum sets they manufacture.

To me a great "CD sound" is one that has been well engineered, has incredible dynamic range, and sounds organic, open, and airy. Good examples of such CD's are most anything released by GRP Records or recorded by George Massenburg. To me when someone says something has a polished sound I think of works by Trevor Horn, not the anemic over compressed sound of a Yamaha arranger. Trevor Horn's sounds is certainly a polished sound one would never achieve using factory sounds from any Yamaha arranger.