I just want to add soemthing to this thread in terms of synth and arranger in one...

I recently swapped my PA 800 clean for another motif XS6. (I made a mistake by selling my motif XS last year) - here are my reasons for chosing korg and for dumping it:

I wanted an arranger keyboard that had a synth engine.

A Korg PA 800 DOES NOT have a synth engine!

It has synth editing capabilities (still no where near as good as the Motif XS and probably the korg M3 / triton series)

After going from a Yamaha Tyros 2 to a Korg PA 800 you think - wow so many tools and editing options. But what use are these tools if the basic sound set is no where near up to your needs?

i am comming from a perspective of synth sounds - dance hooks, pads, leaders, synth basses, ambient sounds etc etc. The Korg PA highly lacks these voices. there are not many, and the ones that are there are extremely weak.

I gave my korg a lot of patience, i spent time and time tweaking and talking to people on the korg Forums - lots of help - no doubt the korg users are friendly and highly knowledgable.

I constantly was posting on the korg forum asking for more synth sound banks (dance hooks, pads etc etc) to load into my PA 800 and i was given some examples and custom user banks that were from the Triton series BUT still the sounds were not very different from the standard sounds onboard the PA 800. I was very dissapointed by it.

I honeslty beleive the tyros 1 and 2 had a better synth and pad sound set than the Korg PA family. the PA definitely has awesome drum kits, great solo instrument voices - nice live uncompressed sound BUT it just wasnt enough for me. going back to the motif just makes me realise what i was missing.

there is a lot of marketing crap that gets put out there as well as just stories people tell about "an arranger with a synth engine" and people automnatically think they are getting an arranger keyboard that has the same exact sounds as the synth line eg: a korg PA 800 with Korg Triton voices... i have yet to lay hands on a triton, but from what i heard from the PA 800 i highly doubt the Triton would sound the same as the PA800. i imagine much more punchier sounds etc etc.

I even have my doubts about the same comparison between a Roland G70 and a Roland Fantom X. the G70 may have some of the fantom X sounds but really? how many? and are they that useful?

anyways i am much much happier now i have gone back to motif XS land.

i didnt want to stir any trouble by my post, i just wanted to clear the air for some people who are considering buying a PA 800 or a Roland arranger thinking they are getting a Synthesiser with arranger functionality...

cheers,
Nick