That is the most blinkered, untrue, partisan statement on this whole thread...

Users of WHAT? Closed keyboards? Balderdash! They MIGHT chose the SOUND of an open keyboard's piano sound or maybe B4, but the minute they play any of the content, the minute they play a sequence on it, they find out just how clumsily assembled these things are. Their soundsets are NOT well balanced, their demo content is embarrassingly amateur, and their OS is convoluted. And, on the shelf next to a MoXS or T3, they sound like a bad Casio with 24 bit converters And then they chose the closed product over the open one.

The 'open' keyboard market is a TINY, TINY fraction of the whole keyboard market. They are outsold thousands to one. And any of these users has the opportunity to listen to an open keyboard, at least online, and MAYBE in the store. And they STILL go home with a closed keyboard...

You see, to most people, the SOUNDS, each individually, are not what makes someone buy a keyboard. A keyboard is an 'integrated system'. The sounds (all of them, and how well they work with each other), the content, the OS and the physical layout are ALL equally important.

I have a sneaky feeling that open keyboard fans are really taking sound quality of one or two sounds as their ONLY criteria. Perhaps because they already HAVE keyboards that do the other stuff well. But perhaps they MIGHT let reality creep into their decision were they buying an open keyboard to be their SOLE piece of gear (after all, with all the hype they put on them, why WOULD you need ANYTHING else? )...

I simply keep getting the impression that the open fanboys keep missing my point. YES, I already use VSTi's. I use them as well and as much as my other types of keyboards. But there simply is no way in HELL I would, at this point in open keyboards' development, use them to REPLACE my conventional keyboards.

With one exception... Yes, I agree that Wersi have done a better job integrating the front end into the 'normal' way of operating and using an arranger. But at a horrendous prise premium and penalty. Oh, and there's much about the Wersi's home organ legacy I would be happy to drop (litterally!), especially the weight! Got enough to deal with in the G70

But to suggest wholesale that "when users compare products live, they choose the open product over the closed one" is utter rubbish. Or I would be defending my G70 as a 'niche' product and you would be ALL using soft arrangers!

Open keyboards have (potentially) the best SOUNDS. And that, my friends is IT. They don't have the best OS, they don't have the best layout (some of them have no layout at all ) they don't have the best live ease of use, they don't have much affordability (especially if you want something that IS integrated well) they don't have much content of any quality when bought, so budget for what? maybe at least another thousand or so before it DOES sound better than a T3 (conservatively a thousand dollars!)...

Doesn't seem much of a bargain.

For now (I do expect that open systems will EVENTUALLY draw equal with closed for ease of use), I'll stick to using my computers when I want to hear high quality VSTi sounds and I'll stick to closed keyboards when I want ease of use.

Now, I'm going to sleep... Wake me up when open keyboards have figured out how to work as well as closed ones, will you?