Brickboo,

No offence taken , whatsoever. In fact you have a valid point as regards sounds, not so much in quality but in numbers. I have a complete essay in my head on that subject which I will post in the next few weeks.
Anyway Nick already answered part of your question here ( I hope) , he certainly completed my summary of the differences between a PA500 and a PA800 admirably. All in all it is safe to say that the PA800 is defintely a better board than the PA500, without knocking the latter. And as he also stated the price differences are becoming smaller thanks to the introduction of the PA3X
.
Briefly getting back to Brickboo cause I do not want this thread to get off topic: There is more than 10 years difference with the i30. Hence virtually all sounds ( based on multisamples) have improved considerably due to newer sampling technics and most of all due to the fact that more sampling space (in Mb) is available on the current keyboard generations. So even if you basically only use 10 major instruments from your keyboard you will always be better off with those instruments residing in a ( fairly) recent model.......

regards,
John Smies

P.S. Nick, did you manage to audition my 2012 Resources for the PA800 in the meantime ?