Bernie and NightLife,

My interest was peaked in this line when first introduced but the price turned me away. Then reading all the posts here about support and reliability issues took me more away from looking at the Audya.

I do have to say that listening to demos and vids of this line, I would be completely inspired also, but the above draws me back. I too am in the same situation as Christian - a sightless player who has been looking for a board which moves me. I have had the Tyros, G-70 and now the T3. The only one so far which moved me was the G-70 but the touch screen made me finally give up on it because I couldn't perform general maintenance tasks without sighted help. The G-70 was my best experience also because of the76 key layout.

My questions to both of you are since you both live in Florida as I do, what support do we have down here? You both are on the West side and I'm on the East. No one that I know of carries these boards locally except for one Mail Order shop in town which has no show room and not sure if they even have decent support since they're like Musicians Friend and ZZounds. Are there dealers with support on the West side of Fl?

As a sightless player, reliability is important. I want to be able to turn on my board and play and not worry about it not booting up since I can't read the screen to tell me what may be the problem. I do, however, love the live sounds of the arranger and that's what I desire. I also had been comparing to PA3x, but again the Touch Screen comes into play. I think I could be inspired with the PA3x also - more so than any of the earlier PA line, but it again comes back to Ketron and the Audya because of its ease of navigation by someone like Christian and myself.

Although, at this time, there is no way I can afford a 76-key Audya, (nor any of it's line) even after selling off a T3 and a Motif XS7, I am interested to know more on it's performance and reliability and especially the available support so maybe at a later time, I may be able to obtain one.

Best,
Vince