Unfortunately my time with the T5s has been cut short. Yamaha has asked for them back. These units are needed at Yamaha for further training, testing, etc.

So I can only give you a short bland description of what I have encountered.

Size and Weigh

Seems that Yamaha was able to keep the weight of the 76 at 35 lbs and the 61 an 31 lbs. They are both easy to move around. I really think Yamaha could have compacted these models like Korg did with the PA3x series, but I guess they have their reasons.

Sounds

I noticed they have added new sounds, in addition to keeping the sounds of the T4. It seems that the first patches are the new, then they move into the older sounds.
The sounds seem to be more vibrant than on the T4, I'm sure it's due to the new effect engines that they have added. Alot of nice piano patches like a ragtime upgright, and some new voiced octave pianos.
The acoustic guitars are really sounding nice, I think the T4 guitars had a harpsichord sound to them.
The Electric guitars are much better than the T4 version, including Jazz chorus and Strat type sounds.

Styles

The styles all seem to have more life to them, I think it's a combination of the re-voicing, the drums have a bit more umph to them too.
The styles with the Audio drums are good to very good. Some of the latin styles really have the "Ketron" ish sound to them.

Audio player

Now you can play mp3/wavs back and manipulate them, either changing the pitch without effecting the tempo, or vice versa.
I couldn't seem to figure out how to route the player out one of the new sub outs, I hope its just an oversite on my part.

Even though I had a very short time with them, I like the improvements. Some of them very minor and probably could have been done with a OS update on the T4, but I like the overall sound better, just the less mellow sound, It's not just an eq thing, I believe the D/A converters are probably better so the fidelity is even better


If anyone has any questions that I might be able to answer you can give me a shout.

Thanks