In another thread, Donny (DNJ) said: to him, Yamaha's S950 Audio Styles sounded hollow and he does not use any of them and if he could he would delete them all from the keyboard. Until now, I've only used the Cool Swing and Big Band Swing, both of which I felt were great for the songs I selected them for.

After reading Donny's post, I decided to go through the keyboard and find all the Audio Styles, try them out and determine, for myself, if they were good, bad, indifferent, etc..., for the type of music we primarily play.

There are only two audio styles in the Swing & Jazz category, Cool Swing and Big Band Swing. I found them clean, not at all cluttered, very clear and crisp sounding, especially as you progress through the variations.

There are no Audio Styles in the pop & rock, Ballroom, Movie & show, Country, and Entertainer categories. However, there are six in the Latin category, only one of which I considered unusuable, which was the Batucada style.

There are also six in the Dance category, and while I found them interesting, it's just not the kind of music I play or enjoy. I guess their overall quality will have to be determined by someone of the forum that actually plays and enjoys that kind of music.

You'll find five Audio Styles in the World category, all of which I thought were absolutely outstanding.

The two Audio Styles in the R&B category are full, robust and very clean.

Finally, there are two Audio Styles in the Ballad category, neither of which I would use. They just don't fit any of the songs I normally play. They sound crisp, clean and were well constructed, but just not for me.

So, the question is, for those of you that have a PSR-S950, Tyros 4, or the new T5, what's your opinion of the audio styles.

The only song I've recorded using an Audio Style is Bring Me Sunshine which was recorded using the Zoom H2 during a live performance at a retirement community. The H2 was connected to the headphone output jack of the S-950.

I hope to record some Latin songs using the Audio Styles sometime in the near future, however, Yamaha has made it so that you cannot record using the onboard recording system while using Audio Styles. The only workaround is to record a midi file of the song, then while playing the midi file, you can sing and use your right hand voices while recording using the onboard recorder. It's kinda a long way around the barn technique, but I tested it earlier this evening and it will work.

Gary