Apologies in advance for hijacking but I feel this is still on topic as per the original post.

I totally agree on some of the points in Sunny's list, especially the first one regarding the sound...

Overall the sound on the Yamaha arranger keyboards (Tyros, Genos, PSR) lack a certain richness and depth... by itself you get used to the overall sound and you think it sounds amazing, which in a way - it is!.. but then when you switch to a roland or korg (or even an old technics KN series) you immediately realise the lack of "punch" and clarity in the Yamaha sound in comparison.

Basses become shallow and muddy, Pads lack that low end warmth which is also reflected on the EPs, drums still sounding plastic and lightweight and not as “tight” and crisp as they should be. (I hate how with every new yamaha keyboard they add a few nice new kits but leave the legacy ones un touched Instead of re doing / re sampling them. The T8 and T9 kits which are basically imitations of the Roland TR808 and TR909 are a joke (but they sound much better in the Motif / MONTAGE/ MODX line for some reason??). Thankfully though, we have the ability load sample drum kits to come to the rescue (which is still extremely tedious).

If anyone feels confused and disagrees with what I am saying - go and use a Montage, MODX, Motif ES/XS/XF and you will hear the sonic difference in sound quality IMMEDIATELY... there is simply something that Yamaha is not telling us about their arranger keyboard line in terms of how they are "stripping" or "Thinning" out the sound quality for whatever unknown reason. And no, it is NOT a matter of changing EQ and compression in the Genos to match, it simply lacks the power.

I loath for the day that Yamaha releases an arranger keyboard that actually puts out the same level of clarity and quality as their synth line. because currently it is not happening no matter what they are trying to have us believe.

Here's is my list I have had since the release of the Genos/PSR SX900 of suggested potential improvements and features that would really help fix some current frustrations and limitations:

1) FAVOURITES: When you allocate a new "favourite" voice or style - as soon as it works you automatically get reset to page 1 of that category... very annoying why cant it just keep you on the current page you were on?

2) STEP EDITOR (Style and Midi Song): We should be able to do a "select all" instead of having to do "Multi Select" and keep pressing (or hold) the arrow buttons to scroll down and select more than one event in the event list.

3) STEP EDITOR (style and Midi Song): We should be able to do a granular "select all" where we can select all of a certain note only for example: I want to select every note that is above the C0 range or only all C0 notes to make edits to them such as volume or velocity... currently you need to manually press each one individually as you scroll down the list of events

4) Drum Edit: any of the drum track channels in a Midi song should be fully editable down to each individual sample being played in the drum track (individual note volume, velocity, reverb, re voicing etc) (without manually scrolling and doing it through the step editor)... Roland has had this in their style and song "make up tools" for about 20+ years? Korg has something similar in the Realtime drum mixer menu as well...

5) Another missing feature: Octave shift of the bass note being played when Accomp is on but the style is off (and editability of the bass note - re voicing?) - also being able to leave the bass note on auto hold as well as the pad voice being played that is following your chord progression while the style is off...

There are more that are relevant only to the PSR SX900 such as the missing custom drum kit creation section (which is in the Genos / but stripped away from the PSR??)

Overall the Genos has "work station" functionality but when compared to the level of workstation functionality with other branded boards it doesn't go anywhere as deep... the above tweaks would definitely help...


Cheers.
Nick