Even on today's flagship model, the Motif ES, editing abilities and midi implementation for the plug in cards is minimal at best. It seems to me that Yamaha has had a history of releasing add on cards that are capable of excellent sounds but that cannot be controlled or manipulated very well from inside the host.

I have both the acoustic modeling VL150 and Virtual analog AN150 cards in my ES, and while both are capable of very good sounds, I can't do any meaningful editing to either without using a computer. One of the attractions of a Virtual Analog is having the ability to edit and even warp sounds in real time. Unfortunately, you cannot go much beyond the standard ADSR for any of the cards from within the Motif ES.

I agree about the MZ Squeak. The synth engine wasn't as deep as what the AN150 and perhaps maybe even my PA80 are capable of, and like the PA80, it was only capable of wave ( sample ) based synthesis, but there was much better ability to control it in real time.

AJ