"In many ways, the Alesis sounds similar to the Yamaha Motif except the Motif does thing like virtual sound modeling or FM synthesis through the addition of plug-in cards. That's going to be a problem for the Fusion: it has to trump the competition, not just match it."

lol so eight tracks of recording through 1/4 inputs at 24bit doesn't alone trump the competition...hell thats a feature beyond the 9000$ board from Korg.

" The Motifs are very well established in the market so if the Fusion doesn't offer more in terms of sound quality and/or feature-set then people won't buy it, especially if they already have a workstation of some sort."

You know...if you honestly tried out some stuff from Alesis, you wouldn't make silly statements like this. We already know the VA of the fusion at the very least will be on par with the Ion ( main contrast being Ion has 16 filer types Vs the 13 types of the fusion )...lol does Yamaha even have a VA on the market? Past that how many filter types does the Motif have? Anyhow...back to things we know. From the namm footage we know the fusion has the "holygrail" piano...so think its safe to say piano should be covered. An electric piano was in the demo that was nice. We also know that the sample set for the fusion is ALL NEW...so thinking about Q synths in relation to the fusion is pointless. Hah plus when you have "unlimited" sample space...its really pointless.

88keys for under 2000$...I really dont think Alesis has to worry about how the Fusion stacks up to the Motif, its Yamaha thats gonna have to scramble with something to counter it. Given Alesis has stuff like the Andromeda a monster of an analog synth for the same price ( lower even ) then Yamaha charges for some of their arrangers.

Link to Andromeda demos
http://www.alesis.de/downloads/audiodemos.html

Link to ion demos

http://alesis.com/products/Ion/Demos/

Track 3 "HowWhy" ion

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=4453&alid=-1

The only lacking I see with the Fusion is its insert effects options...yet with all the other freedom offered Im thinking it would be easy to counter.

Anyhow I agree with KeyBplayer...hahah twenty or more hours of demo time should help with how the Fusion pans out If the new samples suck, if the VA is somehow a train wreck, if its OS is just crap and so on...ill be the first ( relative ) to admit or point it out.

Its mostly the insane potential the Fusion could drop off that has me excited. Hell when I first saw pictures of it ( right after the Korg ) I was thinking it would be in the 3 to 4K range...1600$ :P

Yet another link...this one directly related to the Fusion.

http://www.keyboardmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=29&storycode=5131