Hi Gary. I too use the audio styles, especially the bossa and 2 jazz styles. It's still an amazing kb for me. I just got back from a week in Sedona, AZ and playing a job today was just magic. I was doing a luau and I swear the Hawaiian band on the board was Don Ho's hack up band. It put me right there. I love playing arrangers. On Sunday I have a church gig on a 9 foot concert Yamaha grand that actually has ivory keys. What a pleasure to play this piano. Life is not only good, it is awesome!

Joe

I'm fully expecting a similar repackaging, just as Yamaha did with T-4 to s-950. I think this is a baby PA3x.
I'll be home all day Saturday and FedEx is usually here before 2.

Gary ... are those sounds only playable on a yammie?

To me the so called "Audio styles" sound very "DISJOINTED" sonically as if the style & the RH sounds are coming from TWO Totally different sources.....very weird to my ear......

So... how long has the S950 been out now? How many NEW Audio styles have been programmed for it and made available to load up in the RAM?

These kinds of ideas are all well and good, but if Yamaha don't keep a pretty steady supply of new ones coming, in a VERY wide selection of styles, what use is the feature? Reading these last few posts, of the 25 few audio styles available in the first place, we are using what, two or three of them? That's about right. Probably we use about the same percentage of ROM MIDI styles as we do of audio ones (say about 10%, if that). Thing is, we get SO many MIDI styles, the ones we use are still a decent number, with a good variety.

But the audio ones..?

One of the problems is, I doubt Yamaha have opened up the ability for 3rd party style makers to use the feature and create good audio drum styles themselves. Yamaha have created a proprietary bottleneck for this feature. Having done that, it is their responsibility to feed the beast! Doesn't look like this is happening.

I still believe that Yamaha, instead of pursuing this boondoggle, should have merely concentrated on putting in enough well recorded, punchy, live-SOUNDING drum kits, and this whole silly idea wouldn't have needed all the R&D time being wasted on it. You would STILL have great live drums to play along with, but anybody and their uncle could make styles using them, and you could have converted your older styles over to using them.

That seems a LOT more practical, TBH...

... what's a "boondoggle?"

from Merriam _ Webster on-line:
: a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft
— boondoggle intransitive verb
— boon·dog·gler noun

You see that term usually applied to government cock-ups of one kind or another.

True, what Diki says. A hybrid beast of a Yamaha with Korg drums would be a pleaser for many.

...what's a "cock-up?"

British colloquialism for U.S. term 'foul-up', FUBAR, (whatever that is), etc.