Better than the Roland SN sounds? Yes, Donny. They're better than Roland's SN sounds.

Yes, Donny. They're better than Roland's SN sounds. I've heard countless demos, and even tried an Integra-7 a few times in different stores. Yamaha's high-end arrangers have the best, most realistic acoustic instrument sounds. However, having said this, there are many very good SN sounds.

As far as strings, I've never been crazy about Yamaha's. I much prefer the SN ones. I've also compared Kurzweil's and Roland's. I believe Kurzweil's strings are more realistic. Some actually gave me goosebumps.

I'm considering getting the MODX, because it sounds even better than the Motif XF, but I still don't think it's strings are great. I'll probably want another keyboard or module, or even a string library I can load in the MODX or Motif.

Maybe, someone who has experience with the MODX's strings and the Integra-7's may like to comment.

Thank you.

I owned the Integra for several years. The main thing lacking with the SN-A solo sounds is a realistic vibrato. If a vibrato is not sampled, but created by modeling parameters, it just never sounds realistic. I especially disliked the vibrato of solo strings.
Some of the underlying „samples“ the SN-A sounds are derived from are also not too convincing. Saxophones are really poor.
Take the trumpets. The physical modeling provides some very nice effects such as glissandi and legato. But on the other hand, the vibrato sucks. All in all, I often preferred a Yamaha Motif or Ketron trumpet with a nice vibrato over the SN-A trumpet that never sounded inspiring when playing long notes.

WOAH ... I smell the wrath of Fran a comin ... (bring it on!)

I, too, disliked some of the vibrato's, especially on certain instruments, like, reeds and brass. On the plus side, the Integra-7 has the SRX boards, including the SRX-10 (brass), and the SRX-06 (orchestral - strings, woodwinds and brass), which I find to be more realistic.

So, how do you compare the MODX's strings to the Integra's SN and SRX strings? How about DSF's strings? Again, they say the strings on the MODX are better than the Motif's, and I would agree, but to my ears, they still are not extremely convincing, especially the large ensembles.

Thanks for you comments.

I‘m not sure yet. The new dedicated sections such as Seattle Violins, Seattle Violas etc. sound very realistic to me whenever I test them, but the full US Strings ensemble less so. I still have to get into the details and to the waveform level to edit my own voices composed of nothing but the new waveforms to be sure how good they are. The violins, violas etc. seem to be better than those of the Roland SRX 04 and on a similar level as the DSF Symphonic strings.
I also have iSymphonic orchestra for IOS (including some of its expansions), I think this is at least as good as the Montage strings. Maybe I made a mistake buying the MODX in view of tens of thousands of euros spent for medical things in the past few years, and I should have invested in more software libraries to make a real leap in terms of realism of sounds... The FM-X part of the MODX is completely spoilt on me, I don't need it.
I also dislike the MODX/Montage's architecture with its lacking separation between voices and performances. It's just not the workflow I'm used to, I'm not crazy about the touchscreen either, I don't always hit the right field when editing things.
Anyway, I‘m going to prepare comparative versions of my orchestral sequencer files soon.

I uploaded dedicated Seattle violins waveform demos now, they are very realistic to my ears.