COMALite,

First of all, may I thank you for the well written explanation of expansion card?


Although I agree with you about what expansion card does for Yamaha and the benefits of it. I still think there is some problems with it in terms of cost for the musicians:

1) We cannot compare the pc to Yamaha keyboard for the simple reason that Yamaha makes all of its own expansion cards and it charges the price it wants for them.

2) If expansion cards are used to add features not readily available and designed, that will be fine. But it seems to me that expansion cards are a way to make extra money by simply making certain features optional by simply not including them in the original design of the board anyway.

3)From my past experience with yamaha, those cards are very expensive even when their keyboards are overpriced anyway.


Expansion would be something nice if it is open to all manufacturers. This requires the following:

a) expansion cards are standardized in that all keyboards accepts the same cards. So you can buy Yamaha, Korg, Roland, GEM and buy those expansion cards and still work with any keyboard.

b) any company can manufacture them.

So you would buy a general keyboards with maybe 10 to 20 expansion slots and buy all the cards you want from any manufacturer depending on the price, quality and features.

But that idea, although it is ultra beneficial and super vital to the musician, will simply be not as profitable to those companies. It will lead to better products and lower prices on the expense of hurting the market share of those traditional companies. It will encourage new companies to enter and compete.

I thank you for your post again.