I have to say, though, that Yamaha take their 'home' users MUCH more seriously than Roland do their 'pro' arranger users... Not in build quality, or 'liveness' of overall sound, but in the capabilities that they think their target user can comprehend and use.

There is no arguing that, of the Big3, Roland allow the user FAR less voice editing capabilities, and don't even provide an area for storage of user voice edits, other than the registration (UPG) itself. No 'custom' voices to call up live, with all your tweaks and effects. Just basic presets, and ONLY the Upper1 Part can recall a ROM effect and EQ preset with the ROM voice on a global basis. Pathetic.

Yamaha, OTOH, despite apparently aiming squarely at the 'home' user (let's face it, folks, their 'pro' workstations are built like tanks compared to the T2), somehow seem to think that their poor little home user can comprehend a VERY complex sampler, pretty close to full voice editing capabilities (at least with computer support), user patch storage and a HD recorder.

There just seems something out of whack here... Surely the 'pro' built arranger should have the 'pro' editing capabilities. But it just doesn't work out that way.

Sadly, if you are determined to use only one keyboard on a gig (as I prefer), many pros are forced away from the T2 not only by the lack of 76 keys (pros usually CAN play piano, and many prefer to do it on a 76 or bigger), but by the at least perceived difference in build quality between Y's workstation and arranger lines.

Roland do a grand job of interface design, and OS intuitiveness (hold almost any button down for a couple of seconds, and the screen switches to the edit page of that function, for instance), but IMO, a poor job of acknowledging that the user is in need of more than basic voice editing. And while the Roland TOTLs are based around the Fantom 'engine', they still only have Sound Canvas editing, and a lot of the Fantom sounds on board are only the samples, you can't edit even the Sound Canvas parameters on some of them (different voice architecture, I suppose).

But there just seems to be an enormous difference in their market research. Although most of us would think that the G70/E80 and the T2 are aimed squarely at the same target customer, somehow each of them has a COMPLETELY different idea of what we want. How are they arriving at such opposite conclusions?