Lou: Scott isn't comparing the Tyros to his Steinway, he was just expressing his personal acoustic piano preference.

Since we all agree on the importance of the piano sound and we'd like to compare apples-to-apples, what we are really talking about is this: of the choices between the Yamaha Tyros, the Yamaha 9000 Pro, and the Yamaha 9000 Pro with the optional PLG150-PF piano expansion card installed, which acoustic grand piano emulation sounds best?

Simon Williams has accepted my shoot-out proposal. I have proposed that I will prepare three midi files: a 76-note C major scale walk-up with all velocities set at 128, the same file with all velocities set at 90, and a short popular song sample on piano only that pretty much covers the entire keyboard range. The reason for the velocity-at-preset-level test is to remove any tone variations caused by the performer - those kind of variations will come out on the short music sample. I will play this file on a 9000 Pro and a 9000 Pro with the PLG150-PF acoustic piano expansion card and create MP3 files. Simon will play the same midi files on his Tyros and will host all of the resulting MP3 files on his site for side-by-side comparison.

Even if Yamaha's 9000 Pro with the added $300 expansion card comes out ahead (and especially if it doesn't!), it'd still be interesting to know how the Tyros grand piano compares directly to the stock 9000 Pro grand piano. We will only compare the best "Live!Grand" programs.

I don't have access to any other arrangers in the same price range as the Tyros and 9000 Pro but it's possible that we could expand this test by playing the same files on different keyboards and posting comparable MP3 files. For now, I think the Yamaha arranger comparison will be very interesting.