This was posted on another forum by someone at the Jam, thought it would be of interest here too.

"I was at the jam on Sunday. Unfortunately my wife was feeling unwell all day, and she kept a brave face for as long as she could but eventually we had to leave earlier than planned. Hammers T3 sounded great, I thought much better than the other 'normal' keyboards.
But what about the Audya. I suppose everyone will have their own opinion. This is a Yamaha owners forum, and I am sensitive to that, but for me this instrument was in a different league to any other arranger I have seen, and raises the bar significantly for arrangers. The important sounds are amazingly authentic. Ketron has always been known for this, but there are some improvements - for example the accoustic piano sample is practically perfection, and the human chorus voices so real my wife was convinced it was the vocal harmonizer and AJ was singing. But the two real differentiators are : the use of audio loops rather than midi loops in the styles : and the way a player can control the arranger during performance.
For example you can trigger a break or fill just by pressing the LH chord a bit harder. The keyboard can be split at multiple places and given different voices and all pitched if you want as if they are in the middle of the keyboard. The layering is more innovative than I have seen before because you can make the voice layers respond to the velocity- eg you can have a sax layered with a brass section, and set it so only the sax sounds till you hit it a bit harder and have the brass sound by itself and the sax disappear. Or you can have them layered conventionally, or whatever you want. You can smoothly overlap voice changes by holding a note so the new voice appears over the top of the old. You can float parts in and out of the style on the fly. These are just a few examples of the bewildering range of possibilities.
Audio loops in the styles must be the way of the future. Much less mechanical and the bass and drums will even change their riffs during a style variation depending on how you play - just like real players.
It has 76 semi weighted keys. seems built like a tank and has performance features I never even dreamed of, way too many to describe here. Nothing about the cost yet, but if it was thousands more than the T3 it would seem about right, however, surprisingly the rumor is it may be a similar price.
I was quite skeptical about the way that they announced the Audya two years ago then failed to produce it, and I am sure its still something of a work in progress, eg only a proportion of the styles use audio loops. There may be some layout things that can be improved, and all this functionality probably means a significant time investment to become expert, but nonetheless, this seems genuine step change. If the designers at Yamaha, Korg and Roland are not huddled up trying to figure out how they can respond, they certainly should be.
Mike"

Hammer