Tom,

The VL150 plug in was worth what it cost me along with the breathe controller ( BC 3 ), particularly when I had the Motif classic. It is a new skill to learn if you want to add a breathe controller, but it isn't necessarily that hard if you play keys well, and it certainly isn't the same level of difficulty as it would be if you were to add a wind controller ( the difference being is that the bc just emulates the breathe going in, the wind controller is set up so that you play the notes from it ) . The bc definitely does add some realism to the sound if I use it right. The hardest part was figuring out how to set the parameters up so that the bc actually controlled the breathe effect, but once I figured it out it was easy. Short of having a BC, you can set the breathe effect up via velocity, aftertouch, or the mod wheel. The mod wheel is my favorite way to go without using the bc.

I can't compare the VL150 to the VL70m because I've never had or played through one, but the VL150 does have 256 sounds built in. It takes a couple of steps to access all of them because you need to manually change banks in the Motif menu after going through the first 128 sounds ( not very hard to do though ) . I am not sure about user sounds, I'll have to check on that one, ( guessing 128 here ) but I have used the editing software to alter some of the sounds on occasion.

It does do very nice sax and horn emulations. I find the violins to be fair to poor and the guitar emulations useless because it is monophonic. ( one note poly ). You can get some pretty nasty mono synth sounds from it too ( yes it's acoustic modeling, but there are several synth parameters to work with ).

I have to tell you though, unless I'm specifically interested in using the breathe controller, I don't use the VL150 in the ES as much as I did the classic, because the ES now has the Tyros sweet voices ( loaded from disk for the most part ), and they sound great.

Good Luck on your next purchase Tom.

AJ

[This message has been edited by Bluezplayer (edited 11-20-2003).]