HEY! I found it! A tiny footnote on Page 3 of the Tools for Tyros manual says that the Voice Editor and the File Utility programs are stand-alone applications OR OPT applications. That means you can open these programs from within a sequencer like Cakewalk Sonar 2.0. I assume that would also mean that the Tyros voice editor has or is also a Cakewalk instrument definition file. That's news.

Now how hard would it have been for Yamaha to just say that their software is compatible with popular sequencer programs like Sonar 2.0 in the Tyros owner's manual?

Now I think I understand what's the deal with Tyros...

Let me get this straight, you are talking about Mega voices which are MOSTLY guitar voices intended to be part of the AUTO-accompaniment... Most likely they will be emulating the sound of strumming guitar within a style. So they are not intended as SOLO instruments but as backing instruments for STYLES!!! and probably for sequenced songs when you use the styles to make the songs...

That is not a new concept. That concept is in the WK8 already. That explains why GEM excels over Yamaha with styles that have strumming guitar.... this is because of these kind of sounds...

So basically, Tyros is Yamaha attempt to further improve their styles by borrowing a concept from GEM.

Is that good news or bad news?

Good news: Styles with strumming guitars are spectacular and wonderful. This is of course if they apply it to many styles, especially ballad, 8-beat, 16-beat, and others..

Bad news: That is possibly the only real improvement to the keyboard in terms of styles and sounds... BUT... BUT...

That is good/bad news to GEM:

Good news: Your concept about strumming guitars was sound. In fact, yamaha made new keyboard just to copy that concept.

Bad news: If Tyros got this right, it stole the last thing that GEM could boast about their styles

Again, That is an opinion BASED on simply reading what is written by people. I need to listen to Genesys and Tyros to make judgement. OR... I can take Sherlock Holmes advice, "It is a capital mistake to theorize without data."

I think no one can play MEGA Voices properly in live situation. There are about 10 layers in those MEGA Voices. And each layer is dramatically different. YAMAHA also says in the manual that if you play live you may get unexpected or undesireable sounds from those MEGA Voices.

Go read the manual, and see what each layer is.