Clif,

it's a thought, but I am sure this is not the reason - with the SRS-like technology you can achive good separation from the speakers which are a foot apart.

I think that Yamaha (and many others) believe that the home users, for whom they target Tyros, will pay more money for a bigger instrument. They can charge twice the price of a keyboard by shrouding identical (or inferior) electronics into a fancy big case - think of all the electric pianos from Yamaha, Roland, Technics, GEM, Baldwin (Ketron), etc. Surely woodworking does not cost that much in China. Or how about the Yamaha DGX1000, which is a PSR2000 in a big plastic case, which sells for almost 3 times of the price of the PSR?

Regards

Alex, I am afraid you are right. I want to believe that there is a good reason for the size, but if the Tyros were in a tight package (like the Alesis 6.1), people would probably feel they were not getting enough for their money. Speaking of Alesis, the sales of one of their early drum machines took off once they added some weight to it (with no change in functionality). I guess we have not reached a willingness to pay more for smaller--as is done in the laptop market.