Well, the thread has kind of evolved into a discussion, fair enough........ but if you go back and look at dnj's original post, well, to my eyes that looks pretty much like a taunt, doesn't it? No asking for opinions there.......

Hi,

not for me, and it's not what I see just looking at people playing live (cannot of course enter in any home to check this out ....).

There is a market for all brands, I tend to see instead that this forum is sometimes too Yamaha oriented, even if I respect anybody opinion and found a lot of useful and interesting things here.

Just my thought.

Regards.

All my friends - those who play or have played arranger keyboards - have a Yamaha.

However, if we talked about synths, kord would be the winner in my country, Roland woud be the next in line, Yamaha - last.

overall best seller

synths and workstations

1.Korg(everywhere)Triton and Triton Le outsells everything
2.Roland(Before Fantoms, XP era(esp 50) -roland was #1)
3.Yamaha(EX,motif's bad OS causes this)

arrangers (in mid to promarket,excluding low PSR's and Casios)

1.Yamaha(In US and ASIA) (mainly after 2k and after,not 740,8k era)
2.Korg(In mid east and EU)a little over the edge than Roland(KETRON has a little share)(in mid east -they have better support including hardware)
3.Roland(better than Yam in EU)(as above Korg until afew yrs ago)(while in early to late 90's Roland's E's and G's ruled the market).




[This message has been edited by jamman (edited 10-10-2006).]

Where do these figures come from, jamman?

Er . . . doesn't sound that way to me. dnj is just saying he's tried just about everything and has come to the conclusion that he's happy with his Yammy. That's cool. Enjoy whatever you play - that's all.

Diki,

If you look at this thread, I was the only one who posted something negative about Roland, which, as you know, I do own. In fact, I believe that the main beneficiaries of this thread, and the many well-articulated opinions, are those competitors lagging behind Yamaha.

This consistency is a great feature of Yamaha product line. The user moving from PSR 2000 to 2100 to 3000 can be pretty sure that the newer instrument will have all the features he liked about his old board and then some. Ditto for transitioning from T1 to T2.

How cool would it be if Roland had retained the Super Tones page from the VA- series? or the smooth scrolling in the list of songs/styles, that they have had in the G's? or the style morphing? How about being unable to control tempo with the alpha wheel when a page other than main is displayed? Or the chord sequencer, that they have had forever, but then suddenly decided to drop? Yet in their relentless pursuit of cost savings, they replace the buttons with the touch screen, then bring back the buttons, but not all, (e.g. fills)?

To me this is one of the great conundrums that Roland would drop functions that many users found valuable, or at least gotten used to. The purpose of this was, what? to confuse and exasperate their loyal devotees?

I can somewhat uderstand taking creative liberties when it comes to implementing new functions, although having the audio subsystem and the removable storage, why not implement the MP3 playback? Why not be daring and implement the MP3 playback with the VariPhrase capabilities? Wouldn't that be cool? How about MP3 with VariPhrase and synching to style? That would have been too innovative for them. But why drop the functions which used to work before? How do they decide what people use and what they don't? Were any of you ever asked? I sure as heck was not.

Which brings back my concern about customer support. I can pick up the phone and call Roland tech support in the US, but beyond some simple advice, they have to go to Roland Italy for answers, and those answers do not seem to be coming.

I do think that Yamaha is doing a better job designing, marketing, and supporting their keyboards, than, say, Roland. For the sake of all of us Roland users, I hope that Roland will do things as well as Yamaha does, and maybe even better (some wishful thinking here).

Regards,
Alex

from my observation(being in music retail both here and abroad(yes both EU,mid east and asia) for quite sometime.

Alex, no argument here.... anyone that reads my posts, and surfs in at the Danish G70 site will allow that I am no apologist for Roland!!

However, I accused no-one of Roland bashing, dnj included, only a dig at the self-congratulary style of the topic and post. While the thread has definitely turned into a useful discussion, the original post doesn't seem to have been the reason for it! All I am trying to do is remind our members here how bad things got a while ago (and Donny was one of the more vocal participants), and to possibly try to not get the whole flame-war started again and lose even MORE useful members.

Without accurate sales figures (and NO-ONE is posting those, just 'impressions') all we have is conjecture. While I am willing to concede that Yamaha may indeed have a larger market share in the US, many factors play a part in that result. Technical superiority or overall user-friendliness may play a part in the result, but other factors need consideration,

Firstly (IMHO) Roland's disastrous decision to relegate their entire arranger line to the obscure CK division (in the US) with low store counts, product stocks and exorbitant prices (regional exclusivity results in higher markups). Plus Roland seem to be in an extraordinary state of transition right now........

My impression is (and I heard rumors to the same effect) that Roland cleared house after the lack-luster VA series, and brought in a lot of new blood to the arranger development team, who seem to have started almost from scratch with the G70. While this has brought many new and exciting features to the Roland line, it also saw the disappearance of several unsung, but useful, features that hopefully Roland are paying attention to.

Maybe Yamaha IS dominating the US market (arguments exist for that to be locally only), but many factors contribute to it, not just the arranger features. Only LISTENING to their customers will keep that continuing, and so far, I don't see ANY Yamaha response to the myriad requests for a 76 note Tyros. So there is room for improvement across the 'board.......

Once again, I call for more consideration of ways to improve these keyboards, and less self-congratulatory pats on the back for picking the market leader. Especially Donny, who has a better perspective after trying out so many arrangers, can't you come up with some requests to Yamaha for features you thought would improve your playing experience? Maybe the Makeup Tools from Roland, or the combined Style and SMF play concept from Ketron, or the Akai import from Korg?

While Yamaha may be the market leader, it sure doesn't make them perfect........

No Matter what keyboard is out and what sounds.features it has, there will ALWAYS be something that SOMEONE will pick and say "wish it had this or wish it had that" so there really will never be a perfect Keyboard.. what is a Perfect Keyboard?? whats perfect to one person could be absolute rubbish to another...