The Roland Juno D and the Yamaha MM6 carry the same price tag, about $600. Which is better in terms of quality and usability?

Asking this to a Roland discussion group may provide a biased answer.
Not having used either I can't really give you an answer.
Try and have a demo, or try out on both and see what appeals to you in terms of sound, and easy of use.

Best of luck

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The Sonic Energy Authority - a sound investment

My opinion..., Juno D "hands down winner". Don't be fooled into thinking the MM6 is anything close to pro quality. It's nothing more than a cheap Yamaha PSR.., with some Motif "based" sounds. It's hardly what I would call a synth--nor a workstation. The MM6 is seriously crippled for any heavy sequencing due to a very limited 32 note poly. Also the internal 8 track seq is nothing more than 8 linear tracks with NO POST song editing... No quantize, loop, ect.

The MM6 will not record user styles, nor does it even have a dedicated user voice area. The only way to save voices is to use the "performance memory"--which snapshots EVERYTHING into one setting.

Also the MM6.., being a PSR at the heart, DOES have some of those not so good basic PSR sounds you'd find on lower PSR models. For example that gawd awful slap bass that has been on so many Yammies of the past is on the MM6. There are also several other weak voices too.

The so called patterns are really just "styles". The MM6 is actually an arranger keyboard. Yammie won't advertise it as such so they don't hurt the sale of the unit due to the negative stereotype associated with arranger keyboards (and the stereotype is a bunch of bull as arranger keyboards aren't junk, and in many cases will blow some synths away in "acoustic" sound quality).

The Juno-D is the "real synth" between the two. It's built better, has more synth power, more poly, it too ships with seq software, and a dedicated editor. IF I was trying to decide between the two, I would take the Juno-D.


The MM6 is nothing more than a low cost way Yamaha has chosen to boost the sales of the MO series workstations. All you have to do is ask a question about what the MM6 "can't" do and a Yamaha rep will say "buy the MO6 or MO8" if you want that feature.

I just think it's wrong that Yamaha built this MM6 on the base of an arranger, yet doesn't disclose this info, and then IMO insults the entire Motif line by including this cheapo model in the Motif family.



[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 06-26-2007).]