I cant believe I'm agreeing with you....but alas you speak the truth Diki.....what Yamaha needs to do in the future is just listen to their customers Pro & Amateur players for their wants and needs in an arranger KB. Who's brainy idea was Audio drums & styles this time around anyway? I would have loved to be at the R&D pre-meeting before they made the S950 just to voice my opinions,....Yamaha needs to take some major marketing R&D surveys to get on the right track. I really want to love this S950 and to a point I really like it for my needs now....but, in back of my mind I'll always want changes for it that never get done model after model,....
eg: revamped MFD to include ALL Registration settings & Transpose, ability to SAVE a Registration setting
"while playing" without a glitch, better keybed for MOTl units, Front USB Port, Dual XLR mic inputs, and a few more things..etc.

I started to say, well it's only a middle of the line keyboard, but then I remember the Tyros 4 doesn't do those things either!
If you really want all those things, you should buy a PA3X!

DonM

lol.... YEA DON BUT THEN YOU DON'T GET THE GREAT MAHAYANA SOUND & ALL THAT SUPPORT, STYLES, ETC, ETC, ..

OH YEAH I FORGOT ....I NEED THOSE SPEAKERS in my face !!

That Great Yamaha sound is no greater that great Korg sound, or Ketron sound ... or that great Roland sound. Wersi and Gem are the only 2 that never lit my fire in the expensive lineup. I ever prefer Casio to those 2, but the top 3 are easily usable on most stages with terrific success.
I'd bet that NO one picks Yamaha over Korg or vice versa for sound ... it's features and OS that separate the pack. They all sound great.

WRONG!

The PSR s950 sound good but not as good as my PA600

this place is full of funny people.

I agree that I would rather have better MIDI drum kits, because if I have a great kit, I can add it to many different older styles. The audio drums are only good for that one style.

I just listened to the audio drums by themselves, however, and I have to disagree that they have so much reverb. They do not have a lot of reverb.

I use three of the audio styles regularly, and I get great audience feedback.

Yamaha's audio styles are in response to the Ketron Audya in my opinion. Audio, that is to say .wav and/or .mp3 sound better than midi implementation and I believe the Audya is the first arranger to make use of audio in conjunction with the accompaniment features. Since audio sounds more realistic than midi it was nice to see Yamaha utilizing audio in their latest arrangers. The caveat of course is the audio styles can't be edited or even recorded from my understanding.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I actually purchased a PSR-s950 several days ago with the intention of keeping it. Lo and behold after two days of frustration I decided to return it. Don't get me wrong. The PSR-s950 sounds really good. But if you play in low light situations the keyboard can actually become a hazard because it's nearly impossible to navigate your way around it when the lights are turned down. At least that was my experience anyway. I realize my eyes aren't as good as they used to be but as a comparison I have no problem playing my Roland G7 in low light situations. Yamaha should have put their newest arrangers to the test and if they had done so they would have realized the difficulty customers would face in low light situations. Although perhaps they really did put them to the test and left it up to the customer to purchase a light if need be. Since many people have already complained about that specific problem I hope Yamaha will address it in the future. I should have listened to Don Mason's warning.

Another gripe was the buttons and also the layout of the keyboard. The buttons seemed very flimsy - much flimsier than my PSR-2000 in fact. When I demoed the PSR-s950 at Guitar Center a while back I didn't realize the button issue would be so pronounced. Possibly because of the excitement of playing it for the first time I suppose. After buying it I noticed pressing buttons around the LCD screen was a hit or miss scenario. What happened was I ended up pressing a button two or three times to get it to do what I wanted. Which could be disastrous in a live performance setting needless to say.

My Tyros was solidly constructed and only cost $600 more than the PSR-s950. My Tyros also had after-touch and of course a better keybed; although no on-board speakers obviously. I hate to say it but it appears Yamaha is cutting corners on quality. Most of the sounds are really good to excellent but sounds are only one aspect of a keyboard. If it falls apart a day after the warranty expires the sounds won't mean a thing right? What you could end up with is a $2,000 (after taxes) paper weight. God forbid. The layout also seemed less than optimal to me. It almost seems as if Yamaha created the PSR-s750/s950 without any musician input. I find that hard to believe but stranger things have happened.

PROS: In many cases excellent sounds. Easy navigation - when you can actually see what you're doing that is. Fair price(s) for what you get. Audio implementation. Better sounding drums, albeit, not the bee knees. Lightweight. Nice sounding speakers with the right EQ setting.

CONS: As previously mentioned above. Also, cheesy keys. Screen resolution not up to snuff. No 1/4" inputs. Again, layout is less than optimal in my opinion. Vocal Harmony volume is too low. BTW, never had that problem with either my Tyros or PSR 2000. Build quality seems lacking. Styles seem too robotic but the sound quality is actually very good.

Conclusion: Yamaha should be complimented for the great sounds and for the audio implementation and, yes, for the better sounding drum kits. Although the keys were really really cheesy. But I probably would have kept the keyboard if not for the other problems I experienced.

All the best, Mike

PS: Musikmesse is right around the corner. Summer NAMM could be interesting too.