By the way, I have been reading the user manual and there are a few interesting points: in no place is mentioned an internal HD, but it's specifically said that an external HD can be connected through the USB port; speaking of which, the PA-900 has two of them (one "host" and one "to device") and they are both 2.0, while in the PA3-X the connection to device is only 1.1 (hence the painfully slow transfer rate between internal HD and PC).
But, as far as the storage devices go, here is what the manual says:

Name Media type

DISK [KORG DISK] User-accessible area of the internal memory. This is where you can store Songs and other files.

SD [KORG SD] Optional microSD card inserted into the rear slot.

SD [KORG SD2] Optional microSD card inserted into the rear slot
(second partition).

USB memory device (like a memory stick) connected
to the rear USB Host port

So, compared with the PA3-X, looks like they added a few things but took away others; another important difference, for example, is in the sampling section: you can load samples and edit them but you apparently cannot sample your own sounds. So, more than a full fledged sampler, the one in the PA-900 looks like a sample reader, more or less like the one in the Tyros 4.
The big advantages of the 900 are the low price and the low weight: combined with some features, more up-to-date than even the PA3X, they make the whole package really interesting.

Hi Dreamer, I loved my Pa2X and the SongBook, and frankly I made a mistake going to the Tyros 4. I am so happy to be back to the Korg interface and sound. The driving force was I really wanted to lighten my load and simplify my setup, and especially when I do really small jobs where I plan to use the internal speakers only. Then the price of the Pa900 made it a no-brainer

Btw I believe the interface on the Pa900 is simpler, there is not the Global save element; it just remembers the way you set up the global options. Maybe there is a benefit in the Pa3X interface, but not for me. I like this simplicity.

OK, I've been saving backups to the internal disk and copying them to a USB. Obviously that will run out of space soon, so I've ordered a 16GB microSD. No big deal, only $13.58 and it looks simple to install.

Graham,

I bought the 16 Gb SD card and it is very easy to install and you can access it from your PC by way of the Media - USB tab.

Works a treat.

Bill G

TBH... how many of us actually sample our own sounds? Using a keyboard, no less! That's pretty 20th century thinking, there!

Most of us simply want to be able to import sample sets already made, and having access to standard multisample formats is paramount. Soundfont and Akai are the two big ones, if memory serves me. This is where Yamaha screwed the pooch, getting greedy and only allowing their (mostly unsupported) own proprietary format for multisample import. Having 'Wav import is all well and good, but that's ONE sample at a time. A good drum kit or piano can be HUNDREDS of samples, mapped to keys and velocity ranges. I doubt many of us have the skill and patience to import each one by hand and map it..!

Overall, I think the PA900's decision to just have multisample import but not the actual recording is a wise one. Few of us sample instruments, and even fewer would do it on a keyboard if they had a computer handy (and who doesn't? LOL). Just as long as the full list of PA3X import standards made it to the PA900, you are good to go.

Diki,

No doubt about it, Yamahahaha even screwed things up with the Tyros where you couldn't use Motif sound sets either or purchased sounds for the MOtif even tho they both store the exact same info in their waveforms. All bits were reversed in the Tyros waveform just to make them incompatible.

Bill G

Sound fonts are quite old and fall behind on quality these days; in addition Akai samples are getting more and more difficult to come by as they have been pretty much replaced with sample VSTs. (Kontakt being the most popular)

If you want great sound expansion capabilities then to be quite honest the only way to go is to have a VST Host built into the keyboard so that you can have what you want. (I wouldn’t consider any arranger/organ without this basic option built in)

Bill

Well, it is true... But even the closed systems could and probably will offer more and more possibilities for adding good quality sounds.
On the other hand, let's be honest, it is much that can be done with the sounds on-board and yet we all the time want/need more. I guess it's just the human nature. If we understand what an arranger is for and what a VSTi collection is for, we'll have more of a "peace of mind".

There is no standard multisample VSTi format. Although soundfont and Akai are older formats, they ARE formats. No VSTi has the same data format as any other. That's kind of the point to them. The things have proprietary data format, so you HAVE to use that VSTi to have access to those sounds. Gigasampler was starting to become more common, but the problem was that the data sizes were so large, it was an impractical format for hardware samplers.

And while VSTi integration into hardware arrangers is a good idea, in practice it turns out to be VERY expensive and bad business for the arranger manufacturers. To make an arranger that can play VSTi's, you basically have to make an arranger that is an entire regular computer, running a regular computer OS (because that's what the VSTi is designed to run on) and THEN an entire arranger section, probably running on the same OS. So far these have turned out to be either miserable failures (the MS) or prohibitively expensive (the Wersi's).

Let's be honest... NEITHER of these are practical solutions. But the solution exists already... Akai.

Yes, while you can say that the 'best' sounding sampled instruments currently available need streaming hardware and GB sized libraries, let us not forget that there are MANY great sounding sample sets for Akai (probably every hit record before the late 90's used Akai's or maybe Roland or Emulator samplers) and they have one HUGE advantage for hardware arranger samplers... They had limited RAM sizes, so the sounds were very carefully optimized to use as little RAM as possible.

This makes loading them up in hardware samplers a practical thing (you wouldn't want to have to load 1GB just for a piano in a Yamaha!) and allows you to load in a bunch of things into the MUCH larger memories modern arranger samplers have (Akai only had about 256MB of memory even on the late S6000 models - but remember, that's 25 MINUTES of full bandwidth stereo sampling!).

Basically, if you want to use the sampler in your arranger, the Akai format is by FAR the best format to have. I still use much of those libraries in my production work, and some of them are still to be bettered by VSTi's. Something about having limited resources makes the sample producers work MUCH harder to get it to all sound good!

Sure, if money is no object, if integrating a computer into your hardware sampler is easy to you, VSTi's are often (but not always) the way to go. But for the rest of us, Akai still rules the roost. Yamaha, if they want their users to actually start using the sampler much (I doubt more than 10% use it much if at all) need to open it up for Akai import.

The problem is Diki is as I mentioned in my original post, Akai samples and libraries are getting hard to come by, (Do a Google search and you will be shocked just how little there is about these days) if it wasn’t for this I also would recommend the Akai sample route (As I have dome many times in the past) but unfortunately time as moved on. (This Akai format capability is the reason I always had a soft spot for the Korg)

You are absolutely correct about no standard sample player for VSTi, which is why I said a host so as you can choose your own selection, having said that the most common VST sampler is still Kontakt, (It probably has the most samples for it than any other) so arranger/organ manufactures could standardise on this if they wished.

Streaming of samples would not be a problem as all new instruments that come out these days include an SSD as standard, which is faster than a HDD.

Bill