Originally posted by Giovanni:
Why is it that the other keyboard manufacturers have not gone down this route ?
they have... Yamaha have usb sockets for sticks - just a flash memory card with different connection standard to sd, which is a part-Technics invented format anyway so no way Yamaha would use it just out of corporate jealousy. Yamaha have used older format card slots in the past, usb host is just more universally compatible, even if sd is now the foremost word wide flash card format.
Hard drives are needed for real time wave recording because the files are 10 times bigger than sd audio for a sound quality difference you would be hard pressed to identify in a blind test, particularly over our keyboard internal and external speakers. They are also less reliable than flash memory but still more cost effective in the large sizes needed for wave and editing etc.
For Technics (or Yamaha) format saves hard drives are just total overkill in size/cost ratio compared to the hardware cost of a card or usb slot. If you can get 18,000 songs on a Technics sd card who has 18,000 Technics songs in their repertoire? and if a 40GB hard drive (now a tiny hard drive size) could contain 1.5 million Technics songs, who has 1.5 million songs to play and what have you gained for the increase in cost?