My crystal ball is giving me a pretty good idea of what Gary's review will be like ...
Just sayin'

So for now I'll play the Korg at my regular job and have the EA7 for any extra jobs or when I need to move my "stuff".

yea he will love it being a Yamaha mascot ....
but will he buy one for himself?

Well, I just finished up with the SX-900. And, contrary to popular belief, it's not a keyboard that I would want to use as an onstage performer. I found the changes in the OS were cumbersome, way too many menus to go through in order to get to the next song, and while I had no problem seeing or using the touch screen, I had to use my little finger in order not to hit something I did now wish to select.

The overall sounds were just awesome - some of the best I think I've ever heard. The grand piano was stunning, as were 99 percent of the saxes and strings. I loaded some of the Genos styles into the SX-900 and they sounded excellent. I did not have time to mess with the vocal sounds, Ooohs and Ahhhs, but I did plug in a mic and after a bit of tuning, the vocal harmony sounded as good, IMO, as my TC Helicon Harmony-M.

The song list, to me, was nothing short of a major headache. I much preferred the Music Finder Directory, which was somewhat limiting for some players, but for me, it worked great for a whole lot of years.

When my friend Helmut left, has was astonished at all the things we managed to accomplish during our short time at the board, but I was still scratching my head, especially with the midi player. For example, if I found a song that had embedded lyrics, after starting the song, I could not access the lyrics page unless I went through the main menu and selected lyrics. Two extra button pushes that added to dead time between songs.

So, for me, if I were still able to work, I would stick with my S-950. I sincerely think that ALL arranger keyboard manufacturers should have people on their staff that performs the same program evaluation that every major computer programmer utilizes before they release their software. It would not cost them much to have these individuals on call and probably save the manufacturers a lot of grief in the long run.

Gary

Gary, Just my opinion here but with the number of programmable buttons and customizing you can do I don’t believe 3 hours is enough to get up to speed with the changes to the OS and the Playlist feature. If you had more time and owned the board I believe you could have had a better experience including getting to the next song quicker and to lyrics or anything else you may have needed to get to in a hurry. Although I have not played or own an SX900 the OS pretty much mimics my Genos and from my experience the new way of doing things does things better for an on stage performer than past PSR keyboards. Once you get a handle on Playlist you can’t beat it at least that has been my experience and I too used Music Finder on the older arrangers along with registrations. The new OS isn’t rocket science but like anything else there is a learning curve.