I went to the music shop and played on their synth it sounded wicked, plenty of warmth, depth, and colour. Yet when I play my sy77 when I get home I cant get it to sound like those in the shops what's going on.

I'm guessing the synths in the shop weren't SY77's, may be that's the answer?

Technology has moved on...
Most now have powerful inbuilt effects generators giving a much better (studio like) sound than you old SY77.

What you could do, is find a synth that you really like, and than find out if there's a module version of it. You could use your SY77 as a controller keyboard.

Thanks for your input I know my synth is old
but I should have put my question accross better. What I really wanted to know is all that rack stuff next to the synths is that neccessary and if so what do they do and why would I need them.

Depends what's in the racks....

I would be surprised if a shop was pumping the keyboards for a shitload of audio processors to make them sound more appealing.

They may have a rack mounted mixer to allow all the sources to be mixed of the demo speakers, perhaps a limiter to stop users damaging the speakers.

Perhaps some of the units where rack mounted synths?
I don't know, you where there, I wasn't

thanks for the input.