Yamaha MOTIF XS8 Synthesizer

I think that this keyboard has a really great operating system and user interface. You can edit voices, songs, and even the elements that make up each voice right from the keyboard's screen. You can do things like: change the waveforms that comprise the voice, change the arpeggios for each voice and turn them on or off, and record performances. You can also create fresh samples by installing one GB of DIMM memory into the XS8.

The XS8 also has a much sturdier and more realistic keybed than the hollow keys of the XS6 and XS7 -- they are hollow underneath and feel lighter like a synthesizer board.

The only drawback to all these new workstation keyboards is that there are a lot of samples in there and the actual sound quality seems a bit compromised compared to my older vintage Roland equipment. The Motif XS does sound more realist, but it seems to have a slightly degraded sound quality compared to my other older sound modules. I'm not sure if it's due to the sample compression (shrinking the file sizes to fit ROM memory space) or sampling rate used to create the samples. The XS8 does have a very large 355MB ROM memory to store the samples, but it also is storing more samples and arpeggios than any other keyboard. So, shrinking the sample size to fit it's memory space could still have been an issue by it's designers.