Scrap
09-15-2003, 03:37 PM
Originally posted by synthguy:
There seems to be a lot of head scratching over what a good synth would be to start out with. That's really a harder question to answer than I thought it would be, because it really depends on the person. Are you a complete geek that can hop right in to workstation sequencers, or do technical things make your head spin? 88 piano keys or synth action? Do you want to sequence or just perform with a band? Do you use a sequencer/recording package on your PC? Do you want the most involved synthesizer money can buy? What kind of sounds do you like? Do you want to sample? How expandable do you want it to be, and do you feel comfy opening up a synth?
Lots of things to consider, so let's start considering. I'm going to get under the hood with these babies too, for those who know something about synthesis and stuff to help see what some of your options are. Primarily, I'm going to discuss the Kurzweil 2600S, Yamaha S80/90/Motif, Korg Triton/Karma, Roland Fantom/XV-88/XV racks, and Emu PK-6 Proteus Keys.
Suppose sounds matter a lot to you:
Grand Piano
Yamaha, Kurzweil, Roland and Gem with its ProMega3 will suit you. Korg with its Triton/Karma might, but it's a rather basic sound and picky people don't like the character. It's only a one-strike sample, and the others have layers with different velocities for a more natural authentic sound. The Emus have a decent piano too, but it suffers from the same aflliction as Korg. When you include expansions, the picture is pretty much which synth you prefer, as all of them have fantastic piano roms, and the Kurzweil can load a number of CD roms. The Korg Concert Grand expansion has two velocity switched layers, and under very finicky playing might sound more artificial than the others, but you really have to listen closely to detect it, so I wouldn't worry about it myself. The Concert Grand samples are preloaded in the Triton Studio workstation, making it a great choice as an all around instrument. The ProMega3 includes some physical modelling of damper pedal and string resonance that a lot of keyboardists like, and it adds a little touch of authenticity. But it is pretty much a piano keyboard with some other sounds thrown in, so it won't be mentioned any more. Emu has two fairly well received expansions with the Holy Grail Piano rom and William Koakley's Perfect Piano. I think the Coakley rom is comparable to any sampled piano. The Yamaha S90 is supposed to have the holy grail of piano samples, and is highly regarded as the most authentic of the synths among many people, but you'll really have to play these instruments to determine that for yourself.
A quick word about stereo pianos. There is a difference between a sound played in a synth with a stereo buss, and a stereo sample. Most samples are mono, and "stereo piano" patches use key tracking to spread these mono notes out in a stereo field. With a room or hall reverb the simulation of being in front of a piano is pretty convincing. But a true stereo piano is made by sampling each note in stereo, and is much more spacious with a stronger sense of presence. Kurzweil, Yamaha and Roland have stereo samples in their stock roms, and there are much better ones in the expansions.
Electric Piano
Yamaha, Korg and Roland will have you in heaven with their EPs. Emu's are pretty good. Kurzweil is okay, tho it has to use quite a few layers and some clever programming to give you what you want, so for more authentic sounds you should definitely splurge on its Vintage Keys expansion.
Organ, pipe organ and orchestral keys
Korg shows some weakness here, as their range of organ sounds seem to only work by themselves or with percussion. They don't seem to layer well at all. Kurzweil is similar, but their problem is layering their waves usually induces a weird phase shifting sound, which is probably due to the synth engine. It does have a fantastic and quite convincing organ model, and you can use the sliders like drawbars, but a traditional Hammond model eats up 40 whole voices, leaving you only eight! Yikes. Roland, Yamaha and Emu shine here with a terrific range of drawbar samples, and have the advantage of having performance controls that let you fiddle with the volumes of the layers much like a real set of drawbars. Korg, Roland and Yamaha have great Leslie simulators which really help with their sound. Korg and Yamaha have really good pipe organ sounds, but Roland will having you doing Rick Wakeman on Bach impressions with their scrumptious samples. I don't think Kurzweil has harpsichord samples in rom, but I could be wrong. Korg's sounds kind of cheezy, sounding better in octaves, while Yamaha and Roland sound dandy.
Strings and Orchestra
All of the instruments have a nice selection of orchestral samples built in, tho the Yamaha S80, 90 and Motif have a delicious stereo sample that I love. The Kurzweil suffers a bit here as its sound rom was created in the early 90s, and in this area it shows. Its strings are very nice, as are many of the brass sounds. However the woodwinds can sound rather flat and generic, and some like the timpani and gong are bloody awful, so you'd best look into some orchestral CD roms if you're relying on the Kurz. The Roland instruments have a slightly better selection of orchestral samples in its stock rom. Emu has a module devoted to its 32 megabyte orchestral rom, and this rom is available as an expansion, tho some people nitpick over a few sounds and their quality. Korg has a terrific Orchestral expansion set requiring two slots, tho Roland has the top spot with three excellent roms, and a compilation rom.
Saxes and woodwinds
Except for some of the winds on the Kurzweil which are a little lifeless, they all offer good selections. But I have to confess a lust for Roland's delicious range of saxes.
Electric and acoustic guitar
You will have to decide this by first hand experimentation, tho all of them sound reasonably good. The Emus suffer from not having an effects processor with decent distortion. I have to say that the distortion effects on the Korgs, Rolands and Yamahas really take you close to being on stage with a Marshall stack. Korg probably has the widest selection of electric guitar samples, but don't hold me to that, I just know they have several and they're really good. The Yamaha has the weakest acoustic guitar sample, while Roland has a sweet singing steel string studio guitar they've been using for years, for good reason.
Bass guitar
Kurzweil seems to have the weakest bass sample selection, but that's not saying much as many of them are fantastic. You should be happy with the basses on all the synths.
Drums and percussion
The best stock drum and percussion sounds are probably in the Yamahas. Korg is no slouch, devoting fully half of its sample rom instruments to percussion sounds! You need to use a compressor effect or very careful level setting because most of the sounds are at such a low volume, very curious. With expansions, this changes drastically as Roland has two excellent drum expansion roms, and Yamaha and Korg both have great ones of their own.
Synthesizer waves
The piece de resistance of any rompler are the synth waves. Kurzweil seems to suffer from a lack of them, but what it does have is really good, besides it does synthesize its waves very well. Yamaha has an okay selection, but I don't like the narrow range of them. They seem best suited to hip-hoppy sounds like funky basses, or etherial new age pads, and the sound of the filters emphasizes this weakness. Roland has a really nice selection, while Korg has a treasure trove, like a built in vintage synth expansion.
Effects
Emu has the fewest and cheeziest, much like synths of the 90s, not bad but you wouldn't buy them in a rack. Yamaha has a nice implementation, though the multieffects are a little limited. You have two insert effects and two master effects, with many effects types including some really good distortion, fantastic reverb, and many oddball things which can spice things up. You can even plug in outside instruments or microphones to process with them! This is fine, but they use this same system in a multi-patch performance, and the effects are based on one patch you choose as a Master. All the other patches use this multieffect, and with only two insert effects you might want to use the individual outputs to include an effects processor for more variety and power. Roland has up to five effects, two master and three inserts with many wonderful effects available. The reverb is also studio quality. You have the luxury of programming your effects with each performance, and can copy effects from a patch to save time. Korg has great implementation, with up to SEVEN stereo effects, five insert and two master. They're very powerful, except for the reverb which is just a little cheezy compared to the others. The king of effects is probably the Kurzweil, which has the potent, studio quality KDFX unit, with effects so good they're sold in a very expensive rack mount unit.
Sequencers
Each workstation comes with a built in sequencer, which is a way of recording all of your playing and knob twiddling with all your sounds mixed in a multitrack performance, complete with effects. Yamaha is supposed to have the most difficult sequencer to learn, but it's not that hard. Besides, there is a wonderful support group with representatives from Yamaha on hand to answer questions. Korg probably has the king of sequencers, with I believe 200 individual sequences and a total of 200,000 notes! That's the equivalent of a two hour ELP performance, or three if I recall. Jeepers! Most of them have 16 track sequencers, which allow you to play up to 16 separate sounds at one time, either in the synth, in an external synth, or layered together. Kurzweil has an additional 16 tracks available in its Song mode, which you use to chain together 16 track sequences. So along with these sequences, which are sections of songs like the verses, choruses, bridges and so on, you get 16 more tracks to layer over them, for 32 sounds total. All the keyboards do have very powerful sequencers, allowing you to record very long, complex songs, except for the Emu which only has an arpeggiator, altho it's VERY powerful.
Suppose sound power is your goal:
Synth architecture
Now to dig under the hood and really get greasy.
I know this is preaching to the choir, but you can't say enough about Kurzweil. This is about the most powerful hardware synth on the market, with arcane functions that can shape or mangle sound that very few people have even heard of. Roland isn't that far behind, as they have some parameters that used to be on analog synths from years gone bye and really help out the synthesizer aspects of their instruments. Emu is next, also a force to be reckoned with, followed by Yamaha and finally Korg, tho Korg is no slouch in the synth department, believe me.
The components of a synth that determine the quality of the instrument are the samples, the filters, the effects, the architecture or algorithms available in a layer, and to an extent, the number of layers available in a patch. The Kurzweil has the most complex architecture of the synths, as you're able to configure its synthesizer much like a modular synth. The Roland is not far behind, and it's fairly expressive. Yamaha and Korg are the simplest, Korg least of all, but that doesn't mean its sounds are basic, as you'll see when you play one. The samples recorded in an instruments' rom and effects were covered above so I'll go to the filters.
They help determine how convincing the acoustic sounds are, such as the decay of a piano note, as well as the juice in synthesizer patches. All of these synths have great analog sounding filters, but they are quite different from each other. Filters tend to be compared to Moog or Arp/Oberheim/whatever. The Moog is known for its rich beefy sound due to its unique thick 24db slope, while Arp and Oberheim had a lighter quality to theirs, particularly Oberheim as it used a gentler 12db cutoff. As an aside, the best filter for simulating the decay of an acoustic sound like the decay of a guitar or piano note is probably the very light 6db lowpass. You want some of the original harmonics from the initial sound to ring out slowly, and a very light filter gives you that. The 24db lowpass is definitely the wrong choice, as it kills harmonics very fast as it closes down. For most sounds the 12db lowpass is adequate, since that's as light as most synths get.
Most of the synths have a generic sound in between an Arp and a Moog in character, tho there are some standouts. Yamaha's new filters are kind of odd, but then they seem to make it a point to be different in all their instruments. As I say they're good, but they have a strange character to them, subtley unlike any filter I've ever heard. Coupled with the skimpy selection of synth waves in its roms and sometimes dialing in a patch JUST the way you want can be frustrating, as I found. But to be sure, that doesn't happen very often. You can make some great sounds, from delicate to grungy.
Emu has some of the most powerful filters in synthdom. I believe they have 60 dang types! And they get very arcane and powerful, to the extent that they achieve waveshaping qualities. The traditional low pass, band pass and high pass filters sound kind of generic, but in a good way, and very analog.
Roland uses an odd set up, in that their filters are 12db, and you work with what they call structures, which are like the basic versions of Kurzweil's algorithms to have different filter slopes, either 12db or 24db. They sound generic too, but they have a sweet sound and a juicy resonance, and can be lowpass, highpass or bandpass. Sweeping them with an envelope or knob is truly a pleasure. There is also a very light 6db filter which is excellent for doing acoustic emulations, if you want to program your own guitars, pianos, drums or the like.
Kurzweil has a wide variety of filters available also. Generic sounding, but again quite sweet with a juicy resonance, and the many types give you a good palette of tone shaping tools. It's no wonder the Kurz has so many great synth patches in its library.
I'm a big fan of the new Korgs, the Tritons and the Karma. Not only do they have hundreds of waveforms, but the filters sound very good. They're the most limited of the synths I mention, but they're still very useful. There are two basic configurations: a single 24db resonant lowpass which sounds very warm and analog, and a dual 12db nonresonant lowpass and highpass which are thinner but more flexible. The 24db is fantastic for a meaty Moog sound, giving you juicy leads, sweet pads and floor pounding basses. The dual low-highpass filters are well suited to lighter synth textures when you don't need resonance or want a bandpass configuration, or to use in synthesizing acoustic sounds like guitars or pianos. With the huge number of synth waves available in rom, you have a LOT of power available to make an incredible range of synth patches.
As far as overall architecture, they all play more than one individual synthesizer voice at once. Like I and Scrap pointed out in the Synth FAQ thread, a VOICE is a complete synthesizer sound, with its own waveform, filter or filters or other modifiers, and an amp, to allow you to make one complete distinct sound. Korg plays the fewest voices in one patch with two, but they still sound quite big and expressive. Other than the Kurzweil, the others play up to four voices in a patch, and the Kurzweil 2600 goes a bit over board with 32!! Good grief. However, this allows it to make very expressive patches, as you can create voices that only play in different velocities, which is very useful for recreating more accurate acoustic emulations like pianos, or expressive synthesizer sounds.
Controls
Every synthesizer needs some sort of expression and modulation controls, and these guys have them. The Yamaha synths have both knobs and sliders. The S80 has four sliders which in patch mode control the volume levels of the four voice layers, as well as five knobs which serve whatever function you program them for, such as opening the filters or changing the rate of the LFO. In addition, it uses Moog like pitch and modulation wheels, and has inputs for a sustain pedal, a programmable pedal, an expression pedal, and a breath controller. The Motif has four knobs and sliders, and a bunch of buttons for letting you get to expression functions quickly. It can also control a PC sequencer/recorder such as Cubase SX or Pro Tools.
The Roland Fantom and Fantom S have four assignable knobs as well as a D Beam, which is a light sensor like a Theremin, which you control by placing your hand or other object into the invisible beam and moving around. It also has a modulation paddle - move it up to add vibrato or the like, side to side for pitch bending, a sustain footswitch input, and a programmable pedal input.
The Korgs have a marvelous range of modulation controls, with arpeggiator controls off to the right for immediate fiddling. They also have a rank of four knobs, which are doubled with a button press for four additional programmable parameters. Along with that is an expressive joystick for pitch and modulation control, and a ribbon, along with inputs for a sustain pedal, expression pedal, and one other programmable pedal, so it has plenty of performance options. The Karma doesn't have the ribbon or sampling, but it makes up for it by having eight knobs, with another set of virtual knobs available at a button press, and these are used not only to control parameters, but KARMA functions. KARMA is the algorythmic composer integrated with the synth, and makes it extremely powerful. You have to play with it to understand the true power of this thing.
The supreme master of control has to be the Kurzweil, as it has pitch and mod wheels, two ribbons - one huge and programmable!, eight sliders, ten switches, FOUR footswitch and two expression pedal inputs, as well as one for a breath controller! Whew! If you want control, there you go! It also has two master stereo outputs as well as eight individual ones.
Sampling
The Yamaha Motif does sample, but it's more of a snapshot sampler, in which you record sections of sound to trigger with the sequencer, things like vocal lines, guitar riffs, or special effects sounds. The Motif ES is supposed to be a full featured sampler workstation with up to a whopping 512 megabytes of ram! The Triton comes with 16 megs of sample ram, expandable to 64 megs, the Triton Rack and Studio can be expanded to 96 megs, the Kurzweil comes with 64 megs in the US and can be expanded to 128 megs, and the Fantom S comes with 32 megs, expandable to 160 megs.
Expansions
Eventually you'll want to expand your synth to get even more out of it, especially when you hear some sound and can't quite nail it on your main board. Come on, you know you will. Everyone else is doing it. ;)
Kurzweil has the least expansion options, but with a synth this powerful that's not a bad thing. There are the Contemporary and Orchestral roms, which add hundreds of new sounds in those categories, and most are very useful. However, they were created in the mid 90s and they do have some samples that were frankly just awful. Fortunately most of the sounds are quite nice, like the strings and brass. The woodwinds might sound a bit lifeless compared to the newer synths, and some like the tympani and gong are really bad, and why they include ethnic instruments here, I don't understand. Some of the samples on the Contemporary board aren't too inspiring either, but I'd recommend you get both in order to have a well rounded palette of available sounds. The 2600 comes with the Piano expansion installed, but the one that has me slobbering is the Vintage Keys expansion, which serves up some tasty electric pianos and a fantastic Yamaha CP80 Electric Grand. You can also expand the sample memory to 128 megabytes using standard and fairly cheap computer SDram, and it can load samples in a number of useful formats, so you have an entire universe of sounds available if you spring for a SCSI CD Rom. SCSI interface is standard. You can also expand the program/sequencer memory from approx 460K to over 1.5 megabytes.
Emu has some excellent expansion roms in a number of categories, even some used in their other instruments, so you can get one instrument like the generic PK-6 Proteus keyboard or 2500 module and add the Vintage Collection for 32 megs of vintage keyboard sounds from their Vintage Pro module.
Roland is limited to rom expansions too, but they have some of the best in the business. I am a definite Roland bigot, I LOVE their sounds. The rock, piano, vintage keyboard and orchestral sounds are exquisite, and if you have anything from a JV-1080 module to a Fantom S, you have to get a couple of these wonderful expansion roms. Many of the older SR-JV roms are combined in a very attractive four rom combo on a newer high capacity SRX board, and the sounds were so well sampled they're just as useful today.
Korg has one up on the other synths. Not only can the Triton be expanded with SD sample ram, but it and the Karma have a number of expansion roms of wonderful quality in many useful categories, such as Orchestral (2 roms), Vintage Synth and Concert Grand piano. In addition, they can be upgraded with the fabulous MOSS synthesizer board, which gives you a 6 voice synthesizer of incredible power. It is configurable in 13 different synthesis types, including programmable 6 voice physical modelling! The modelling is a little weak, and some samples sound better than their modelled types, but it's there for you to play with and is still quite powerful. The Plucked String synth is useful for giving a modelled guitar or bass instrument and is very expressive in ways a sample can't be. The electric pianos are fantastic too, tho you're limited to six notes. Most people will use the analog synth model to death, as it gives you a three oscillator synthesizer with numerous filter types and its own effects. And man, does it sound big. It does alias (squeal) at very high key ranges, but the thing otherwise sounds utterly analog. For the Triton, you also have SCSI options for hard drives and CD roms, and it can load sample CDs in a number of types as well.
Yamaha has perhaps the most interesting expansions available for the S80/90 and Motif. There are two sound roms, the Piano and Percussion roms, a harmonizer effect and General Midi expansion, but the rest are synthesizer boards: the FM Synth modelled on the original DX7, the Analog Synth modelled very closely on the much sought after Prophet 5 synth, and the Virtual Acoustic board which has a very powerful programmable one voice physical modelled instrument. The Piano rom is looking less necessary with the improvements in the roms of each generation of Yamaha synth, particularly the S90 and soon to appear Motif ES, but it does offer you a whole ton of new piano sounds. The synthesizer boards are the most exciting, as FM synthesis gives you sounds that are unavailable in any other form, tho it's much more difficult to understand than regular analog style programming. The Analog Synth board will give you all those synthesizer sounds the Yamaha can't with its basic engine and on board rom waveforms, and will teach you all you need to know to program any synthesizer. And the Virtual Acoustic board will give you a good variety of VERY convincing brass, woodwind and other sounds. It's also the hardest to understand, but the stock sounds are good enough you may never have to program a single sound anyway. It also has available output expanders, which add to the normal four analog outputs with an additional four analog outs, a digital input/output, or an MLan board.
Accessories
All of the instruments give you the option of footswitches and expression pedals, including piano damper pedals which let you half dampen the piano patches. Kurzweil and Yamaha also include a breath controller input to use in brass or woodwind emulation, or more expressive synthesizer patches, as you blow into it just like a wind instrument. Korg and Yamaha offer SCSI boards to allow storage of sounds on hard drives, or use with computers to edit samples on the Triton. The Motif and Triton Studio include SCSI, and the Triton Studio also includes a hard drive and the Concert Grand piano rom, and you can add a CD burner to master a performance right from the synthesizer, including stereo audio from a band! While most of the workstations and synths let you store sounds on floppy discs or optional hard drives, the Yamahas also give you the option to store data on Smart Media cards.
The Bottom Line
Let me sum up some recommendations, for new as well as some used instruments, synths as well as workstations. I'll make a separate post of this so you won't have to scroll way down my ramblings. ;)
In my opinion, the kings of workstations are the Korg Triton Studio and the soon to be released Yamaha Motif ES. The Motif ES is going to be the one to beat, with an incredible 175 megabytes of compressed wave samples!! That means it comes loaded with over 1800 sounds to use in creating a huge variety of patches. The filters are supposed to be improved, which means better sounding synthesizer sounds as well as acoustic patches like pianos. It's also supposed to come with some of the best pianos avaliable. You can also use it as a sampler, and as I said, you can expand it to 512 megabytes of sample ram, and SCSI is standard, so you can plug in SCSI hard drives for storage of huge sample files. The sequencer is huge, with over 200,000 notes available for huge sequences. It has 128 voices, so you can play big sustaining piano parts, or sequence huge involved compositions. The effects are beefed up too, with eight sets of dual insets rather than two on the original Motif, and the reverbs are rich and smooth. The expansion boards mentioned above make it just about the most powerful single instrument available. The original Motif is still for sale at a discount, with half the voices available at 64, and less sampling power. And if you want the sounds in a rack, there's a rackmount version which can hold two expansion boards and has 128 voice polyphony. The Motif and ES come in 61 and 76 synth action keyboard versions, and an 88 note graded piano action keyboard many people love.
The Triton Studio runs a close second, with nearly as much sound power. It has 120 voice polyphony, altho this is divded up between the on board 32 meg sound rom, and the Concert Grand and other expansion roms. It has a wonderful sound, and the synthesizer patches benefit from some great analog sounding filters, including a beefy 24db resonant lowpass which is quite Moogy. It only has two voice layers available in a patch, but they still sound very big and rich. The onboard hard drive allows you to store huge files, such as samples or songs for almost instantaneous loading, and a CDRW to produce finished music CDs! It can be expanded with the MOSS board and a whopping seven expansion roms, so you can have a wealth of patches and programming resources available. The original Triton and Rack are available too and are a little cheaper, with 62 voice polyphony, two rom slots and six more voices from the MOSS expansion. Programming the Tritons is a breeze thanks to a big high resolution touch sensitive display, with many parameters available on the screen at once. Korg has lavished these beasts with a fantastic effects section, with up to FIVE insert effects available at ONCE, as well as two master effects and master EQ per track. The reverb is just a bit cheezy compared to the other synths, but not by much, it's still very good. Plenty of outputs are available, with a stereo master, as well as four individual outs, while the other models come with a stereo and two individual outs. They all come in 61 and 76 note synth action and 88 note piano weighted keys. There is a Triton Le version with only one insert effect, a much smaller display and only a Smart Media card slot, altho it also has the four control knobs and joystick for expression, as well as a sustain pedal and programmable expression pedal input. It does offer a sampling option with up to 64 megs of sample ram and a SCSI port for hard drive storage or CD Rom input. They also come in 62 and 76 note synth action keyboards as well as an 88 note piano keyboard, and this one includes the Concert Grand expansion to sweeten the deal. The Karma only comes in a 61 note keyboard version and uses the smaller display for programming, and gives up the ribbon and sampling capability, but it has the full Triton synth engine and can be expanded with two sound roms and the MOSS board.
The Roland Fantom S is another wondersynth worth considering, as the sounds and effects are fantastic, with the wonderful Roland voice architecture configurable in a number of algorithms. With up to four voice layers, the patches can be absolutely huge and rich. The filters are smooth and juicy sounding, the voice parameters are very well endowed allowing you to do some very expressive programming worthy of a modular synth, and the effects make them even more expressive with up to three stereo insert effects and two masters, and the reverb is smooth and lush. With four SRX expansion boards, it can be loaded with a staggering amount of wave roms, as many of the older SR-JV roms have been combined four deep onto one SRX rom, and they're some of the best in the industry. Next to the Kurzweil, this is probably the second most powerful workstation on the market. A SmartMedia card slot and USB jack make storage painless and quick, as well as linking the Fantom to a computer for storage, sample loading/saving or editing. A modulation paddle, four control knobs, a D Beam controller, 16 sound trigger pads, a footswitch and programmable pedal give it plenty of expression control while playing. The Fantom S comes in a 61 note synth action or 88 note piano action keyboard, and the original Fantom is still for sale at a reduced price, with a nice 76 note synth action keyboard, and both have stereo master and two individual outputs.
The Kurzweil 2600 series is the 200 pound gorrila of workstations, with *breaaath* pitch and mod wheels, two ribbons - one huge and programmable!, eight sliders, ten switches, FOUR footswitch and two expression pedal inputs, as well as one for a breath controller! Its synthesizer architecture is about as complex and powerful as they come, with a number of algorithms and filter types useful for shaping sounds in a number of ways. It also has some wonderful sound roms, including a nice stereo piano which comes standard, along with four expansion roms which give it plenty of sonic resources. There is an organ model available, and tho it eats up 40 of the synth's 48 voices, it's an excellent model. And the KDFX effects are so powerful, they sell the same effects in rackmount units. Connectivity is fantastic, with a stereo master, as well as eight individual outputs, with high definition converters for pristine sound. Digital outs are also available with an 8 channel ADAT output. And storage is handled with two SCSI connectors, allowing you to use hard drives or CD Roms, and it can have samples loaded in a number of formats, so it has a huge library of sounds available for you to shop for. The sound can be a bit distinctive and limited at times, but it covers all the bases from accurate sample playback, to virtual analog synthesis including hard sync, resynthesis, waveshaping, even FM timbers can be created with it. With only 48 voices, it might be a bit limited, but it uses synthesizer oscillators along with the samples, so it actually seems more like a 64 voice or better instrument. And with up to 32 voice layers, it can't get much bigger sounding. It comes in a 76 synth action and 88 note piano action keyboard, and just coming out is the 2661, a 61 note synth action keyboard - minus the big ribbon, which includes the Contemporary and Orchestral roms. It is a bit complex for a first time synthesizer, but you'll never outgrow it, and the synth engine will never be outdated.
Non-workstation suggestions
The Emu PK-6 Proteus Keys is a very good synthesizer, with a wide range of sounds and very good expandability. The filters are what set this synthesizer apart, as not only do they sound very good, but there are a staggering 60 types! They even give the Proteus waveshaping characteristics. With 64 voices and four layers, it can do some large impressive patches. The effects are quite limited, but the keyboard is selling some places for a mere $500 US, so you can afford to purchase an effects unit with one. And the expansion roms are very good. It has slots for three rom cards if I recall, and there are a number of nice expansions available, from good vintage keyboard, organ and piano to orchestral. It also comes equipped with 16 complete arpeggiators, which can all run at the same time! Talk about your wild grooves! It has a 61 note synth action keyboard and four control knobs with three more pages of functions below that for control of 16 parameters, as well as pitch and mod wheels and two programmable footpedal inputs.
The Roland XP-30 is another 61 note synth action keyboard, which I highly recommend if you don't need a piano action synth. It has a nice 64 voice 4 layer architecture which was the prelude to the Fantom. It has a wonderful 40 megabyte sound rom with hundreds of waveforms of virtually every category. It comes equipped with the Techno, Session and Orchestral sound rom waveforms, and has room for two more! As it is, it has an incredible 1400 plus patches on board! And room for 128 of your own, along with SmartMedia storage of even more. It also has a paddle controller, four control sliders, and inputs for a pair of pedals. The voice architecture is the usual delicious Roland configurable algorithms with seven types and very nice filters. The effects are slightly limited but very useful, with a nice chorus and reverb, and an insert effect with many different types, including a guitar amp simulator.
The Roland XV-88 is a fantastic 88 note piano action synth, with the same architecture as the Fantom, but with 128 voice polyphony. It has room for two SR-JV and two high capacity SRX expansion boards, so it can be equipped with a fantastic range of instrument samples from various categories, and given about 1000 new patches from the boards.
The Yamaha S90 is much like the Motif without a sequencer, using the same voice architecture and expansion options, plus it comes equipped with a marvelous triple strike stereo piano which sounds utterly delicious, and an 88 note piano action keyboard.
Used recommendations
The Roland XP-60 and 80 are two similar workstations with 61 and 76 note synth action keyboards, and the same voice architecture as the XP-30, which means it sounds marvelous. They have room for four SR-JV expansion boards, giving you a total of 40 megabytes of excellent wave rom and well over 1100 patches. The sequencer is very good and large enough to hold long, complex compositions.
The General Music Equinox is a nice workstation as well, coming in 61 and 76 note synth action and 88 note piano action keyboards. I haven't had the pleasure of trying one out, but I downloaded the manual and it seems like a well equipped synth, with a 32 megabyte wave rom, nice dual resonant filters, and a decent dual effects processor. In addition, it comes with an organ model, programmed with eight sliders and 16 patch locations just for organ patches. I've heard some demos of it, and the filters sound nicely analog, and the patches cover a wide range of sounds and styles.
Stay tuned for further developments as they occur. :)
There seems to be a lot of head scratching over what a good synth would be to start out with. That's really a harder question to answer than I thought it would be, because it really depends on the person. Are you a complete geek that can hop right in to workstation sequencers, or do technical things make your head spin? 88 piano keys or synth action? Do you want to sequence or just perform with a band? Do you use a sequencer/recording package on your PC? Do you want the most involved synthesizer money can buy? What kind of sounds do you like? Do you want to sample? How expandable do you want it to be, and do you feel comfy opening up a synth?
Lots of things to consider, so let's start considering. I'm going to get under the hood with these babies too, for those who know something about synthesis and stuff to help see what some of your options are. Primarily, I'm going to discuss the Kurzweil 2600S, Yamaha S80/90/Motif, Korg Triton/Karma, Roland Fantom/XV-88/XV racks, and Emu PK-6 Proteus Keys.
Suppose sounds matter a lot to you:
Grand Piano
Yamaha, Kurzweil, Roland and Gem with its ProMega3 will suit you. Korg with its Triton/Karma might, but it's a rather basic sound and picky people don't like the character. It's only a one-strike sample, and the others have layers with different velocities for a more natural authentic sound. The Emus have a decent piano too, but it suffers from the same aflliction as Korg. When you include expansions, the picture is pretty much which synth you prefer, as all of them have fantastic piano roms, and the Kurzweil can load a number of CD roms. The Korg Concert Grand expansion has two velocity switched layers, and under very finicky playing might sound more artificial than the others, but you really have to listen closely to detect it, so I wouldn't worry about it myself. The Concert Grand samples are preloaded in the Triton Studio workstation, making it a great choice as an all around instrument. The ProMega3 includes some physical modelling of damper pedal and string resonance that a lot of keyboardists like, and it adds a little touch of authenticity. But it is pretty much a piano keyboard with some other sounds thrown in, so it won't be mentioned any more. Emu has two fairly well received expansions with the Holy Grail Piano rom and William Koakley's Perfect Piano. I think the Coakley rom is comparable to any sampled piano. The Yamaha S90 is supposed to have the holy grail of piano samples, and is highly regarded as the most authentic of the synths among many people, but you'll really have to play these instruments to determine that for yourself.
A quick word about stereo pianos. There is a difference between a sound played in a synth with a stereo buss, and a stereo sample. Most samples are mono, and "stereo piano" patches use key tracking to spread these mono notes out in a stereo field. With a room or hall reverb the simulation of being in front of a piano is pretty convincing. But a true stereo piano is made by sampling each note in stereo, and is much more spacious with a stronger sense of presence. Kurzweil, Yamaha and Roland have stereo samples in their stock roms, and there are much better ones in the expansions.
Electric Piano
Yamaha, Korg and Roland will have you in heaven with their EPs. Emu's are pretty good. Kurzweil is okay, tho it has to use quite a few layers and some clever programming to give you what you want, so for more authentic sounds you should definitely splurge on its Vintage Keys expansion.
Organ, pipe organ and orchestral keys
Korg shows some weakness here, as their range of organ sounds seem to only work by themselves or with percussion. They don't seem to layer well at all. Kurzweil is similar, but their problem is layering their waves usually induces a weird phase shifting sound, which is probably due to the synth engine. It does have a fantastic and quite convincing organ model, and you can use the sliders like drawbars, but a traditional Hammond model eats up 40 whole voices, leaving you only eight! Yikes. Roland, Yamaha and Emu shine here with a terrific range of drawbar samples, and have the advantage of having performance controls that let you fiddle with the volumes of the layers much like a real set of drawbars. Korg, Roland and Yamaha have great Leslie simulators which really help with their sound. Korg and Yamaha have really good pipe organ sounds, but Roland will having you doing Rick Wakeman on Bach impressions with their scrumptious samples. I don't think Kurzweil has harpsichord samples in rom, but I could be wrong. Korg's sounds kind of cheezy, sounding better in octaves, while Yamaha and Roland sound dandy.
Strings and Orchestra
All of the instruments have a nice selection of orchestral samples built in, tho the Yamaha S80, 90 and Motif have a delicious stereo sample that I love. The Kurzweil suffers a bit here as its sound rom was created in the early 90s, and in this area it shows. Its strings are very nice, as are many of the brass sounds. However the woodwinds can sound rather flat and generic, and some like the timpani and gong are bloody awful, so you'd best look into some orchestral CD roms if you're relying on the Kurz. The Roland instruments have a slightly better selection of orchestral samples in its stock rom. Emu has a module devoted to its 32 megabyte orchestral rom, and this rom is available as an expansion, tho some people nitpick over a few sounds and their quality. Korg has a terrific Orchestral expansion set requiring two slots, tho Roland has the top spot with three excellent roms, and a compilation rom.
Saxes and woodwinds
Except for some of the winds on the Kurzweil which are a little lifeless, they all offer good selections. But I have to confess a lust for Roland's delicious range of saxes.
Electric and acoustic guitar
You will have to decide this by first hand experimentation, tho all of them sound reasonably good. The Emus suffer from not having an effects processor with decent distortion. I have to say that the distortion effects on the Korgs, Rolands and Yamahas really take you close to being on stage with a Marshall stack. Korg probably has the widest selection of electric guitar samples, but don't hold me to that, I just know they have several and they're really good. The Yamaha has the weakest acoustic guitar sample, while Roland has a sweet singing steel string studio guitar they've been using for years, for good reason.
Bass guitar
Kurzweil seems to have the weakest bass sample selection, but that's not saying much as many of them are fantastic. You should be happy with the basses on all the synths.
Drums and percussion
The best stock drum and percussion sounds are probably in the Yamahas. Korg is no slouch, devoting fully half of its sample rom instruments to percussion sounds! You need to use a compressor effect or very careful level setting because most of the sounds are at such a low volume, very curious. With expansions, this changes drastically as Roland has two excellent drum expansion roms, and Yamaha and Korg both have great ones of their own.
Synthesizer waves
The piece de resistance of any rompler are the synth waves. Kurzweil seems to suffer from a lack of them, but what it does have is really good, besides it does synthesize its waves very well. Yamaha has an okay selection, but I don't like the narrow range of them. They seem best suited to hip-hoppy sounds like funky basses, or etherial new age pads, and the sound of the filters emphasizes this weakness. Roland has a really nice selection, while Korg has a treasure trove, like a built in vintage synth expansion.
Effects
Emu has the fewest and cheeziest, much like synths of the 90s, not bad but you wouldn't buy them in a rack. Yamaha has a nice implementation, though the multieffects are a little limited. You have two insert effects and two master effects, with many effects types including some really good distortion, fantastic reverb, and many oddball things which can spice things up. You can even plug in outside instruments or microphones to process with them! This is fine, but they use this same system in a multi-patch performance, and the effects are based on one patch you choose as a Master. All the other patches use this multieffect, and with only two insert effects you might want to use the individual outputs to include an effects processor for more variety and power. Roland has up to five effects, two master and three inserts with many wonderful effects available. The reverb is also studio quality. You have the luxury of programming your effects with each performance, and can copy effects from a patch to save time. Korg has great implementation, with up to SEVEN stereo effects, five insert and two master. They're very powerful, except for the reverb which is just a little cheezy compared to the others. The king of effects is probably the Kurzweil, which has the potent, studio quality KDFX unit, with effects so good they're sold in a very expensive rack mount unit.
Sequencers
Each workstation comes with a built in sequencer, which is a way of recording all of your playing and knob twiddling with all your sounds mixed in a multitrack performance, complete with effects. Yamaha is supposed to have the most difficult sequencer to learn, but it's not that hard. Besides, there is a wonderful support group with representatives from Yamaha on hand to answer questions. Korg probably has the king of sequencers, with I believe 200 individual sequences and a total of 200,000 notes! That's the equivalent of a two hour ELP performance, or three if I recall. Jeepers! Most of them have 16 track sequencers, which allow you to play up to 16 separate sounds at one time, either in the synth, in an external synth, or layered together. Kurzweil has an additional 16 tracks available in its Song mode, which you use to chain together 16 track sequences. So along with these sequences, which are sections of songs like the verses, choruses, bridges and so on, you get 16 more tracks to layer over them, for 32 sounds total. All the keyboards do have very powerful sequencers, allowing you to record very long, complex songs, except for the Emu which only has an arpeggiator, altho it's VERY powerful.
Suppose sound power is your goal:
Synth architecture
Now to dig under the hood and really get greasy.
I know this is preaching to the choir, but you can't say enough about Kurzweil. This is about the most powerful hardware synth on the market, with arcane functions that can shape or mangle sound that very few people have even heard of. Roland isn't that far behind, as they have some parameters that used to be on analog synths from years gone bye and really help out the synthesizer aspects of their instruments. Emu is next, also a force to be reckoned with, followed by Yamaha and finally Korg, tho Korg is no slouch in the synth department, believe me.
The components of a synth that determine the quality of the instrument are the samples, the filters, the effects, the architecture or algorithms available in a layer, and to an extent, the number of layers available in a patch. The Kurzweil has the most complex architecture of the synths, as you're able to configure its synthesizer much like a modular synth. The Roland is not far behind, and it's fairly expressive. Yamaha and Korg are the simplest, Korg least of all, but that doesn't mean its sounds are basic, as you'll see when you play one. The samples recorded in an instruments' rom and effects were covered above so I'll go to the filters.
They help determine how convincing the acoustic sounds are, such as the decay of a piano note, as well as the juice in synthesizer patches. All of these synths have great analog sounding filters, but they are quite different from each other. Filters tend to be compared to Moog or Arp/Oberheim/whatever. The Moog is known for its rich beefy sound due to its unique thick 24db slope, while Arp and Oberheim had a lighter quality to theirs, particularly Oberheim as it used a gentler 12db cutoff. As an aside, the best filter for simulating the decay of an acoustic sound like the decay of a guitar or piano note is probably the very light 6db lowpass. You want some of the original harmonics from the initial sound to ring out slowly, and a very light filter gives you that. The 24db lowpass is definitely the wrong choice, as it kills harmonics very fast as it closes down. For most sounds the 12db lowpass is adequate, since that's as light as most synths get.
Most of the synths have a generic sound in between an Arp and a Moog in character, tho there are some standouts. Yamaha's new filters are kind of odd, but then they seem to make it a point to be different in all their instruments. As I say they're good, but they have a strange character to them, subtley unlike any filter I've ever heard. Coupled with the skimpy selection of synth waves in its roms and sometimes dialing in a patch JUST the way you want can be frustrating, as I found. But to be sure, that doesn't happen very often. You can make some great sounds, from delicate to grungy.
Emu has some of the most powerful filters in synthdom. I believe they have 60 dang types! And they get very arcane and powerful, to the extent that they achieve waveshaping qualities. The traditional low pass, band pass and high pass filters sound kind of generic, but in a good way, and very analog.
Roland uses an odd set up, in that their filters are 12db, and you work with what they call structures, which are like the basic versions of Kurzweil's algorithms to have different filter slopes, either 12db or 24db. They sound generic too, but they have a sweet sound and a juicy resonance, and can be lowpass, highpass or bandpass. Sweeping them with an envelope or knob is truly a pleasure. There is also a very light 6db filter which is excellent for doing acoustic emulations, if you want to program your own guitars, pianos, drums or the like.
Kurzweil has a wide variety of filters available also. Generic sounding, but again quite sweet with a juicy resonance, and the many types give you a good palette of tone shaping tools. It's no wonder the Kurz has so many great synth patches in its library.
I'm a big fan of the new Korgs, the Tritons and the Karma. Not only do they have hundreds of waveforms, but the filters sound very good. They're the most limited of the synths I mention, but they're still very useful. There are two basic configurations: a single 24db resonant lowpass which sounds very warm and analog, and a dual 12db nonresonant lowpass and highpass which are thinner but more flexible. The 24db is fantastic for a meaty Moog sound, giving you juicy leads, sweet pads and floor pounding basses. The dual low-highpass filters are well suited to lighter synth textures when you don't need resonance or want a bandpass configuration, or to use in synthesizing acoustic sounds like guitars or pianos. With the huge number of synth waves available in rom, you have a LOT of power available to make an incredible range of synth patches.
As far as overall architecture, they all play more than one individual synthesizer voice at once. Like I and Scrap pointed out in the Synth FAQ thread, a VOICE is a complete synthesizer sound, with its own waveform, filter or filters or other modifiers, and an amp, to allow you to make one complete distinct sound. Korg plays the fewest voices in one patch with two, but they still sound quite big and expressive. Other than the Kurzweil, the others play up to four voices in a patch, and the Kurzweil 2600 goes a bit over board with 32!! Good grief. However, this allows it to make very expressive patches, as you can create voices that only play in different velocities, which is very useful for recreating more accurate acoustic emulations like pianos, or expressive synthesizer sounds.
Controls
Every synthesizer needs some sort of expression and modulation controls, and these guys have them. The Yamaha synths have both knobs and sliders. The S80 has four sliders which in patch mode control the volume levels of the four voice layers, as well as five knobs which serve whatever function you program them for, such as opening the filters or changing the rate of the LFO. In addition, it uses Moog like pitch and modulation wheels, and has inputs for a sustain pedal, a programmable pedal, an expression pedal, and a breath controller. The Motif has four knobs and sliders, and a bunch of buttons for letting you get to expression functions quickly. It can also control a PC sequencer/recorder such as Cubase SX or Pro Tools.
The Roland Fantom and Fantom S have four assignable knobs as well as a D Beam, which is a light sensor like a Theremin, which you control by placing your hand or other object into the invisible beam and moving around. It also has a modulation paddle - move it up to add vibrato or the like, side to side for pitch bending, a sustain footswitch input, and a programmable pedal input.
The Korgs have a marvelous range of modulation controls, with arpeggiator controls off to the right for immediate fiddling. They also have a rank of four knobs, which are doubled with a button press for four additional programmable parameters. Along with that is an expressive joystick for pitch and modulation control, and a ribbon, along with inputs for a sustain pedal, expression pedal, and one other programmable pedal, so it has plenty of performance options. The Karma doesn't have the ribbon or sampling, but it makes up for it by having eight knobs, with another set of virtual knobs available at a button press, and these are used not only to control parameters, but KARMA functions. KARMA is the algorythmic composer integrated with the synth, and makes it extremely powerful. You have to play with it to understand the true power of this thing.
The supreme master of control has to be the Kurzweil, as it has pitch and mod wheels, two ribbons - one huge and programmable!, eight sliders, ten switches, FOUR footswitch and two expression pedal inputs, as well as one for a breath controller! Whew! If you want control, there you go! It also has two master stereo outputs as well as eight individual ones.
Sampling
The Yamaha Motif does sample, but it's more of a snapshot sampler, in which you record sections of sound to trigger with the sequencer, things like vocal lines, guitar riffs, or special effects sounds. The Motif ES is supposed to be a full featured sampler workstation with up to a whopping 512 megabytes of ram! The Triton comes with 16 megs of sample ram, expandable to 64 megs, the Triton Rack and Studio can be expanded to 96 megs, the Kurzweil comes with 64 megs in the US and can be expanded to 128 megs, and the Fantom S comes with 32 megs, expandable to 160 megs.
Expansions
Eventually you'll want to expand your synth to get even more out of it, especially when you hear some sound and can't quite nail it on your main board. Come on, you know you will. Everyone else is doing it. ;)
Kurzweil has the least expansion options, but with a synth this powerful that's not a bad thing. There are the Contemporary and Orchestral roms, which add hundreds of new sounds in those categories, and most are very useful. However, they were created in the mid 90s and they do have some samples that were frankly just awful. Fortunately most of the sounds are quite nice, like the strings and brass. The woodwinds might sound a bit lifeless compared to the newer synths, and some like the tympani and gong are really bad, and why they include ethnic instruments here, I don't understand. Some of the samples on the Contemporary board aren't too inspiring either, but I'd recommend you get both in order to have a well rounded palette of available sounds. The 2600 comes with the Piano expansion installed, but the one that has me slobbering is the Vintage Keys expansion, which serves up some tasty electric pianos and a fantastic Yamaha CP80 Electric Grand. You can also expand the sample memory to 128 megabytes using standard and fairly cheap computer SDram, and it can load samples in a number of useful formats, so you have an entire universe of sounds available if you spring for a SCSI CD Rom. SCSI interface is standard. You can also expand the program/sequencer memory from approx 460K to over 1.5 megabytes.
Emu has some excellent expansion roms in a number of categories, even some used in their other instruments, so you can get one instrument like the generic PK-6 Proteus keyboard or 2500 module and add the Vintage Collection for 32 megs of vintage keyboard sounds from their Vintage Pro module.
Roland is limited to rom expansions too, but they have some of the best in the business. I am a definite Roland bigot, I LOVE their sounds. The rock, piano, vintage keyboard and orchestral sounds are exquisite, and if you have anything from a JV-1080 module to a Fantom S, you have to get a couple of these wonderful expansion roms. Many of the older SR-JV roms are combined in a very attractive four rom combo on a newer high capacity SRX board, and the sounds were so well sampled they're just as useful today.
Korg has one up on the other synths. Not only can the Triton be expanded with SD sample ram, but it and the Karma have a number of expansion roms of wonderful quality in many useful categories, such as Orchestral (2 roms), Vintage Synth and Concert Grand piano. In addition, they can be upgraded with the fabulous MOSS synthesizer board, which gives you a 6 voice synthesizer of incredible power. It is configurable in 13 different synthesis types, including programmable 6 voice physical modelling! The modelling is a little weak, and some samples sound better than their modelled types, but it's there for you to play with and is still quite powerful. The Plucked String synth is useful for giving a modelled guitar or bass instrument and is very expressive in ways a sample can't be. The electric pianos are fantastic too, tho you're limited to six notes. Most people will use the analog synth model to death, as it gives you a three oscillator synthesizer with numerous filter types and its own effects. And man, does it sound big. It does alias (squeal) at very high key ranges, but the thing otherwise sounds utterly analog. For the Triton, you also have SCSI options for hard drives and CD roms, and it can load sample CDs in a number of types as well.
Yamaha has perhaps the most interesting expansions available for the S80/90 and Motif. There are two sound roms, the Piano and Percussion roms, a harmonizer effect and General Midi expansion, but the rest are synthesizer boards: the FM Synth modelled on the original DX7, the Analog Synth modelled very closely on the much sought after Prophet 5 synth, and the Virtual Acoustic board which has a very powerful programmable one voice physical modelled instrument. The Piano rom is looking less necessary with the improvements in the roms of each generation of Yamaha synth, particularly the S90 and soon to appear Motif ES, but it does offer you a whole ton of new piano sounds. The synthesizer boards are the most exciting, as FM synthesis gives you sounds that are unavailable in any other form, tho it's much more difficult to understand than regular analog style programming. The Analog Synth board will give you all those synthesizer sounds the Yamaha can't with its basic engine and on board rom waveforms, and will teach you all you need to know to program any synthesizer. And the Virtual Acoustic board will give you a good variety of VERY convincing brass, woodwind and other sounds. It's also the hardest to understand, but the stock sounds are good enough you may never have to program a single sound anyway. It also has available output expanders, which add to the normal four analog outputs with an additional four analog outs, a digital input/output, or an MLan board.
Accessories
All of the instruments give you the option of footswitches and expression pedals, including piano damper pedals which let you half dampen the piano patches. Kurzweil and Yamaha also include a breath controller input to use in brass or woodwind emulation, or more expressive synthesizer patches, as you blow into it just like a wind instrument. Korg and Yamaha offer SCSI boards to allow storage of sounds on hard drives, or use with computers to edit samples on the Triton. The Motif and Triton Studio include SCSI, and the Triton Studio also includes a hard drive and the Concert Grand piano rom, and you can add a CD burner to master a performance right from the synthesizer, including stereo audio from a band! While most of the workstations and synths let you store sounds on floppy discs or optional hard drives, the Yamahas also give you the option to store data on Smart Media cards.
The Bottom Line
Let me sum up some recommendations, for new as well as some used instruments, synths as well as workstations. I'll make a separate post of this so you won't have to scroll way down my ramblings. ;)
In my opinion, the kings of workstations are the Korg Triton Studio and the soon to be released Yamaha Motif ES. The Motif ES is going to be the one to beat, with an incredible 175 megabytes of compressed wave samples!! That means it comes loaded with over 1800 sounds to use in creating a huge variety of patches. The filters are supposed to be improved, which means better sounding synthesizer sounds as well as acoustic patches like pianos. It's also supposed to come with some of the best pianos avaliable. You can also use it as a sampler, and as I said, you can expand it to 512 megabytes of sample ram, and SCSI is standard, so you can plug in SCSI hard drives for storage of huge sample files. The sequencer is huge, with over 200,000 notes available for huge sequences. It has 128 voices, so you can play big sustaining piano parts, or sequence huge involved compositions. The effects are beefed up too, with eight sets of dual insets rather than two on the original Motif, and the reverbs are rich and smooth. The expansion boards mentioned above make it just about the most powerful single instrument available. The original Motif is still for sale at a discount, with half the voices available at 64, and less sampling power. And if you want the sounds in a rack, there's a rackmount version which can hold two expansion boards and has 128 voice polyphony. The Motif and ES come in 61 and 76 synth action keyboard versions, and an 88 note graded piano action keyboard many people love.
The Triton Studio runs a close second, with nearly as much sound power. It has 120 voice polyphony, altho this is divded up between the on board 32 meg sound rom, and the Concert Grand and other expansion roms. It has a wonderful sound, and the synthesizer patches benefit from some great analog sounding filters, including a beefy 24db resonant lowpass which is quite Moogy. It only has two voice layers available in a patch, but they still sound very big and rich. The onboard hard drive allows you to store huge files, such as samples or songs for almost instantaneous loading, and a CDRW to produce finished music CDs! It can be expanded with the MOSS board and a whopping seven expansion roms, so you can have a wealth of patches and programming resources available. The original Triton and Rack are available too and are a little cheaper, with 62 voice polyphony, two rom slots and six more voices from the MOSS expansion. Programming the Tritons is a breeze thanks to a big high resolution touch sensitive display, with many parameters available on the screen at once. Korg has lavished these beasts with a fantastic effects section, with up to FIVE insert effects available at ONCE, as well as two master effects and master EQ per track. The reverb is just a bit cheezy compared to the other synths, but not by much, it's still very good. Plenty of outputs are available, with a stereo master, as well as four individual outs, while the other models come with a stereo and two individual outs. They all come in 61 and 76 note synth action and 88 note piano weighted keys. There is a Triton Le version with only one insert effect, a much smaller display and only a Smart Media card slot, altho it also has the four control knobs and joystick for expression, as well as a sustain pedal and programmable expression pedal input. It does offer a sampling option with up to 64 megs of sample ram and a SCSI port for hard drive storage or CD Rom input. They also come in 62 and 76 note synth action keyboards as well as an 88 note piano keyboard, and this one includes the Concert Grand expansion to sweeten the deal. The Karma only comes in a 61 note keyboard version and uses the smaller display for programming, and gives up the ribbon and sampling capability, but it has the full Triton synth engine and can be expanded with two sound roms and the MOSS board.
The Roland Fantom S is another wondersynth worth considering, as the sounds and effects are fantastic, with the wonderful Roland voice architecture configurable in a number of algorithms. With up to four voice layers, the patches can be absolutely huge and rich. The filters are smooth and juicy sounding, the voice parameters are very well endowed allowing you to do some very expressive programming worthy of a modular synth, and the effects make them even more expressive with up to three stereo insert effects and two masters, and the reverb is smooth and lush. With four SRX expansion boards, it can be loaded with a staggering amount of wave roms, as many of the older SR-JV roms have been combined four deep onto one SRX rom, and they're some of the best in the industry. Next to the Kurzweil, this is probably the second most powerful workstation on the market. A SmartMedia card slot and USB jack make storage painless and quick, as well as linking the Fantom to a computer for storage, sample loading/saving or editing. A modulation paddle, four control knobs, a D Beam controller, 16 sound trigger pads, a footswitch and programmable pedal give it plenty of expression control while playing. The Fantom S comes in a 61 note synth action or 88 note piano action keyboard, and the original Fantom is still for sale at a reduced price, with a nice 76 note synth action keyboard, and both have stereo master and two individual outputs.
The Kurzweil 2600 series is the 200 pound gorrila of workstations, with *breaaath* pitch and mod wheels, two ribbons - one huge and programmable!, eight sliders, ten switches, FOUR footswitch and two expression pedal inputs, as well as one for a breath controller! Its synthesizer architecture is about as complex and powerful as they come, with a number of algorithms and filter types useful for shaping sounds in a number of ways. It also has some wonderful sound roms, including a nice stereo piano which comes standard, along with four expansion roms which give it plenty of sonic resources. There is an organ model available, and tho it eats up 40 of the synth's 48 voices, it's an excellent model. And the KDFX effects are so powerful, they sell the same effects in rackmount units. Connectivity is fantastic, with a stereo master, as well as eight individual outputs, with high definition converters for pristine sound. Digital outs are also available with an 8 channel ADAT output. And storage is handled with two SCSI connectors, allowing you to use hard drives or CD Roms, and it can have samples loaded in a number of formats, so it has a huge library of sounds available for you to shop for. The sound can be a bit distinctive and limited at times, but it covers all the bases from accurate sample playback, to virtual analog synthesis including hard sync, resynthesis, waveshaping, even FM timbers can be created with it. With only 48 voices, it might be a bit limited, but it uses synthesizer oscillators along with the samples, so it actually seems more like a 64 voice or better instrument. And with up to 32 voice layers, it can't get much bigger sounding. It comes in a 76 synth action and 88 note piano action keyboard, and just coming out is the 2661, a 61 note synth action keyboard - minus the big ribbon, which includes the Contemporary and Orchestral roms. It is a bit complex for a first time synthesizer, but you'll never outgrow it, and the synth engine will never be outdated.
Non-workstation suggestions
The Emu PK-6 Proteus Keys is a very good synthesizer, with a wide range of sounds and very good expandability. The filters are what set this synthesizer apart, as not only do they sound very good, but there are a staggering 60 types! They even give the Proteus waveshaping characteristics. With 64 voices and four layers, it can do some large impressive patches. The effects are quite limited, but the keyboard is selling some places for a mere $500 US, so you can afford to purchase an effects unit with one. And the expansion roms are very good. It has slots for three rom cards if I recall, and there are a number of nice expansions available, from good vintage keyboard, organ and piano to orchestral. It also comes equipped with 16 complete arpeggiators, which can all run at the same time! Talk about your wild grooves! It has a 61 note synth action keyboard and four control knobs with three more pages of functions below that for control of 16 parameters, as well as pitch and mod wheels and two programmable footpedal inputs.
The Roland XP-30 is another 61 note synth action keyboard, which I highly recommend if you don't need a piano action synth. It has a nice 64 voice 4 layer architecture which was the prelude to the Fantom. It has a wonderful 40 megabyte sound rom with hundreds of waveforms of virtually every category. It comes equipped with the Techno, Session and Orchestral sound rom waveforms, and has room for two more! As it is, it has an incredible 1400 plus patches on board! And room for 128 of your own, along with SmartMedia storage of even more. It also has a paddle controller, four control sliders, and inputs for a pair of pedals. The voice architecture is the usual delicious Roland configurable algorithms with seven types and very nice filters. The effects are slightly limited but very useful, with a nice chorus and reverb, and an insert effect with many different types, including a guitar amp simulator.
The Roland XV-88 is a fantastic 88 note piano action synth, with the same architecture as the Fantom, but with 128 voice polyphony. It has room for two SR-JV and two high capacity SRX expansion boards, so it can be equipped with a fantastic range of instrument samples from various categories, and given about 1000 new patches from the boards.
The Yamaha S90 is much like the Motif without a sequencer, using the same voice architecture and expansion options, plus it comes equipped with a marvelous triple strike stereo piano which sounds utterly delicious, and an 88 note piano action keyboard.
Used recommendations
The Roland XP-60 and 80 are two similar workstations with 61 and 76 note synth action keyboards, and the same voice architecture as the XP-30, which means it sounds marvelous. They have room for four SR-JV expansion boards, giving you a total of 40 megabytes of excellent wave rom and well over 1100 patches. The sequencer is very good and large enough to hold long, complex compositions.
The General Music Equinox is a nice workstation as well, coming in 61 and 76 note synth action and 88 note piano action keyboards. I haven't had the pleasure of trying one out, but I downloaded the manual and it seems like a well equipped synth, with a 32 megabyte wave rom, nice dual resonant filters, and a decent dual effects processor. In addition, it comes with an organ model, programmed with eight sliders and 16 patch locations just for organ patches. I've heard some demos of it, and the filters sound nicely analog, and the patches cover a wide range of sounds and styles.
Stay tuned for further developments as they occur. :)