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I bought mine in June of 1999 for $280. I guess I overpaid a little given the current market and the fact that the synth came without the memory cards, but it doesn't mean I don't like it.
Most of the presets are useless (like I'm personally not into combination of acoustic bass and electrical piano) but there are some incredible atmospheric and/or weird sounds which serve as a good starting point for your own combinations. I would say even the drums are OK (you get 4 drum kits) if you tweak the EQ and other parameters and add a little rythmic delay and reverb. You can really get some punchy kick drum sounds.
Piano sounds are complete waste.
There are two effect processors which can be used serially or in parallel. IMHO the effectors are good, and the reverbs, in particular, are quite convincing. Having an extra set of outputs is helpful for selective reverb with an outboard unit, very useful for hihats etc in the drum kit.
The synth uses prefabricated PCM wave samples which themselves present fairly complete sounds. In this regard, M3R is different from Kawai machines produced in mid-to late 80s (like K1), where there are dedicated attack portions and an assortment of harmonics for the sustained part. In this respect, you have less creative freedom, but the quality of sounds in M3R is extremely high. I still managed to get some interesting effects using the editor in SoundDiver.
If it dies, I will likely buy another one, mainly because it's an excellent value for the money.
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