The JV became known as the professional option... but is that true? Well the phenomenal success of the SC55 and variants eventually labelled the sounds as cliche, and the term "Sound Canvas" became associated with those sounds. However there have been two generations of SC developed since then. The current SC engine can be found in the VA-7/76, and i believe the EM-55, and the Edirol products (I wish they didn't discontinue the SC D70)

As far as the SC-880, it is a huge step beyond the original Sound Canvas, and kicks the JV-1080's ass. The whole idea with spending several hundred dollars to buy a few megabytes of compressed sounds is ridiculous, the SC-880 gives you everything you need without add ons, and the midi implementation on the SC-880 is much easier to work with. The SC-880 gives you such a broad palette of sounds you can drag almost anything from the box.

People tend to like the JV's because there are more patches. You can get what you need on the Sound Canvas, but you might have to dig in and program. Your not going to out analog a vintage synth or out giga gigastudio, but make no mistake, the SC-880 has the capacity to create professional sounds in any genre. At certain times however, you may feel that some critical acoustic instruments aren't good enough in isolation. That's not the SoundCanvas' fault, just a natural limitaion of romplers.

I finally just wanted to mention that you can control the filter (and it's a very full sounding LP) with CC's 71 and 74... 'cause that's not clarified in the manual.

The drum sounds are fairly good, but they do require a little equalizing and stroking to make them sound "live"

The guitar sounds are pretty good, but again, they are midi, and they are not what you would like, so be prepared to tweak them. String bending can be a bit of a challenge.

Overall, I'm quite pleased and have no plans of replacing it any time soon.