I will be honest and say that if you're into sound realism, the XP-80 doesn't offer a lot unless you expand it with the SR-JV80 expansion boards. THOSE BOARDS ARE A NECESSITY! Film music composers will benefit from Orchestral I & II, World, and Session.

I've also noticed some kind of glitch in the sequencer that seems to happen mostly on strings and bass instruments. I started recording right at measure one, with a bass pizzicato, and when I played it back, it was fine. But when I added more strings (just two tracks/parts, each one playing just two notes each), the bass pizz skipped. It's kind of hard to explain, but it seems like the strings interfere with the bass pizz and when you hit "play", the bass pizz plays but there's a skip there. My workaround is to just start recording from measure two. And yes, I have the latest ROM/CPU versions.

I've found the sound on the XP-80 to be of high quality - even after 3 years, the waveforms still sound respectable. I particularly like the piano/acoustic guitar samples as well as the sweeping pads (perfect for use in incidental music). The brass/sax/drums sounds are disappointing, but no synth at the moment offers a completely perfect package of sounds.

I haven't got any expansion boards apart from the 'experience' board (which Roland supplied as a demo). The main problem with the boards is that you don't get any more polyphony - for the cost of buying an expansion board, it may be cheaper to buy an external module instead and you'll benefit from a wider range of sounds + more notes!

Editing is excellently handled through the synth's large display. It's very useful to save patches to floppy disk - a feature that's far more hassle on the Roland JV2080 as you need to purchase special memory cards/bulk dump to other midi devices.

The touch of the keyboard's OK for playing sweeping pads, but you'd be better off spending money on a master keyboard if you will be playing more pianistic music - the touch of the XP-80 is quite shallow, if you want a good master keyboard then I'd go with the Roland A-90.

Nevertheless, the XP80 is light and has survived many gigs all over the country. The synth is a very powerful tool - I'd recommend it for people who wanted a synth-style keyboard combined with industry standard sounds. If you can afford it, go for the XP80 and also buy a KORG X5/N5 - this works as a really nice live setup as you have a large palette of sounds to layer.

The problem I've been through is the output noise and the melting glue on the weighted keys, in indonesia JV-80, D-70, JV-1000 and XP-80 is always has the melting problem, but I notice the new released has better glue. well just 'want to say, this one is keep, even though it has give me some annoying problem, but that's the risk of being an electronic musician... by the way... XP-80 is a really good controler too... this workstation and my trinity is going to be amy good companion.