When I buy a Roland (which I will eventually) I know who to FReepmail on advice :-). I’ve been eyeballing them for awhile. Do you have LogicPro too?
LogicPro, no. I’m not an Applezoid. I’ve dabbled in Pro Tools for Windows, but I have a pal with an older technology hard wired setup that gets a killer sound that I can’t equal even with Pro Tools. I use him when I want to record something serious. When playing around I use Audacity on Linux.
Roland is both better and worse than where it started depending on what aspect you look at. They can’t afford to build cabinets the way they did in the early nineties. That counts in how a standalone unit sounds. But if you’re piping it through a decent external sound system, it doesn’t matter so much. Quality headphones count if you prefer the private listening approach. I suggest high end Sony, or the newer KRK models. In the meantime Roland has gotten the acoustic keyboard feel down almost pat, to the point that the high end feels lighter than the low end and on their deluxe models feels like a real wood escapement action. (As a ham handed pianist I never paid attention to that on an acoustic, even though it’s true with lighter hammers on the high end.) A bonus is that you can play more than just piano with a keyboard. Harp lends itself well, as do (oddly enough) violin and other voices that have sharp attacks, even though lack of aftertouch limits the realism (I make up for that by fiddling the volume control, and can get a pretty mean saxophone emulation that way).