NE5D 61 worth the price difference to NE4D?

[analogika]

More memory is fantastic, but for crying out loud -- memory isn't expensive. Why didn't they give us 20GB of memory so we could get a bunch of the "big" versions of the pianos? Why not add memory expansion options? Sheesh!

Actually, the special Flash RAM required is extremely expensive. Yamaha, for example, charge about 300 US dollars per gigabyte of the stuff to add to their Motif XF.

The "common" RAM is no use for this purpose as it loses its contents when powered off.

There are different types of Flash memory. Some are much more expensive than others.

Apple will upgrade your iPhone by 64 GB for $100.
And you can get a 1TB Flash drive for $400.
Most types of Flash are cheaper than RAM.

I have no idea why Yamaha charges 300$ per GB, but I'm fairy certain that it's primarily because they can, and secondarily because they only sell small numbers of these upgrades, rather than the tens of millions that the computer industry sells.

[neolithic]

Hmm. there are many different types of RAM - factors like read time, write time, power consumption, error checking and many others determine which type engineers use in a device. Don't assume Clavia, Yamaha etc are trying to rip us off - it doesn't make sense in a competitive marketplace to do that. In the case of memory upgrades like Yamaha, there's a limited market and still the usual Production costs to cover, so it's inevitably going to be more expensive than the memory in your iPhone, which has much greater economies of scale.

[matt0505]

Hi sh4wn,

I don't know about your other fully weighted 88-key-board, but originally I wanted to have an NE4D, because at that time it seemed to me to have one of the best b3 emulations (apart from the C2D, I guess). I listened to some other emulations and tried them out in a shop, but either Nord had been doing a damn good job in advertising or the others really just didn't sound as good as the NE4D. By now, after playing for about 2 years, I still like the b3-sound very much, although I'm really curious about the leslie improvement in the NE5 (and maybe sometime a real b3, but I think I won't ever buy one ...

Do you often use the organ, the b3?

Have a good time!

[PScooter63]

Apple will upgrade your iPhone by 64 GB for $100.
And you can get a 1TB Flash drive for $400.
Most types of Flash are cheaper than RAM.

I have no idea why Yamaha charges 300$ per GB, but I'm fairy certain that it's primarily because they can, and secondarily because they only sell small numbers of these upgrades, rather than the tens of millions that the computer industry sells.

The storage Flash you are talking about is NAND Flash, and is not the same as the NOR Flash used by Nord and Yamaha. NAND Flash can't be used here because it can only be used for storage. It cannot be accessed in real time, which is what is required for Yamaha and Nord's purposes. NOR Flash is far more expensive than NAND Flash. The prices that Yamaha charge (and the value of the Flash RAM built in to Nords) is appropriate - it really is that expensive.