How good are roland KB sounds

OK let me ask this another way, the Dim Pro or any other synth has a certain bit depth quality and keyboards have sounds, patches, samples written onto a hardware card of a certain quality. If I go midi out of the sequencer to the KB and analog back to a mixer, except for the synth controls is hardware same, better, other than soft synth output.
If any here were to choose a soft synth piano over a kb piano, is it just personal pref or a nuts and bolts reason one over the other. Part of the reason I'm asking is how best to allocate system resources. If I can outsource some the instruments that maybe equal to the synth, I would think that cuts down on my CPU usage.

ORIGINAL: wyndham

OK let me ask this another way, the Dim Pro or any other synth has a certain bit depth quality and keyboards have sounds, patches, samples written onto a hardware card of a certain quality. If I go midi out of the sequencer to the KB and analog back to a mixer, except for the synth controls is hardware same, better, other than soft synth output.
If any here were to choose a soft synth piano over a kb piano, is it just personal pref or a nuts and bolts reason one over the other. Part of the reason I'm asking is how best to allocate system resources. If I can outsource some the instruments that maybe equal to the synth, I would think that cuts down on my CPU usage.

Wyndham,

The latest softsynth pianos, products like Synthology Ivory, are superior to hardware synths, but do require a lot of computing power.

The latest hardware pianos, products like Roland's RD700SX, Yamaha's S90ES, Kawai's M8 are all excellent and have such realistic sounding pianos that most people cannot tell one of these digitals from an acoustic grand piano in a recording.

The pianos on the Roland XV are an older generation and inferior to anything we've discussed so far, including the piano in Dimension Pro. Given the choice between Grand XV and Dimension Pro, I'd choose the latter.

However, if you're keeping your XV, then you have an excellent alternative for around $200 that will unload your computer, the SRX-11 Complete Piano card. The piano sample on that card is the very same used in Roland's RD700SX, Superior Grand. I use it and it's an excellent product.

If you're interested in digital acoustic piano samples, this is not the best place for information. Why not check out Pianoworld.com forum? They discuss these kinds of topics all the time on their digital piano forum.

Also, check out purgatorycreek.com's digital shootout, which has mp3 recordings of dozens of piano samples. Granted mp3 is not always the best way to evaluate samples because of losses in the conversion process, but I think they are very good for comparing the sound of each piano.

Well I quit buying hardware quite a ways back. Since the stuff I do have is old enough that most people wouldn't recognize the model I don't often list this stuff.
Yamaha-SY99, 2 tx81z's, Roland- D110. I won't go so far as to say dinosaurs but they so far away from cutting edge it's not funny. But I use software for that. And like that much more that hardware. It's not like I don't appreciate new shiny boxes with fancy blinking lights It's a money thing.

Wyndham,

That Martin sample is excellent. For a strum, check out the midi articulation sets from Keyfax. You'll find these over on the Motifator.com marketplace. I've never used them, but I hear they are good. They're MIDI, so they may be an adequate starting place at minimum.

I own an XV3080, and the Roland sounds are great, but you have to be careful about which ones you use. I also have a Fantom XR rack, but I prefer some of the XV sounds over the newer Fantom set. With both synths, and a couple of SRX cards, it's a pretty good set of synth sounds.

I almost bought the Roland RD700SX last year, but then Yamaha came out with the S90ES and it was a better keyboard all around, with a full blown Motif ES synth to boot. But I always did like the sound of its Superior Grand--I'm so glad that it's on SRX.

Good luck and enjoy.

ORIGINAL: lawapa

Well I quit buying hardware quite a ways back. Since the stuff I do have is old enough that most people wouldn't recognize the model I don't often list this stuff.
Yamaha-SY99, 2 tx81z's, Roland- D110. I won't go so far as to say dinosaurs but they so far away from cutting edge it's not funny. But I use software for that. And like that much more that hardware. It's not like I don't appreciate new shiny boxes with fancy blinking lights It's a money thing.

I see. I haven't used any of those synths, but they are all probably tough beasts to program. I know 1-unit rack FM synths and romplers are no fun at all.

When I started, I was a student who could only afford second hand synths, and low-end stuff, so I had experience with a couple Korg romplers (X5D and Wavestation), a Roland JV1010, an Emu ESI-2000 sampler (with a two-line LCD screen), stuff like that. It was all very uninspiring when it came to sound programming. One day I found a Juno-106 in the ads and I bought it. That thing opened my eyes to a new world of hands-on sound making. I also found a Moog Prodigy (for $150, can you believe that?), and saved my pennies for a Korg MS2000R. I decided I would never buy a menu-based hardware synth again. Now I have only 5 HW synths (at some points I had around 12) and all of them are packed with knobs. I also have tons of softsynths. I love them all and use them all together. And when I need rompler sounds, Dimension Pro and Wusikstation do the job.