Hey guys, I'm having a hard time with this decision and wondering if anyone has experience with both of these keyboards? I'm looking for a high-quality piano feel/sound as well as a synth/controller for my studio. The piano is first and foremost though.

I played the Yamaha MOX8 tonight and am thinking about picking it up. I liked the sound and the feel. Can anyone give me an idea of how the RD-700NX compares in piano sound quality and feel? It's really hard to tell from videos and online information. I haven't found anyone in town with the Roland yet or I would just go play it.

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

You're really comparing apples with oranges, to be honest. The MOX8 is far more of a workstation/synth with decent pianos, while the Roland is primarily a stage piano with a few extra voices - they're not the same quality as the Yamaha.

The Yamaha's keybed is pretty similar to their P95 piano, OK but not exactly inspiring and feels a little cheap. The Roland is probably the current leader in simulated "real" piano actions. It's also nearly twice the weight. Its sounds are not really editable, bar a few parameters. I expect the MOX8 to be fully tweakable, probably with a computer editor as well. And it can control transport in DAW software too.

So if you were OK with the feel and sound of the MOX8, I'd be inclined to go for that. What's more, in the UK the difference in price between the two would leave you nearly 800UKP to spend on something else for your studio.

Building on what Aidan said...

If you want it all, for what might not be too much more than the price of the RD-700NX, you can get a Roland FP-7F and a Yamaha MOX6. I think that would be an excellent combination.

The FP-7f basically gives you the piano capabilities of the RD-700NX, while the MOX6 gives you everything in the MOX8 except the 88 weighted keys, which you won't miss since it's simple to even play the MOX6 from the Roland's (better) 88 keyboard if you want to. So you would have the best of both, plus some extra advantages, like speakers in the piano, and the use of both a weighted piano-style action and a non-weighted organ-style action for the times that would be preferable. The MOX6 is pretty small and light, too.

Played a MOX8 yesterday and was disappointed, especially when compared with a S90XS sitting close by. They share a lot of the same patch names but the MOX8 sounded cheap, to be honest. (I was using a pair of Beyer headphones.) The sample-stretch areas were glaringly obvious on pianos, and the EPs were lifeless. The whole thing seemed highly compressed to my ears. By contrast, I would have been happy walking away with the S90XS if it wasn't such a behemoth, and if the interface wasn't so confusing.

If it came to a choice between the MO and an RD, I'd take the RD any day.

I don't know about the S90XS, but the MOX8 sounds identical to the Motif Rack XS... I just tested by running the MOX8 into the Rack, ran both into the mixer, plugged AKG D240 phones into the mixer, and used the channel on/off buttons on the mixer to instantly switch between the two while I played, I could not detect any difference.

AFAIK, the S90XS should sound identical, except for the better S6 piano they put in the S90 that does not exist in the others. That would explain a piano difference, if you weren't comparing the same piano patch in each, but the EPs and all other same-named patches should sound identical.

That was what I was expecting, but of course Yamaha is not going to sell you a $2.5k board for $1.5k - effectively killing off the higher priced offering. The patches sound the same, in that they exhibit the same characteristics, but the resulting audio quality was very different. I don't know how much of that is the A/D converters, and how much the use of more compressed/smaller samples, but something was causing me to dislike the cheaper version. Aside from sound quality, the poorer action (with very slippery keys) was also a factor in my overall judgment.

It is supposed to have the same quality. The differences are in things like polyphony, the ability to load in more samples (or make your own), the full screen display, the quality of the action (although that's also a trade-off for weight), aftertouch, more controllers (faders, ribbon, add'l foot controller), etc. And, in fact, the Motif XS is being discontinued anyway, and the XF further differentiates itself from the MOX. So I would not assume "they have to make it sound worse."


Sometimes, if one is just a little louder than the other, you will tend to think it sounds "better" without being able to put your finger on why. When I compared the Rack to the MOX, I had the MOX at full volume, and had to back off the Rack to get them level matched, it had a hotter output. At the same level, I could not tell which was which.

Also, if instead of plugging directly into each keyboard, you plugged your phones into a mixer that contained the output of both instruments (much more convenient for instantaneous switching to make comparison easier), you have to be sure that there's no difference in mixer settings, of course.

(I should also mention that I compared them in mono, with reverb off. I think that's the best way to hear any differences in actual sounds. Plus it's how I most often use the instruments!)

You may be right - I have no definitive proof one way or the other. However, there was quite a bit of discussion about the differences in sound between the CP1, CP5 and CP50. A few people thought that the only difference was in the peripherals, stating that they thought the AP sound of each was identical - people who played them over time came to a different conclusion...



I plugged directly into the phones output of each board, at roughly the same volume - if anything the MOX8 was a tad hotter. Having played keyboards for so many years I tend to make fairly quick judgments, knowing that one board or soundset appeals, whereas another does not. I don't know whether my lack of technical knowledge hinders or helps. In this case, I knew there was some extra level of refinement in the S90XS, without knowing what it was.

In the same way, all the time I owned Electros, I knew that there was something not quite right about the Hammond emulation, without being able to categorize exactly what it was - aside from very obvious differences in things like percussion. It's those kind of subtleties that, for me, determine whether I want to live with a board or not. Unfortunately, the MOX8 is not for me, although I expect it to appeal to a lot of players with different criteria in mind. Certainly, as primarily a piano player, that particular board would not do it for me.

I think I may have figured it out. I think the difference may be in the actual response of the keyboards, and the differences in how they trigger and track velocity. My guess is that if you had run a MIDI cable between the S90XS and the MOX and triggered both "engines" from the same keyboard, you would have found no difference.

Specifically, in my case, when my Motif Rack XS was triggered from the MOX8, the two sounded identical. But when one of them was triggered from a PX-3, it seemed to sound "better." I suspect that what was happening was that I didn't have to strike the PX3 as hard to get the same velocity, so in normal playing it just sounded a bit more "alive." So I think the tracking of the MOX keyboard may be a bit more "subdued" than the S90 keyboard.

It's a possibility, anyway...

Aiden, Don't know how you can state that the RD700NX is a stage piano with a few extra sounds, when in fact it has 1000 extra sounds. This number would be comparable to most workstations.

I recently owned a Korg M50 88 workstation which had some great individual sounds and I think the quality of many of the Roland sounds would easily match or better it. Always a matter of opinion though.

Well perhaps "a few" is unfair. But there is an innate difference nevertheless. The RD series are marketed as a stage piano first and foremost. And the extra sounds are not editable to workstation standards. That's why I told the OP it wasn't a very useful comparison.