Interesting post, HSL, though I don't agree with all the perspectives there, i.e.:

,,, you criticize Yamaha for using many of the same samples and/or same sounds as models from long ago. To me, that's a feature. Of course it's great that MODX has many newer, better sounds than the Motif XS, but it's also great that, if I still want to use my old favorite Motif XS sounds, I don't have to keep an old XS around to do it. In fact, I wish they had more even older sounds. There are some sounds from the older Motif ES and even going back to the S80/S30 that I really liked, that are not on the current models. It doesn't matter that they are "old" or somehow "imperfect" or whatever... they had a character that worked for me. This is one reason you'll often see keyboard players for well known groups using boards that are 20 years old... those are the boards that had the sounds of their hits, and newer "better" versions of those sounds don't sound as "right" for the songs as the original sounds did. If they want the song to sound the way the audience really wants to hear it, they want those older sounds, not "improved" versions.

..you conflate the cost of custom ROMs with SSDs. Just because these different things hold data, and have capacities measured in gigabytes, doesn't mean they are the same, in functionality or in cost.

...re: "A simple AWM2 sax with added compression and delay (for example) would sound much better than a naked SA sax without effects and with a heavily compressed (storage) sample!" -- I think this is subjective and depends on the application. What sounds "better" always is. But I would say that a naked SA sax should sound more realistic/authentic when played, than does a sax with compression and delay. After all, if you play a real sax, it has no compression or delay on it. But it does behave differently depending on how it is played, and it is those behaviors that the SA2 is designed to replicate, and which are missing from straight samples. So it depends what your goal is.

As for groovyband, it sounds interesting. I have no comment on any of that stuff, though, since I don't personally care about arranger functions. But it's nice that people who do, who have a Montage/MODX have another option there.