I know... it sounds a bit presumptuous. But, hear me out.
I've played just about every orchestral instrument over the years, some professionally, some not, but all at least "pretty well". So, years ago, when I was shopping around for a synth to fill in orchestral sounds, I was disappointed by everything I tried from Roland, Yamaha, Korg, etc. Then one music store near me had something even THEY didn't know what it was... a PC1x. They hadn't even taken it out of the box. I said, "I'll be over in 30 minutes, please have it ready to test." I spent two hours listening to every sound and I was impressed with the realism of the orchestral sounds. I bought it on the spot.
You see, I do musical theater, and often smaller venues, schools and the like, don't have the budget for a full Broadway pit orchestra. With the layers, splits, and switches on the PC1x, I was able to add excellent-quality string, woodwind and brass sounds that even sounded good to me!
Eventually, my needs grew beyond the PC1x's capability. Arrangers for Broadway, and particularly for Broadway tours, started cramming more and more patch changes into their scores to fill in for diminished pit orchestras. A show like Beauty and the Beast might now have 200+ setup changes. The first time I tried that on the PC1x, I had to do a SysEx import between acts for the second act's changes, always worried there would be a glitch.
So, I saved up for the PC3K8. Not only does it meet all the needs of those scores with plenty of room to spare, I can also run all the music-cued SFX from the keyboard, with the sound going out of the Aux for placement outside the orchestra mix.
Can you tell I like it...?
Happy to be here and to see what everyone else is doing with them.
Alan