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Happy New Year, everyone!

My new Yamaha DGX-660 has 554 "voices" that seem to fall into three categories:
1. 29 voices that are labeled Natural! or Live! or Cool! or Sweet! For example, Natural! Grand Piano (the default voice) or Sweet! Tenor Sax.
2. 137 voices that are not labeled with the exclamation point as above, e.g., Ambient Grand Piano.
3. 388 voices that are labeled XGlite, e.g, Natural Grand Piano (XG).

I'm curious as to the differences between these categories. Do the category 1 voices have more or better samples? Are those in Category 3 limited in some way so as to be compatible with the GM specification? Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you!

XGlite is a superset of GM.

What do you imply by limited in some way to be compatible with GM ? GM is just a set of 128 sound numbered from 1 to 128. An acoustic piano for example doesn’t have to be « limited » to be « compatible ». And the quality of the sound doesn’t depend of the GM specification, but of the library provider. My GM set from EWQL is far superior than the one from Windows.

It's hard o find definitive info, but apparently Live! = sampled in stereo, with room ambience, and some of the others have to do with sampling multiple velocity layers, and/or using longer samples, and/or using samples that include recordings of the player performing natural techniques like vibrato (which is different from, for example, introducing vibrato by applying an LFO to the sample in real time). Basically, it means something more sophisticated than the basic samples used for most of the sounds. Though from a marketing perspective, it seems bizarre that they would make a big deal out of something and give it a special name, and then not explain what it means. But Yamaha terminology is always a challenge.

Thanks, Frederic. I asked whether the XG voices were limited in some way because, for example, there is a Natural! Grand Piano (voice 001) as well as a Natural! Grand Piano (XG) (voice 167). So I was wondering whether there was a difference -- they sound very similar, at least over the built-in speakers.

anotherscott, I appreciate the detail in your reply, which came as I was typing my response to Frederic. Yes, it is bizarre that Yamaha does not have an explanation anywhere (I searched!). Thank you.

"Sweet!" voices accurately emulate the natural tone and vibrato of acoustic instruments such as brass and woodwinds.

"Cool!" voices realistically reproduce the dynamic textures and subtle nuances of electric instruments.

"Live!" voices are stereo sampled with natural room ambience to ensure maximum realism.

I make a living performing on a Yamaha arranger, and use these voices all the time. The newest iterations are S.A. and S.A.2 - Superarticulation. They got guitars that you can hear the hammer-on and pull-off sounds when you change notes.

I get a lot of compliments about the sound from my PSR-S970. Even though the voices aren't the best out there, as an ensemble instrument, it sounds great.

They all have their uses. The plain trumpet voice imo sounded so tinny and nindescript when trying out solo, but when part of a created backing, it sounded superb. Violin's the same. Horses for courses and all that..