I am in line to buy the new XF. I have acquired a bunch of questions regarding changes.

I see that the XF8 does not have firewire/ieee1394 standard, so effectively it’s price is higher than the XS8.

I don’t quite understand how the XS used RAM. Was the extra RAM added used as sampling memory? If so, then the XF has only 128MB RAM ever, as compared to the XS where you could add memory

Are there other things I might have missed?

“I don’t quite understand how the XS used RAM. Was the extra RAM added used as sampling memory?”

Yes, the XS RAM was used for sampling. Some people never added sample RAM to their Motif XS. They simply used the internal sounds and the many Voice libraries that do not need samples.  Also some people never used the Firewire interface.  They either already had another audio interface or did not use a computer for recording.

So it depends on your needs what options are necessary if any at all.

The Motif XF now has 714MB of samples (stored on a ROM chip).  The Motif XS only had 355MB of samples (also stored on ROM chips).

There are also the newer Operating System and additional features not on XS.

I wouldn’t worry about comparative pricing between the XS and XF.  Just the sounds alone (and all of the development work involved) justify the same price as the XS.