> Other manufacturers such as Yamaha are guilty of the same kind of interface obfuscation

Everybody agrees the FS1R is a confusing mess although there too I think it's not just the interface but it goes deeper down to them not knowing enough themselves about what can be done with the capabilities of the engine.

In defense of Yamaha, if you read that retrospective I linked in the post [1], you do see that they spent years whittling down their engine to arrive at the DX7 and I think it shows. They did not spend that kind of effort on the FS1R nor did Casio on the VZ-1.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150912075333/http://usa.yamaha...