Yes, for me it’s important that it’s immediately accessible for playing - there’s nothing worse than having to fiddle around with a PC in order to play - if it’s a hassle to get into the playing mode then I find my motivation to play decreases - and it’s hard to keep stuff connected permanently through a PC unless you want to leave all the gear powered up all the time. To play the Juno I just hit the power switches on the instrument, mixer and speakers and I’m playing - even thought that only takes 30 seconds, I’ve thought about buying a power sequencer so I could do it with one button instantaneously :)

My experience with the USB noise from the JUNO USB probably isn’t representative. I did some searching and there are a couple of references to noisy USB for Roland Junos over the years, but not enough to make me think that it’s a widespread issue. They talk about grounding. Also I see that one of the people having problems is using an ASUS machine - so am I - and based on other issues (non audio) I don’t think I’ll be buying another ASUS board anytime soon.

https://forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?t=21006

https://www.forums.rolandclan.com/viewtopic.php?t=47753

firmware change might fix it: https://support.roland.com/hc/en-us/articles/207928066-Juno-DS61-Juno-DS76-Juno-DS88-USB-Driver-Mode

If I have a chance, I’ll try some experimentation to see if I can isolate the noise and let you know what I can figure out. I haven’t played the Arturia, but It sounds like an option as well, especially driving that jd08 or the Yamaha - that looks like a pretty nice unit - you already have great sounds - - the Juno is a great all-in-one tool - but it sounds like having 88 weighted keys is your main requirement. I like the Juno but I don’t drive anything with it because it does everything I need.

I also use Ardour on Linux - have been trying Bitwig because of the hype but it’s not free software and Ardour is so much easier to use. Bitwig has good drum sounds/utiltiy but there are cheaper ways to achieve that I could not get the Juno to integrate seamlessly with Ardour (or Bitwig) via the DAW menu on the Juno, for what it’s worth but I don’t see that as very important and I’m used to nothing working with Linux anyway. SurgeXT looks very interesting as well, thanks. I just listened to the demo and it sounds pretty great, so I’ll probably give that a shot as well.