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Answers: I've played the alto sax for 9 years and I've always wanted to fool around with a soprano, but I hear they're harder to play. Has anybody played soprano and another kind of sax and noticed a significant difference in difficulty?

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It isn't that they are more difficult in general, it is that they almost always have bad intonation and it takes a lot of work to learn to control the intonation, especially while playing with a group. It also takes a bit of work to get a good tone out of it. Too many people sound like they are playing a goose instead of playing an instrument.
The soprano is a wonderful instrument and is great fun to play. Unfortunately if you are playing in a group like a big jazz band, or a concert band, there isn't much music for it. By what I've seen, around 5% of the jazz band music has soprano sax, and concert band music is less than 1%. As a saxophonist, it never hurts to have one and be able to play it well, but it would almost be better to learn an instrument like clarinet than the soprano.

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