First of all Quasar thanks very much for your kind comments. I have purchased Garritan's GPO and am looking at his Jazz & Big Band libraries. He certainly makes high quality virtual instruments....even GPO and Jazz & Big Band with the lower bite size (and more affordable) are amazingly high quality.

Now going with Muse Receptor, Colossus, Jazz & Big Band and others is definitely taking the cadillac of music for a drive. This will definitely sound amazing....especially if you also add effects of equal quality...wow!!! And yes this will cost some dollars but if you can afford it do it. There is nothing more exciting then high quality instruments to use in your performances.

I am not aware of any other GM modules. In fact I was not aware of the one that you just pointed out. Oh my....I can't keep up.

In addition, Garritan's libraries are designed to be fully load into memory so that calling up the instruments should be instantaneous. You can use disk streaming if you like...in the event you would like to use a very high quality piano at the same time as having these instruments on call. Esh, this might also work for your system.

Fran, I am really happy to see you using software synths. You will get use to it and never look back. The only thing is you might lose all your friends UD, DNJ, Travel'easy and so on. Then you will be left with only the echos of your mind. Especially, if you also trade in your G1000. Thanks for pointing out these synths. I was not aware of them....asleep at the switch....oh well.

In closing it looks to me that there are a number of new and innovative software/hardware based systems being developed:

Esh2006
Quasar2006
Fran2006
DNJ2006

It also seems like these systems may be orders of magnitude better (effective, efficient, flexible) than any of the new crop of arranger keyboards. Plus if you go for something less expensive it could cost less than such keyboards....it seems to me.


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 10-08-2005).]