You know, you guys should REALLY open up your arrangers and take a look inside, every now and again...

You keep confusing the fact that it has an Operating System with the fact that it is a full computer. Just because it has the former has nothing to do with the latter. Pretty much all arrangers short of the 'open' ones run on custom RISC chips, designed specifically for the job. And, because a) our industry is tiny, and b) the arranger market is even tinier, there isn't the money to go out and completely redesign these things constantly to try and keep up with the ever-changing PC peripheral hardware.

You can't swap out motherboards, change I/O components, upgrade RAM types like you can in a computer. There's probably ONE chip to handle all these subroutines, and it would cost a fortune to re-tool and design a new one.

Don't forget, USB3 is on the horizon. No doubt, as soon as it appears, you will all be groaning that your arranger ONLY has USB2, when the move to USB3 wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to how it works...

I agree that, when designing something more 'open', like the Audya, planning ahead for your users' needs in RAM capacity should be a given, but it is likely that much of the subsystems from the Audya still use SD-1 componentry. What RAM did that one support? Yep, thought so

The fact that Ketron say that they are working on a RAM expander should be cause for celebration, not misinformed grumblings that it isn't everything a PC is. Just be happy it is coming...

And open up your arranger, and try to see how different it is from a computer...