Sorry James, but having struggled for years to make translated styles sound as good as the originals, I'm afraid once again I have to disagree. You yourself probably know that the sound and the performance are inextricably linked. Change the sound, and the performance needs to be changed. Sometimes in a large manner. You know all too well that, I would have thought.

Drum sounds with multi velocity samples, cross switched instrument samples, velocity curves that don't match up, non-linear controller responses, not to mention performance switches (like Yamaha Mega Voice stuff), all of these make translating a style from one arranger to another an exercise in frustration. Yep, sure.... you can get close. But it is rare to see a translation better the original. And that's dealing with closed arrangers, who already have well balanced soundsets, and a fair degree of common tones.

Throw an open arranger into the mix, with it's hodgepdge of different sources, all with different velocity responses (until you spend weeks trying vainly to get them to match), all with different EQ responses, all with drumkits with sample switching in totally different places and totally different sounds, and it's easy to see why, so far, there's once again very little proof of your theory...

Once again, if a player is NOT already making translations that rival the TOTL ROM styles (I've heard very few that come close to the original), what use is that open arranger?

Honestly, James, I'm coming from the same place as you, I use VSTi's for lots of music, but perhaps I'm just more of a pragmatist. As good as they are, until someone actually DOES make a coherent soundset and a few hundred style (what 99% of the arranger market is looking for OOTB) for an open arranger with an OS that IS geared towards the users of closed ones, I just don't see this flying.

You have a PA2x don't you (or is it a PA1X)? Seriously, now. Would you honestly sell it, and just about all your other closed hardware, to get an MS if you had to gig a large variety of music on it? I know I wouldn't. But, once aging, theory rears its' ugly head. It's all well and good to proselytize these things, but another altogether to back up your words with action.

I'm sorry I take such a narrow definition of the word 'arranger', but I'm afraid that, I truly believe that well over 99% of the entire arranger playing world agrees with me. I mean, for one thing, the MS is not some über-expensive Scala, or even an Oasys. Yet it has pretty much tanked in the arranger market. To the point that Dom has thrown in the towel, and is now marketing it as what it was all along... A VSTi player with groove and arranger (albeit clunky) capabilities, but no intrinsic content of any value. If the MS had truly been what arranger players wanted, they would have bought it in droves.

I'm pretty sure I could cobble a bunch of vintage analog modular synths together, work out some sophisticated sequencing voltage voodoo, and create something that COULD, if you had all day, maybe make something interesting musically that you could get to follow chords played a bit. But I'm not insane enough to try and market it as an 'arranger' to the whole arranger world... Spending an entire DAY to make one piece of music that wouldn't rival a T3 (unless you were going for Kraftwerk!) and would never sound as good doing a foxtrot wouldn't strike me as a particularly good investment of my time and money.

I'm sorry, but you nailed it, for me. You said YOU wouldn't be able to take the time to program the hundreds of styles you might need as a gigging pro (or even a well rounded amateur). And I'm sorry, but I don't think you would want to spend the time making hundreds of translations, either. Especially once you got to hear how poorly they fare when compared to their originals...

Come to think of it, you have an Oasys AND a PA, don't you..? Now SURELY, you ought to be able to translate all the PA's styles over to the Oasys, and build Karma setups that could do much of what the styles do. But your not crazy enough to do that, when you already have something that does the job MUCH better. THAT'S really the point I've been trying to make. Sure, you COULD use a Swiss Army knife as a hammer. But why would you, if you already had a hammer?

And use that Swiss Army knife as a hammer for very long, and you'll be WISHING you never gave up your hammer.