As are you, James. Difference is, you are still talking about what OUGHT to be possible (but haven't actually tried), and I am talking about what IS possible, at least on any reasonable timeframe.

We have far more in common that you think, James. I DO use VSTi's, I DO use complex WS's as well as arrangers, I am pretty aware of everything you've said. Thing is, you refuse to acknowledge the herculean task of preparing an open keyboard to do the job that any good TOTL arranger can do, OOTB.

When I want to make one off, original productions, I primarily use WS's and VSTi's. But to do the job at a very high level, it takes a LONG time to do anything. Days on each tune, weeks or even months per album. And an album is a paltry ten or so songs. Scale that up to the hundreds of styles you need to be able to cover ALL the bases, and you can understand why no-one is using these things as an gigging arranger, yet.

Fran's sits at home, and never gigs. Dennis's got returned after its' shortcomings were made apparent. We had a guy gigging one from Romania, or somewhere in that vicinity, and nothing he posted impressed in the least. The only decent things I've heard from the MS were one off sequences, and those were few and far between, or some techno loop stuff (some off the MS website) that have no practical use unless you are playing to the DJ crowd...

There isn't ONE person using their MS as a full gigging arranger on this forum, and little on the web other than Serbian type music (whose practitioners don't HAVE a closed arranger as a viable alternative to choose instead).

All I have EVER said to all the 'theoretical' proselytizers on this forum is. first, why don't YOU go and get one, and SHOW us how easy it all is...? Telling us all how it OUGHT to be doable, but you have no experience to make that conclusion other than conjecture is such a cop out. It's amazing how all the people that think an open arranger is the future DON'T have one. And all those that DO have one are using closed arrangers to gig with.

Maybe we ARE at an impasse, James... I truly believe that you have completely ignored the salient points of my posts, too. You haven't refuted anything, merely repeated the same theoretical objections to my position. Me, I'm a practical man. I can do the math. Let's say it takes me two or three days to make a really good translation of a single style. I am talking balls to the wall, WAY better than the original, no cobbled together bull... All the drum nuances remapped to a VSTi (I'm just theoretically imagining there IS a VSTi with a drumkit that CAN map to the original, personally, I ain't heard one yet), all the guitar Mega stuff remapped to alternative switches, yada yada yada...

That means, it's only going to take two or three YEARS to make 300 styles or so (what I need to cover everything I use my G70 for... reggae to swing to alt rock to disco to ballroom to...). Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't got that kind of time

Sure, if you are sitting at home with all the time in the world, doing one offs of original tunes, then yes, the open arranger might be just the tool. But, OTOH, a computer rig for VSTi's and a couple of good closed WS's (with samplers and a TOTL sample library) and a DAW sequencer could do the job just as well. After all, that's basically what YOU have decided to use, for all your stuff. Oasys, computer rig, V-machine as a VSTi host, all the other gear.

But for those of us that play thousands of songs, using hundreds of styles, or those of us that barely can operate our closed arrangers, for those of us that can't write good styles, for those of us that struggle to make translations sound even usable, let alone better than the original, the open arranger is a complete bust.

And sad to say, from everything I've read and heard on this forum, that's basically EVERYBODY. The only people disagreeing with this don't even HAVE one. Those that do (or did) are definitely in that group...

Can we revisit this topic once you have actually taken your own advice, gone out and bought an MS, and can report from actual experience just how easy or impossible this is..? We are just talking in circles until you do...

Sure, maybe I could put a kit car together from all the little bits and pieces in about ten years or so (if you count the time I'd have to learn to be a mechanic, too!). But I've got to drive to the gig TONIGHT... And I don't have the patience for someone that keeps telling me what a great Porsche kit car replica such and such a company make, and how I ought to get one, especially if he hasn't made one himself...