Yeah, it's a real shame that Tony hasn't bothered to be as effusive in his praise of the Audya on THIS forum as much as he was determined to bash it while he had his (mostly self-inflicted) problems a while back. After dominating this forum bashing it incessantly, he ONLY posts his positive comments somewhere else. It unbalances the coverage, IMO.

I remember, after trashing the Audya for his button problem, after he actually got around to doing what some of us had suggested for AGES (and he had dismissed as not the answer) and it was finally fixed, he never even BOTHERED to post here saying it was fixed, and how he got it fixed. Now, after slamming it relentlessly for months, he chooses to post all his praise of it on the Ketron forum only. So those trolling this forum for information only have the bad stuff to read.

It's just like the newspapers... slander a guy on page one, and print the retraction on page eleven, in with the unread articles...

As to the Audya issue, as with most arrangers, I honestly think most people get their likes and dislikes of an arranger FAR more from the ROM styles than they do from any technical aspects of the OS itself. Those that primarily play Latin music are Ketron's most fervent fans. Then those that REALLY want that 'live' sound are the next bunch that admire it... But Korg and Roland (if you discount the guitars in Roland's case) are not THAT far behind it, especially if you voice them right and let the drums be as upfront as Ketron's usually are mixed. And they can be had FAR cheaper than the Audya.

But OS4 has introduced MANY quite important features, some of which, yes, SHOULD have come out in OS1 but some of which are quite new and beyond what was initially announced, so it's fair to say that, although the Audya IS a 'work in progress', it's no more a work in progress than say the PA2Xpro, which has been updated to include new features like DNC, but nobody is bitching that that SHOULD have been invcluded in OS1

Let us not forget that Yamaha have a sampler, too, on the T3, but it has next to NO editing, and NO import of any format whatsoever other than its' own (multisample import, that is), and AFAIK, can't even record samples using its' own hardware. So give the Audya a break... for an arranger, its' extra features are pretty much on a par for most arrangers save perhaps the PA2Xpro. And some of them are FAR in advance of Korg's, who still suffer from a paltry three fills, and gets a much bigger break about it than its' users are prepared to give the Audya...

To be honest, for every feature missing from an Audya (some of which are pretty irrelevant, IMO, like a full onboard sequencer - no-one doing SERIOUS sequencing is working in the box, these days), it has two or three that nothing else has. Not bad, really!

But, if you bother to listen to all the demos available for each arranger, most people's opinion of them still boils down to whether you like the styles or not, and what each of us is looking for in that department varies radically... so it's unsurprising our opinions of the same arranger vary radically, too.