When people use hardware, James, they tend to bring hardware paradigms to the table. So much is made of how good the MS is, but whenever anything is wrong, suddenly it's the software...

Yu can't have it both ways. Either the MS is a dumb bit of kit that does NOTHING at all, and everything is down to the software (in which case, it becomes a question of whether the hardware is cost effective and needed at all, when MUCH cheaper computers can run the same software), or the OS and associated software IS something to do with the overall instrument, in which case criticizing it for failures past and present is legitimate.

As has been pointed out, do you REALLY think that Dom couldn't have programmed full ON Bass capability into it during the four or five YEARS it was supposed to be an arranger (running on HIS software)? And if not, WHY didn't he do it? It is when ESSENTIAL details get missed so blatantly, like this, that you wonder about whether some of the other things that plague the MS will ever get fixed also, or only those that Dom thinks are important?

It is SO nice and convenient to simply toss off anything he doesn't FEEL like fixing himself on the shoulders of it being someone else's software, but this is the Achilles Heel of the entire 'open' arranger concept. When the entire thing working properly doesn't rest in the hands of ONE team, but in the myriad teams of a myriad of different software entities, often with little regard for how other parts of this mess of worms wants to use THEIR software they designed for THEM... or what schedule they feel like fixing broken parts of the OS (especially when few of them even design with Linux in mind) as things get updated and changed.

Arranger by committee... and none of the committee is talking to anybody else in it.

Integration is the mantra of the arranger. WS's can get away with being far more piecemeal than an arranger. But for an arranger to work, it has to ALL work. Smoothly, easily, integratedly. I'm still not seeing that. You have issues with this, issues with that, issues with something else. But you can't go to ONE place and ask for it all to be fixed. Which you CAN with a closed arranger.

At the moment, live use of VSTi's, especially in an arranger, everything ready to go at the drop of a hat paradigm, is still pretty low on most VSTi designers' list of priorities. There's a lot to be said FOR open keyboards. But I still feel that the open 'arranger' needs a LOT more advancement by softwrae designers at ALL ends of the spectrum. From OS design (Dom and Linux/Wine's dept.), to VSTi design, to style playing design.

Bottom line is, someone calls up and says they need a four hour all arranger (no SMF's) gig from you tomorrow. Do you grab the MS, or do you grab the PA2X? (you can't have BOTH...)

For all the videos, for all the excusing whatever faults it has on this that or the other software developer (but never the MS itself), I bet you grab the Korg...