It's good to hear everybody's different takes on all this.

Personally, I would think that if anyone is looking for a budget arranger, look at what you have to buy to use vArranger software only. For starters, a MIDI controller. And a MIDI controller with a boatload of controls on it, because without these, you are flying blind. Then a decent laptop (in fact, a better than decent one if you want to run a few power hungry VSTi's on it), a decent quality audio interface, a decent MIDI interface (multi-output if you want to split the tracks between a couple of different external modules or existing keyboards) and probably a fast external HD (because things like Giga-Sampler or most of the newer VSTi's are HUGE in size and really need a decent speed HD to load up quickly). Then the VSTi module itself, which can vary from bloody naff sounding free soundfonts to superb TOTL monsters that cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

Cabling to hook it all up, and decent speakers.

No offense, but there are HARDWARE arrangers that can be got for well under $1000 (including s/h versions of many of the last or last-but-one TOTL models) that can sound absolutely brilliant with absolutely ZERO effort.

So far, other than Dennis, most seem to want to run this through some legacy VSTi that barely approaches the quality of an utterly BOTL sound module from 20 years ago! I am amazed! People are GIVING AWAY twenty year old arrangers. Good ones, at that!

For me, I guess, this is the current sticking point. Even budget arrangers like the BK-7m or BK-5, or the Korg Micro-arrangers etc. utterly blow these dinky old Sound Canvas era VSTi's out of the water! And when you add up all the peripherals to run vArranger (if you don't already have them), you are going to end up out of pocket, sounding like you bought an old G600 rather than a new Tyros!

I honestly 'get' vArranger. I think it is the future... But at the moment, I think that the soundsources it plays have a LONG way to go to match hardware reliability and overall quality and especially, QUALITY OF INTEGRATION. An arranger's soundset isn't just a collection of sounds. That what so many often miss. It is a collection of sounds, exquisitely balanced to be almost seamlessly interchangeable.

Change a flute sound to a clarinet sound in an arranger style. Odds are, you won't have to go and alter the volume or brightness. Change a brush kit into a sticks kit, odds are you don't have to go and mess with each drum's individual velocities, or volumes, etc.. Change an acoustic piano into a Rhodes, it's a one button procedure.

We all rely on this every day. We all rely on it working, and it does it so well we don't even THINK about it any more. And we rely on several thousand sounds and drumkits doing it (in most modern arrangers, there are thousands of different sounds, not just 128 GM MIDI Capitol sounds). Until you start working with VSTi's. Then you realize just how much work went into balancing your arranger's soundset!

So, this, more than anything else, is why I am trying to get Dan more interested in leveraging existing modules (I'd LOVE a BK-7m setup file!) and even more importantly, the current crop of TOTL WS's (remember, you budget conscious players out there - most TOTL WS's are FAR less expensive than TOTL arrangers, and have FAR greater capabilities) than in going down what I consider a dead end of VSTi integration before the VSTi exists to make this easy.

We have been LONG envying and talking about WS arp and loop capabilities, how they can sound utterly fresh and contemporary, how things like Karma can add randomized elements to static soundscapes, etc., how they appeal to younger players and many of us older player, but we ALL bitched about how unfriendly they are for producing anything OTHER than strict loop music. The arranger paradigm of Variations, Fills, Intros and Endings, all logically tied together and sync'd so that one flows musically to the next is utterly missing from WS's. Here is the tool to add it...

Please don't turn this into a cheap soundalike of decades old arrangers, Dan. Turn it into the FUTURE, not into the past!