I read what everyone wrote here and......thanks for the input....you gave me a lot to think about that I hadn't previously considered.

I guess I should have said, though, that the sound system thoughts were for doing jobs with lots of stage area, lots of time to set up, and (hopefully) lots of money to be made...shows, Festivals, demonstrations, summer fairs, DisneyWorld type locations, etc.

I've been thinking for a while now about this as I'm watching ordinary gigs becoming almost non-existent overnight and I'm thinking it's time to reinvent myself.

It's in the planning stages now (stage shows), but, to be honest, it's been in the planning stages for a few years now. Still, I'd love to hear (before I get too old to be carrying equipment around) what can be done sonic-wise with the new big three TOTL arrangers, and maybe that will "jump-start" me into doing something with my ideas.

You hear a lot of good demos with a lot of fancy players playing a lot of fancy music but you don't hear examples of what these keyboards sound like through gargantuan sound systems. Personally, I'd like to run my PA3x through Deep Purple's setup and hear what it can sound like at it's best.

As for the separate "outs," I wanted to "out" each note of the percussion instruments into a separate channel on maybe a 16 channel mixer and EQ each of them......particularly to clean up the bass, snare, cymbals, and cowbells....I have a fetish for cowbells. But I'm not even sure you can separate the sounds on the percussion track. I never really looked into it.

I think also, that if you're looking to sound like a band, in addition to good "punch" in your sound, you also need to make up a lot of drum patterns and a lot of "fills" for each genre so that it doesn't get monotonous to the listener and keep switching between them in your song maybe every 2-4 measures. The one thing I notice the most on OMB players is they tend to leave the same style running and use very little "fills." I watch drummers play now, and I see how you don't realize how much the drummer is doing in the background to fill out a song by complementing the lead player/vocalist. Good arranger playing requires that kind of versatility, though you could easily wear down your fingertips by pressing tabs and going through style variations and fills a few hundred times per song!

Also the bass. I used to think a bass is a bass is a bass. As I listen now, I realize that the bass player is the one who defines the song and makes it come alive. How could you play Motown without a great bass line? Another "must do" to sound like a band!

Unfortunately now, I'm more of a player than a technician. I wish I had as much tech knowledge as you guys have. There's no room for just a "player," you also have to have a good knowledge of the proper reproduction of your "playing."

As I think about all the info on this thread, I'm reminded of what Frank at AudioWorks said to me when I bought my PA3x. "There is so much you can do with this board, that you have to keep remembering to ask yourself is what you're working on presently (with the keyboard) going to be worth the end result....i.e. is the "end" worth the "means?" Will anyone really notice or care these "non-listener" days that you EQ'd the drums for max sound quality? Or you panned each instrument? Or you programmed just the right amount of vibrato at a 2 second delay into your violin patch? I don't think so.

But...at the end of the day. I'd still love to just hear someone playing a TOTL arranger on maybe even Springsteen's setup. I certainly could use the motivation.

Mark