Good news about the organs. I was looking at the manual, and there's a huge variety of things you can adjust, especially how the percussion works and sounds. A huge improvement over the nerfed VK section in the G70.

George, can you test out how smooth the transitions between different loops are? If you've read my thread on using these to basically deconstruct an audio backing track so you can re-order it like using Markers in a MIDI file, basically, as long as there are no audible hiccups between loops, there shouldn't be any between song segments, too.

BTW, did you notice the disclaimer in the manual that says the processor overhead is fairly high when using MP3's, but low when using AIFF or WAV files? Sounds like it might make sense to use those, or if you only have MP3 versions, convert them to WAV's first. Not a big issue, though, given how large USB sticks are, these days...

Have you got a BK-5/3/7m in stock to do some A/B-ing using the exact same style, see if you hear any audio quality differences? I must admit, all this interest in the BK-9 is a bit of a shock, given the attitude towards the less expensive BK's. Personally, I think my little BK-7m is a gem, and the drums and bass are easily as good as I've heard on other arrangers at three times the price!

I agree, it seems that Roland have finally re-remembered that styles are only as good (to the average player/listener) as they are well balanced and voiced at the factory. It's a tough sell trying to unload one if the styles are not mixed well, even though the user can do it for himself.

BTW, keep an ear open for the BK Session Manager software when it is ready to go. One of it's strong points was a batch processor for Performances, so that, if on some Performances you DO want Bass INV 'on' at the start, you can batch select all the others to have the Bass Inv off, without messing with the ones you do want it on. And a lot of other 'global' things like that.

Last thing, George... can you contact Roland, and put some weight behind the request for them to reintroduce the SMF 'Mark/Jump' feature from the G/E series..? Being able to restructure your SMF's on the fly made a radical improvement to using sequences. It seems a shame that Roland, after finally realizing they made a mistake dropping the Chord Sequencer, have made the exact same damn mistake dropping the Mark/Jump feature!

Sometimes, Roland leave me shaking my head over their ability to find the most useful stuff and axing it from the next generation!