KAOSS is nothing like multipads or clip launching. It’s more of a sort of Karma derivative for note and controller data.

My main issue with real-time tempo and pitch manipulation in hardware arrangers at this time is that they lack the CPU horsepower to do it at the highest level that computers can do it at. It’s pretty easy to make a recording of an arranger transposing a riff down a couple of steps and slowing it down slightly (the hardest thing it can do!), then compare that to a computer using say Melodyne or other high quality pitch and tempo tools. Night and day.

Maybe when arranger CPU’s get a significant boost it’ll be a more useful tool for high quality results. But until then, I still think (as I did during the Audya’s launch) that audio guitar loops aren’t the answer. If you listen to any really high quality VST Guitar Mode, the results are close to indistinguishable from live guitar playing, but with none of a loop collection’s shortcomings… limited chord selection, uneditable patterns, extreme difficulty in making your own custom patterns.

Both virtual acoustic guitars and electrics are now so good in computer form, surely this is the answer rather than limited live loops? The idea that you are supposed to be satisfied with loops only in maj, min and 7th completely misses the point that music uses dims, augs, open 9ths, 7#9’s, sus’s, etc. etc.. Sure, stick to ultra simple songs, that’ll suffice, and impress greatly. But the jarring switch from the loop to a MIDI pattern and samples for anything more than those basic chords defeats the whole concept, IMHO.

Yeah, an SSD and an absolutely huge collection of loops for every possible chord could be done, but it’s a gargantuan endeavor, and that’s just for ONE style. Now, do it for hundreds more!

Let’s take our cues from modern computer production. Drum libraries like BFD are indistinguishable from a real drummer if programmed well, as are guitar mode VSTi’s. And the core behind their patterns is still the MIDI data that arrangers already can play even with this generation of CPU’s. So any chord, any inversion. We are already quite close. Yamaha and Korg both have fairly decent Guitar Modes, not up to computer levels, but close. What they lack is the depth of samples and modeling of the sounds, whether drums or guitars.

Personally, I think this is the way to a real future, not the shortcut of using audio loops with their huge shortcomings when you want to use them for anything other than their limited designed use.

As to clip launching, audio loops, that sort of thing, I really feel hardware arranger design will always trail computers by decades. But the hardware of an arranger can always, even now, be used to control a computer. Yet strangely, arranger manufacturers have almost gone out of their way to deny allowing an arranger’s knobs, sliders, buttons and touchscreen to be fully user defined to control external gear, like a computer.

You put an arranger fully in charge of something like a Mac Mini, wow! I don’t think it’s realistic, quite honestly, that the arranger industry will actually develop computer level drum and guitar VSTi’s, they’ll probably go for the cheapest solution, no matter the shortcomings. But the simplest, cheapest solution is somehow always ignored… Allow an arranger the flexibility to control external gear any way the external gear NEEDS controlling, and the future is already here.

Why are we waiting? 🤔😎🎹