I’ll go out on a limb and say ‘never’!

From what I ve read at Korgforums, the only people happy with their PA5x are people that never had a PA4x! There’s just too much stuff from the 4x that is going to be added back ‘later’. It’s over two YEARS now, still next to nothing added back in. Many core bugs remain, or to be more generous, basic features that have not been implemented well. In the past, most TOTL arrangers had maybe one year of updates to squash the bugs and add the odd new feature in. After that, they were basically finished. Korg is dragging their feet horribly with the pace of polishing the 5x. Too long for anyone that has been in the Korg ecosystem for any length of time.

This is the first Korg arranger that took this long to correct errors and add in promised features. Their next model (if they even bother) is going to be met with massive skepticism from the base.

As to Roland…

Roland have not only left the pro arranger market, but also have moved very strongly towards synth production rather than ROMplers (workstations), which is the core sound engine of every arranger. While an arranger based on synth engines might be interesting, it’s going to alienate most traditional arranger users.

Roland Italy basically designed the arranger software to run the provided Roland Japan sound engines. They also did most of the ROM style creation. So consequently Roland couldn’t offshore arranger creation to China, just manufacturing. It’s the design and voicing that make or break an arranger, and Roland Japan couldn’t cut those costs any further. It’s a dwindling market, unsuitable for most of today’s synth driven music. Time to get out….

They won’t be back unless kids in their droves start using them, and the ROM sounds and styles pretty much guarantee that won’t happen.

The BK9 sound expansion (which made it to the labeling on the front panel) seems to be something abandoned pretty early in development, there are no SRX slots or any other open multi pins inside hinting at future expansion. Somebody I suppose forgot to take the wording off the front panel silkscreening..! On the upside, the BK9’s ROM sounds include many sounds from several SRX cards, and weren’t an expensive upgrade.

There are two or three minor updates that could have transformed the BK9 with little additional development, and justified a BK10. One would be linking the saved chord sequence to the Performance, and the same with linking the .jpg display to the Performance. Integrated sheet music and full lyric display! And a huge selection of audio loops for the Key Audio feature would have made the feature almost as good as a multipad player. It was only the lack of content that doomed the feature…

So close!