You might consider the best of both worlds.
http://www.openlabs.com http://www.openlabs.com/products.php http://www.openlabs.com/ekochart.php

Although the eKo is not considered an Arranger at the moment, there is possibly the ability to do that in the future with OS updates, plugins, Hardware upgrades, expansion capabilities, and when other manufacturers start developing add ons and upgrades for the eKo.

Check out that feature list! Quite impressive to say the least.

Also notice that the eKo will be in retail stores as of June 23rd, 2003. This month!!! The big question is: "How does it sound?" The truth is nobody that I know of knows WHAT it sounds like or how good the quality of the voices are. There are no demos on their web site.

I guess we'll soon find out though. I think loop based sounds will be a big part of the eKo but there's no telling for sure until we musicians go in and demo it and find out the facts from fiction. Very interesting concept to say the least this eKo is! Time will tell if it's all it's made up to be and what the makers of it intended it to be.

Best regards,
Mike