The musicall instrument buiseness is a slowly developing high tech buiseness and probably the most conservative of its kind since they allways need to put stabillity above new feautures.
But it is developing slowly little step after little step.

I myselve am hoping that soon arrangers will follow the road shown by Muse and receptor with their uniwire idea.

So what is this Bachus talking about i hear you saying ?

Well it should work like this....imagine a computer with a vst host where many vst's on the computer are connected to. (With a huge amount of controll over these vst's on the PC system)..... Imagine a highspeed (ethernet cable) connection between the arranger and the computer......Imagine a build in interface on the arranger that communicates with the vst host and lets you access these vst instrument patches/performances as if they would be local instruments.......... imagine the vst's sending their audio output back to the Arranger over the highspeed databus(ethernet)....[with very low lattency, as proven possible by Muse receptor]

I think that every keyboardplayer dreams from a pianosound like the Ivory, or a virtuall instrument that lets you shiver like a real Sax. There are so many differnt methods of synthesis that its impossible to fit them inside one arranger keyboard. Well just install a software version of your favourite synth make your setups on the PC and choose these performances as single sounds from your keyboard. ((with the current state of vsti's these performances/sounds would only be able to function as solo instruments as most vst's still have trouble with fast instrument changes))

I think that the company that fixes this for arrangers has a winning product on their hands. They would have both the flexibillity of using vst's almost native on their machine, without the instabillity of a crashing software system live on stage. (Adding vst's to an arranger like Wersi did is very troublesome and shows that 3rd party software on your base system is like playing russian roulette, this is what we all know from our computer experience by now, one bad driver or program can kill the whole system)

This should all offcourse be in addition to the keyboards very own top of the knotch soundsystem, and not instead of it (like lionstracs is trying to do)

What is your take on this?

Yes the devlopment is in "baby steps"... They could easily be doing more, but they have to hold off for the "upgrade models". Can't add all that good technology to one board otherwise sales would be low on the upgrade It's all business and to secure customer return and loyalty.

To a certain extent, there is a definite advantage to a 'closed system' arranger. NOT a workstation (the more open and flexible they are, the better!), but an ARRANGER....

As anyone who has tried to convert a style from one arranger to another (even more recent arrangers from the same manufacturer!) understands, on anything other than the simplest, most bare-bones styles, the sound-set and the style are all of one piece. Without exactly the same sound, with the same velocity curve, same harmonic content, same sample velocity x-over points, same performance 'noises' (Mega-voice patches), it is a LOT of work to adjust even one style to approach how good it sounds on it's original arranger.

An 'open system' arranger only exacerbates those problems, with EVERYBODY that uses it having a different set of VSTi's, drumkits, piano sounds, etc., etc.. So basically, unless the 'open' arranger has a sound-set at least as advanced as the very TOTL 'closed' arranger (which they never do, due to the cost of development, and their attitude of 'but it's OPEN....", as if that is some magic mantra), the styles will NEVER be as focused and detailed as a 'closed' system, that the style developer has a mature and stable set of sounds to write the style on....

There are MANY aspects to an 'open system' keyboard that are of great benefit, but stability of sound-set to help style development is NOT one of them!

thats exactly my idea....

A closed arranger system that takes care of styles and songs,

But with the option to use Vst's as solo instruments...(with an interface on the keyboard...but running on a remote PC system)

I think in that way you can catch the best of 2 worlds...........

Next to that i think the top model arranger should have all options available to a workstation. Including the controllers like sliders some potmeters/knobs and Pads and such.