Squeak you might want to check out the new Roland Fantom S. Although the reviews over at Harmony Central are mixed, (some people don't like it, some people do), I heard it in person and it sounded pretty decent to me. The nice thing about it is it is a Full Blown Synth Workstation. Sampling, Sequencer, Expansion Bays, etc., and it is able to make Loop based sounds that in my estimation sound very similar to the Style Accompaniment on the PSR Keyboards. But instead of just 8 tracks on the PSR 2000, for instance, for Style Accompaniment, the Roland Fantom S can have up to 16 different sounds playing at the same time, all loop based. You have to realise that all Style Accompaniment on the PSR Arrangers or any other Arranger, is just sound loops with some variations, breaks, fills, etc. A Keyboard Wiz at GC demonstrated the Fantom S to me and it sounded essentially the same as my PSR 2000 Style Accompaniment sounds, ie., rich full bodied sampled sounds playing in realtime and with the Keyboardist having the ability to play right along with them. The neat thing about the Fantom S is the Sample Loops you can create are basically unlimited in Variation, Style, Rhythm and Expressiveness. As a comparison the Yamaha Motif can only use 4 sounds at a time. I owned a Motif 7 for a short while but I hadn't explored the Sampler capabilities at all by the time I returned it. The Keyboard Wiz at GC told me the Motif was only able to use 4 Sampled sounds at a time as compared to the Fantom S's 16 Sampled sounds at a time. His demonstration was quite convincing. It sounded excellent. On a side note the Fantom S has only 64 Note Polyphony and the SRX Epansion Cards that they have for it do not increase the Polyphony at all. But maybe they will make one in the future that will increase the Polyphony much the same way as Yamaha made one for the 9000Pro to increase its Polyphony. The Fantom S has 64 Megs of WAV ROM and also 32 Megs Sampler RAM expandable to "288" Megabytes, the largest of any Workstation on the Market.

Best regards,
Mike

If I'm not mistaken, the Phantom S uses a loop sequencer similar to the XP boards (called RPS). As I remember, this discussion Squeak is continuing stems from an earlier thread where we lamented the absence of a loop seq. on arrangers. To make my point again, synth loop sequencers are good, but require that you plan ahead and probably pre-record your loops. What arrangers need is a looper that will record a style and some chord changes LIVE.

Look what's on the General Discussion and also the Roland JV/XP Forums
http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum1/HTML/002935.html

Cassp,
You're right about the sequencer on the Fantom.. It is based on the XP series (which was a great series of synths too). You're also right about my disappointment with the lack of loop based sequencers on many arrangers. It would be great if there was an arranger that had the auto accomp, but also allowed you to completely bypass that and use a standard 16 track that loops within itself (outside of the style recorder).. Something with a set up like 16 tracks plus (1) pattern track.. This way you can utilize pattern chaining and whip out songs fairly quickly if you don't want to use the auto accomp feature. I do like the auto accomp feature, but at times it's quite limited depending on what you want to do... Good example is I'd never attemp to do any serious dance, techno, hip hop, rap, and r&b on some arrangers.. With these styles you really need a straight loop based 16 track sequencer that allows you to chain patterns and so forth.


Squeak

[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 06-09-2003).]

Hi,
just wondering if the ultimate purpose of having one of these keyboards is to play it live( by that I mean using all the arranger functions and just playing) or to actually use it as a basis for recording songs( ie using the sequencer for creating midifiles )?
I have all 3 and they're all so different.
best wishes
Rikki