When getting Ketron to make the Audya exactly the way HE would like it (as opposed to most of its' users ) is SO much more important?

Thank you for your words, Diki.

Well, if I had an Audya I would probably not feel the need to sample another arranger, because the Audya live drums sound better than 90% of what I have heard, drums-wise, both in Roland and Korg (not to mention Yamaha). In the past I have owned stuff by Ketron (SD1, Midjay) and so I know first-hand how their grooves are different (more natural, and therefore more inspiring to play with).
I own also a G-70 and agree that its drums are full of punch; I have sampled them and also most drumkits fom my Fantom XR and even my Boss DR-880, but then you have to make drumkits with them, which means taking a lot of time to match volumes, panning, crossfades and so on. I find much easier to sample -say- four or eight bars of each variation plus three or four fills (they take one or two bars at most); it's true that this takes up more memory compared with sampling just the drum sounds and then using them to play the converted styles, but the time this process requires just puts me off. I am more a sampling guy, I guess...

I was thinking of buying a Midjay plus because I could pay just 1200 euros for it and then I could sample the live drums tracks, like Rikkisbears wrote, even if the Midjay has a lot of other loops on its hard disk that can be used, for example, to play in sync with an SD5; moreover, the vast majority of these loops are mono, so they would require only 50% of the memory a stereo loop would take, even if they sound less realistic compared with a drumkit properly panned.

In this thread someone (I think it was Nedim) wrote that the Audya is nothing more than a Midjay with a keyboard attached; I really wish that this was true, because 1200 euros is an acceptable price to pay, compared with the 3600 an Audya would require here, even if I could always resell it later, with a minimal loss. But I am afraid that, after having experimented the Audya, I would never have the courage to part with it and for this very reason I was thinking to borrow (or even rent) one.

Anyway, I haven't been playing much as of late due to personal problems, but your words encourage me to try to post something to show what can be done with a keyboard that has a sampler incorporated.

[This message has been edited by Dreamer (edited 09-14-2009).]