'Arranger' is just a word...

Once you dress up fills and Intros as 'conditional loops', you aren't going to see any objection from the Karma crowd. I mean, here's the start of it... If Steve Kay was so dead set on not having ANY arranger-like functionality, don't you think he would have nixed this idea?

There have been 'conditional' and 'directed' loops for as long as there have been sequencers... it was a feature on Dr. T's decades ago, and exists on many fancy analog step sequencers. After all, an Intro is simply a loop that plays only ONCE and then goes on to another loop. An Ending is a loop that plays ONCE, then stops. A Fill is a loop that starts immediately on button press in sync with the music (rather than waiting for the end of the loop), plays ONCE (or repeats if directed) then goes on to another loop, either hand selected or preset by the loop condition.

None of this is anything that can't be (or hasn't been in the past) used extensively by loop sequencer users.

As usual, the difference between an 'arranger' and a 'loopstation' is going to come down to CONTENT. But at least if the rules of fills and intros etc. are incorporated into the basic OS of the Karma keyboard, then using it in a more conventional arranger sense becomes possible. And it comes without Kay radically changing the direction of his development. Flexibility seems to be what he has always striven for. And if that flexibility includes the basic conditional rules that allow us to use it in an arranger-like fashion (while not restricting its capabilities in any way for those that don't), so much the better.