I thought I would take up the offer from Scott to create a new poll with more options and see how it goes....

Dennis, you mention external monitor. Does this really mean built in internal speakers?? I wonder if allowing people 18 options which lets them select everything they want really gives much indication of what is really important to people. I think most people will simply select all the features they want which want really give very clear results. Maybe you should limit it to 8-10.

Hi Nigel,

Thanks...No I did mean an external monitor. So many of the screens available on arrangers are so small, that editing (even if possible via the OS) is a real PITA for what you can actually see.

I also wanted everyone to be able to vote on everything because I believe that WILL give a clear picture of what the "consensus" arranger/workstation would be. Well to those of us who are members of SZ

At the very least, we will get the most favoured options

Although if you could "sticky" this poll, that would be appreciated

Thanks m8,

Dennis

Thanks! I've just stuffed the ballot box by casting my votes.

Gotcha I thought you may have been referring to an audio monitor. So no-one really cares about onboard speakers ? Well apart from Uncle Dave that is. And it was already sticky before you asked lol.

made my choices.....what's most important to me is high quality keys, great sounds, huge arsenal of styles (especially classical and soundtrack) disk streaming sampler, fully editable sequencer, chord track (not chord sequencer), low weight, medium price.

I can live with all the rest.

by 'medium price' I mean not more than £ 1700 -2000

Korg prices their excellent synth workstations almost always at £ 1699, so that's what I'd expect to pay for an excellent instrument.

I'd love to see more innovation on the style engine, things like FULL audio styles and KARMA integration come to my mind
I'd love to see more controllers added, ribbon controller, vector stick, Pad touch sensitive drum pads, D-beam..
I'd love to see full fledged master keyboard functionallity
I'd love to see Articualtion voices or even other synth engines like VL added.. I.e. a KRonos version of an Arranger

My major gripes with the poll list is that there are only things on the list allready available in current arrangers.. While arrangers need (in my opinion) to evolve to the next level with new features..

judging by the polls 76 keys isn't such a big deal.

Looks like it is running even with 61 keys..50/50..that makes it a "BIG" deal..

No longer 50/50 Fran. It seems as 61 has the edge now.

Gary

Maybe I should start voting...

I am also with you, WOW! imagine 8-10" touch screen,VL voices with breath controller,2 gigs User RAM, Solid Disk Drive etc etc,well the other stuff D-beam is old and alot of the others which isn't anything really useful. As I said it many times over and over again, how many times can you re-invent the wheel? We have the technology, but I guess it get's down to the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ that is the bottom line period.

Of course if they put it all out at once the $$$$$$$$$ will run dry for them...they have to bleed us year after year ...little by little with just enough to make you always want more

17 to 14 (at the point I write this) is hardly an overwhelming ratio for either side of the 76/61 debate.

But it proves nothing (other than only 31 people at this forum of hundreds are even bothered to vote).

To be honest, Scott, the only poll that would be of any serious use would be a poll where we are asked to write down five things that AREN'T on any current arranger, along with the cost those features are on other keyboards or studio hardware. Then someone would have to tally them all up, group together the similarities, and average out the estimated cost of inclusion.

It's all well and good to dream, but you have to be practical and pretend that COST actually IS a factor. You could take the world's best WS, and marry it to the world's best arranger, but what you end up with is something that would cost close to what BOTH of those would cost separately.

It's good to dream, but it also good to know WHEN you are dreaming...

Sound quality...and I mean perfection..with real life like articualations that are playable (that maybe a challenge).

We already have tons of playing features.....at least I do on the Korg.

Memory is cheap...all they have to do is spend lots of money to get all the samples to do this and spend lots of time on sound programming.....and let's do more modeling instead of rompling, where it works?
Lee S.

Why has my post about the dedicated sliders been removed. Did I say something wrong?

Sorry about saying my post was removed. I got my Scott Yee polls mixed up.

You got THAT right! I needs me, my speakers, and I don't want to make another trip to the car for them! lol!

While I love the onboard speakers for the office/studio work, I dead plug them when I'm working. I want to hear what the audience hears--exactly what they hear. The keyboard speakers are great, but I discovered a few years ago that the audience is not hearing them--they're hearing what is coming from the PA system.

A classic example of Murphy's Law in this area was when a good friend and fellow entertainer was working a job at an Italian restaurant in Baltimore. He was playing and singing his heart out when all of the sudden, without warning, the PA, a Bose L1 Compact, went silent. Unfortunately, he didn't know it. He was monitoring himself through the keyboard speakers and never noticed the loss of sound.

I was sitting just a few feet from him when it happened, and let him know. He stopped playing, said he was taking a short break, and I fixed the problem. He had a bad 1/4-inch cable coming out of his mixer and going into the Bose. A spare cable quickly solved the problem and he was back from the break in less than 3 minutes.

Just food for thought,

Gary

Donny...61 VS 76 only 2 votes different...a lot of folks want 76 it looks like about half.

So what musician think about this my project
keys will be 61,76,88 from master midi keys
Trosa

Although there are a few other choices....As long as the best sounding arranger as many would say TYROS 4 has 61 keys ......
you can always use a EXTRA controller and get the 76 fix taken care of no problem at all.

That's not a fix for the problem, though. That's a Band-Aid over a deep wound.

So the answer to those that prefer 76 is to carry TWO keyboards around? Please!

And it's already been well documented how many compromises you need to make to integrate that second keyboard. You can't lay it out how you want from within the T4 OS, you have to do quite a lot from the 76 itself, making registration changes a far more complicated procedure.

For people happy with 61's, then yes, this DOES look like the solution to the problem. But only because you don't HAVE the problem! If arrangers generally only came in 49 note models, and you had to jump through these kinds of hoops to add a 61, trust me, you would NOT be considering this 'problem fixed'!

Why a problem as I see it there are many 76 choices out there for all you piano style arranger players...just pick one and play simple eh?..

Huh? PA3, Audya... what else?

If you are talking about CURRENT arrangers.

Hmmmmmm?... G70, SD1, Pa2x, comes to mind.. ;0 oh yeah, but they dont sound like the Tyros4 ....what was I thinking?

And that's real good!
Why should all sound like T4? Each brand it's own caracter to suit different taste and support the different players needs.

That said, T4 is the Yammie Arr who sounds best regarding to drums and bass when play styles that I've heard so far, but still too compressed, polished and CD'ish for my taste. But again, that's my very personal point of view.

Rock on!