Ok, we can do just drums, but that's only 30% of the Audya's live style feel. The rest is via the individually recorded guitar and bass parts and then the addition of the midi elements.

I would also like to hear the Yamaha PSR950 in there too. I have a theory they are only two bar patterns because of the tiny size of ROM (Audya is 8 bars per arranger variation = 32 bars of original recording plus fills, breaks, intros and endings per style (totalling around 45 bars of original recordings per style - that means you wont even hear one repeated rim shot in those 45 bars)

I think the Audya has around 600 Audio Styles now with something like 8gb of Audio Drum loops.

Look, we get it... loads of audio stuff in an Audya! Not just the drums. But if you'd notice, this was originally an S950 thread, about the audio DRUMS, so it seems unfair to start adding a bunch of other stuff you KNOW no other arranger can do...

You might also have noticed how poorly I compared the S950 to the Audya's, simply because of how FEW audio styles it has compared to the total it comes with. And about how you couldn't, without great difficulty, load any extra ones. All points that show the Audya off to great advantage. Mind you, at nearly double the price of an S950, you should EXPECT great advantage.

But, in fairness, this being Yamaha's very first foray into audio drums, it compares far closer to the SD-1, which was Ketron's first audio drums arranger (I think... perhaps there was an earlier one?) which, at the time of release, could ONLY do audio drums (and once again, jacking new patterns in was not simple at all). And overall, with Yamaha's excellent SA voices and sophisticated guitar sounds and voices, an SD-1/S950 comparison is hardly a blowout for Ketron!

Anyway, my entire point in this thread has not been that audio drums, taken alone, aren't superior to MIDI drums, but that their disadvantages, measured against how CLOSE you can get with the best of today's arranger's MIDI kits (and how even CLOSER you can get with the best of today's VSTi MIDI kits) make them quite the dead end for arrangers, and as arrangers gradually add better and better MIDI kits (if not distracted, like Yamaha seem to have been) even more the dead end.

In many ways, of the audio drums style parts, and the ability to easily play .wav's with the multipad system, I think the multipad ability, so you can add 'breakbeat' and electronica beats to regular drumming (which is the core of today's modern rhythm sound) is by far the more useful function, particularly as Yamaha have made it easy to add your own beats, unlike the style drums.