Two more (why am I limited to only two per post?)

Keep going...

Finally...

BTW, I'm curious as to why some have no fills... how the fills connect the different Variations, how it all flows together is as important as the basic sound.

And particularly with audio styles, there's lots of opportunity for one audio file to not transition smoothly to the next one (whether it's the recording, or the hardware's fault). For one thing, how do you get crashes on the 'one'? Are they always MIDI crashes on the very last tick of the fill (like MIDI styles do), or is there a way for the tail end of the fill to ring on, while the audio engine plays the beginning of the next audio file at the same time?

Well this has been really interesting, thanks for everyone taking the time to do this.

I have been VERY surprised with the results. Putting the Audya aside, I expected to like the Korg best, but it wasn't that simple:

Roland.
The BK7 was the biggest surprise for me. The drum kits are indeed excellent (except the brushes which are the worst of the bunch), the big problem is with the patterns themselves, often they are unnatural and lumpy, sometimes the percussion instruments used are totally random and would not be played that way in real life. If Roland were to use real drummers to play the drum parts of the Midi style (using a Midi Drum kit) it would make a huge difference. The BK5 didn't sound quite as good as the BK7, perhaps this was the recording, not sure. Diki's recordings were very good quality, and at 320kbps there is almost no audible compression.

Korg PA3X
The Korg patterns are better than the Roland ...although many are obviously programmed much slower as the tom runs are just silly in places! Many are still too jerky though and actually sound like something I might do if I were programming a style (I am not very good and my styles sound too mechanical..like a walking Robot)! The percussion instrument samples are good, but not quite as good as Roland's BK7, but the brushes are far superior to the Roland and are the best Midi brushes I have heard. The Crashes...they are all over the place, lots of different pitches and all over the stereo image which is odd sounding

Yamaha
The Midi Drum instruments are the least impressive of the bunch (Maybe the Tyros is better?) and the drum patterns are quite messy. Again....why are Yamaha not using drummers to play the drum parts instead of keyboard players? The Audio drums sound much better than the Midi drums, but the patterns are not great and I am not convinced these are 100% real drummers - sounds like an Audio recording of a Midi Drum style mixed in with some real Audio which is a little weird.

Obviously we all have different benchmarks, and I am glad we have the choice of all these different instruments. Although I couldn't go back to midi styles, I would not want any of these manufacturers to stop... or worse disappear. Its bad enough that Gem and Technics have gone it would be a disaster if we lost another.

Is anyone here a drummer, I would be interested to know what they think?

Thank you for posting all those Diki - very nicely done.

To answer your question I will record some styles and add fills so you can hear how the Audya handles the transitions between loops. you are right, often the Audya will use a crash or similar.

To my aging ears, they all sounded pretty good, not a lot of difference between them, some, particularly the BK7 latin styles, sounded somewhat thin and too much reverb, but overall, there wasn't sufficient difference to make me jump up and down and look for another keyboard because of what I just heard. As for what the audience hears, they could probably care less.

Thanks to everyone that took the time to post,

Gary

Id like to hear a few G70 drum patterns also in this mix to compare...Diki,Fran,Cass?

They all sound great - but I HATE, HATE, HATE it when swing patterns have "Congas" or "Bongos" in the style!!!! GRRRrrrrrrrrr.
My Korg is famous for that - I have to edit all that junk out - swing bands don't have conga players...or claves ... or even tambourines. That's a real buzz kill for the groove.

I think my original point still stands. Yes, there are slight differences between manufacturers, and yes, overall, audio recordings sound a bit better.

BUT.... only a bit!

And what you lose is EVERYTHING. Not only the ability to edit the pattern, but also to easily make your own, or 'lift' a great set of patterns from an SMF. When time permits, I'll post some patterns from the BK or G70 and then apply a 'Cover tools' preset to them, which changes the kit entirely (it can change the style entirely, too!). It is a piece of cake to take pop patterns, and make them into brush patterns, or Rock patterns and make them techno, whatever... This is something you just can't do to audio.

BTW, one of those Latin patterns was 'thin' because there's no kick drum! If you play the full style, the bass plays the tumba...