aside from the sound which was already discussed I don't see the advantages of these so called audio styles vs midi styles which you can customize in so many ways....with audio styles you cant edit most of it it either...that alone puts me off as who would want the factory to dictate the sound I prefer?

No advantage, Donny - just an added benefit that sounds good.

Gary

Audio styles is what Audya has...

Yamaha has audion drumstracks in midi styles.. which Wersi has had for over 10 years..

But in the Audya you also have audio basses guitars and more... I dont think the Yamaha deserves the name audio styles..

Bachus, I'm really not sure how the styles were constructed, but they sure sound good.

Gary

Personally I think it's important, especially for the type of music I like (ambient).

I think audio styles are great for Latin styles. There are many subtleties especially within the percussion section that midi still can't reproduce.

I agree.

Gary

I disagree.

http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=42&tab=127
http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=10

That's the tip of the iceberg. MIDI percussion can sound amazing. Now, obviously, no-one expects 28GB of percussion samples. But that (the BFD collection) is an exhaustive collection of almost everything you could ever think of. A basic Percussion kit for a MIDI arranger would be a teeny, tiny fraction of that figure.

Somehow, arrangers seem to find the sample room to put in amazingly detailed piano, Rhodes, guitars, sax's, all of which chew up sample RAM, but drum and percussion kits still get the short end of the (drum)stick!

You don't need audio loops to sound unbelievably realistic any more. In fact, for many years, TBH. Add another 256MB of ROM to the roughly 1GB or so that they already have, and you would have a percussion kit that would fool anyone.

And, of course, just like better drum kits, they would be able to be used on ALL your legacy styles, not just the tiny few that come with the machine. 10% of your styles (far fewer, if we are simply talking Latin styles) doesn't really START to fulfill the need.

KITS, not loops. That is the answer.

No... that's just your answer.
Stop talking like you were the Oracle from Delphi because you are not... don't you see how boring this way of relating to the others becomes after a while?

Styles differ for each player and I think Yamaha has done a fine job of offering a nice variety for all players.
Some complain of not enough new styles but I find some of the
previous style excellent and I am glad they did not delete
them. It boils down to "different strokes for different folks.
Lloyd