Well,
After much study & thought...I made the decision to go with vA2 software arranger and a Ketron SD-1000 sound module. Today I will be setting up the laptop, installing SW, hooking up my MIDI keyboard and waiting for my SD-1000 to ship.

I will be posting my progress here so others may possibly benefit from my experiences.

I'm pretty excited about getting this going.

Lee

Congratulation

What is your MIDI keyboard?

Dan,
I currently have a CME UF70 76 key MIDID keyboard.
Lee

This is exciting cant wait to hear this setup in action Lee good luck!

Congratulations are in order, please keep us informed about your experience with this innovative solution..

Would an existing keyboard such as a Yamaha PSR S950 or Tyros work as a midi keyboard for this?

My understanding is that a person would still need a laptop as processor and sound engine i.e. SD K1000.

Seems that a person should be able to upgrade an existing arranger without changing the housing...especially when it appears that a lot of arranger upgrades are mostly software anyway.

Just curious?

Tx

Yes, any workstation with MIDI out can be used with vA2.
You can use the sounds on the current WS with vA2.
vA2 can play ...Yamaha, Korg, Ketron and Roland styles.
Yes, vA2 is a PC application and that would be needed to run it.
If you added vA2 to your current arranger.....you would use the keyboard as input and the sound engine as output.
AND you can easily add other sound modules or software synthes too.

In most cases the buttons you use to run the arranger will NOT work for vA2 as most arrangers do not send MIDI messages when they are pressed. (That has been a complaint of mine for decades) But an easy thing to do is use a touch screen on the PC...or use a simple thing like Korg Kontrol 2 for the buttons.
There are many possibilities.

Lee

On the bright side for computer based side, steinberg released a asio4all multi access driver

Asio4all, is a pc sound driver co oatible with most all sound devices that makes sure that there is a really low lattency (time between oushing a key and hearing the sound) on PC soundhardware.... On the downside, you could only connect one software package at a time to the sound device....

This is what kept me from buying Varranger so far, because on my DAW, i use ableton for composing and sequencing, and also BiaBox. BiaBox is connected trough Ableton over rewire, Varranger however does not support rewire...


I would be happy if someone could test Varranger with this multiclient Asio4all driver from steinberg...

vArranger is more a live real time arranger, so no need to connect with the DAW.

When you want to compose or sequence, you simply export your vArranger SONG CHORDS to Midifile, and then start working on your DAW, so I don't really see the point of Rewire for vArranger

From what I have seen, the steinberg generic asio has tons of latency

some sound cards allow multi client ASIO drivers

The point is, when on stage, people might want to have both their ableton daw active, espescially when playing modern music at for example weddings..... The things ableton offers in a live situation by far outshine the flexibillity of an arranger... The only thing it cant do, is follow a chordprogression... Ableton is more the a daw, its a brilliant tool in a live situation for arranging music on the fly.... Its pure awesomness...

Anyway, i think its not you who decides what customers want.... But its you who decide what customers get.... Allways keep that in mind, and dont try to tell them what they want and need...

I know what i want, and that its not possible yet.... I want an arranger that can be used as a midi channel plugin in ableton... But thats far beyound what anyone is currently producing...

Reports about the asio4all indeed very much depent on hardware, it allways works but yields various results..