For those that don't grasp the concept of a soft synth that is not only comprehensive in sounds and features, but also can use styles and sounds from several manufacturers, I can see that it may seem daunting. The truth of the matter is that I bought Dan's program years ago in it's infancy, and he has been building on it ever since. Check out Dan's forum to find out what hundreds of users think before dismissing it as trash.

Bernie

Thank you Bachus,
must admit it hadn't really occurred to me my cd/DVD roms probably would fail too, eventually.
Have got some of the files on USB sticks, but probably not all of them. Never thought I'd get to use the KN files again ( gave up trying to convert them with EMC ) so never really gave them much thought till now.
So thank you, I''ll backup those disks.

Yes, I was one of those heartbroken people. I had about 300 floppy disks with all my styles safely stored away, ( back in 2000). Took a couple of years off ( keyboard free zone)
along came kn7000, out came the disks. More than half were corrupted. Some totally useless , dome only partially. Fortunately my disks were backed up at least 2 to 3 times , so between them I managed to save most of the files, A composer file from one disk and the matching sounds from another. Nightmare. Took weeks.

So, point taken.

My current keyboard files, I do numerous duplicates on seperate use sticks and hard drives. I actually had a 3 month old USB hard drive fail. Not impressed.

Thanks Bavhus.

rikki
I learned the hard way. After I lost my hard drive due to mechanical errors, I wound up buying a 4 Terabyte internal and a 4 Terabyte external and now backup my internal to the external daily..........

Ron

Hi Roger , you have cheered me up !! I thought I was the only one who could not make much sense of it all

John C.

Hi Guys
Sorry, it's probably me. In my enthusiasm for getting access to technics styles again, I probably complicated things.

Reason I initially bought varranger was, I had a beautiful old top of the line Yamaha midi piano, but it didn't have arranger functions, it's just a straight piano.
Selling it, would have been difficult and would not have gotten much for it anyway.
I wanted arranger functions, so I midied my keyboards to it, It's pretty difficult to press variation buttons etc on a keyboard unless I had the keyboard sitting on top of the piano.
Very messy. Quickly gave up on that idea.

So I looked into software arrangers. Started off with One Man Band which allowed me to play PSR styles.

Then Dan mentioned he was developing vArranger, which would play Ketron styles. I had previously owned a Ketron sd1 , so thought great, might be worth a look at.

I had my piano midied to a laptop which ran varranger software (basically the operating system , where I loaded the styles, chose the sounds, chose the fills variations etc)
I also had a little Ketron sd2 sound module to supply the sounds for the styles and melody.
I ran an audio out from the sd2 to the piano for amplification.

I now had an arranger piano without having some bulky keyboard sitting on top of it.
Just the piano, with laptop and the tiny little sd2 module.

Dan has since added the ability to play Roland , Yamaha and Korg styles , and soon apparently Technics styles.

Ok, so we've probably had Roland , Korg & Ketron styles for our Yamaha keyboards, not the same thing, these styles were converted to Yamaha format ( I 've come across some very mixed results) whereas varranger actually loads an original Yamaha or Ketron etc style.

Hopefully the above doesn't make it clear as mud. Haha

Hi Ron ,
That must have been a nightmare.

Hi Roger,
Basically that screen shot is the main page of the software.
It!s sort of the equivalent of the screen on your kn7 ('s, brilliant that you still luv it so much you've got 3 )

You pick your sounds , styles , variations etc on this screen.

Sort of like having an arranger keyboard module inside your laptop and you connect an external keybed , or accordion , plus a speaker system .
And your not limited to it playing styles from one manufacturer, currently it plays all 4.

Midi things together....aaaah.
Trying to midi my KN7000 to a Korg micro arranger....hopeless.
No - on the home page of a web site you clearly explain what the thing you are selling does and how it does it. Otherwise numpties like me just walk away.
Thanks Rikki for doing what the guy that runs the business should have done.

Despite "That Guy" (his name is Dan) not having the best website... Or sharing much information about future development and new patches..


"That Guy" allways answers all user questions in a day when asked on the Varranger forums. "That Guy" is definately not a webhoster, but "That Guy" is definately a great programmer that keeps adding new feautures to the Varranger while updates are free, and on top of that gives great service to his customers.


Its just a small one man company, in France, so the main website is in French... did you try to read that? This man puts his effort in creating a better product, and not in advertising it, and thats something i can really really admire... and in the end, a good product will seel itselves even witouth a great website to advertise it.

I wish the main companies would put more money in development and less in expensive websites and advertisements.

]Thanks for your help Rikki , As you know I've always been a technics boy !! gigged 20 plus years with the smac1200 module and my midi accordion !I owned 2 kn7000 keyboards piles of software ,planned to gig with the kn7000 but all too heavy once put into a flight case etc . a few yrs ago a friend converted a psr3000 keyboard into a sort of module by removing keys and speakers and cutting the unit down in size and weight and putting into a flight case c/w with my musictech midi receiver and also sienhieser mic receiver .all I have to do at a gig is plug in the power lead and connect the speaker leads to speakers and I'm away performing with my midi accordion .

Really reliable easy to use ,with good sounds and styles .

So using the Varranger and being able to use styles from Yamaha range (I assume it will play Tyros 5 ?)including ethereal sounds/styles ?)and also all the roland ,korg and TECNICS styles is of great interest to me .

I notice that a number of you list the V Arranger on your list of musical instruments owned ,

Is there anyone on the forum that actually does live gigs with the V arranger .

if so please tell us what you are using .

please note I'm really interested in this concept in seems to have great potential

As I would need something quick and user friendly and also rock solid and reliable