I tried Banstand for a very little while yesterday, before recording the midi file I sent, but I was really expected it to sound better out of the box.

What I wanted it to be, was a superior sounding engine, ready to accept what the ancient Casio is sending through the MIDI out, meaning melody in 1 or 2 tracks, (maybe 4 if I layer 2 souds LH and 2 in RH, very seldom used) and the accompaniment in 5 tracks including drums. Didn't used it as a VST instrument though I should, because the damned Casio sends the bass out 1 octave higher than it should, and it sounds unrealistic.

So, utilising it as an one-stop-shop sound "refresher" is yet to be proved. In addition, I loaded up Roland's HyperCanvas and found it once again, easy to use, versatile and tweakable. Bandstand gives you chorus, reverb, EQ and that's it. Hypercanvas lets you tweak every sound to your heart's content right away, but you have to tie controllers with CC in your external midi contoller to tweak Bandstand sounds.

As for the sound itself, hmmmmm...... never tried SG180 and such, but Hypercanvas does almost the same job, please don't shoot me. Electric Guitars are alive and believable in Hypercanvas, but very tame and electronic sounding in Bandstand. Drums are better in Bandstand, have to look closely in the acoustic guitars to form an opinion. On the other Hand, Hypercanvas sounds work very good together.

As for the future of soft synths, there is a company that makes a "box" that is essentially a PC-in-a-box (Frank pointed out this product once If I remember well). If they can make this box sort of a "fool-proof-black-box-I-don't-care-what's-inside-as-long-as-it sounds-good-and-doesn't-crash", they can sell it as a replacement to the tone modules we (you) have today. Strap it on your controller and go.

Theodore