Hi Bob,

The best sounds typically are obtained easily by buying 3rd party CD Roms. The big question is which one(s)? Yes, it is possible to get high quality sounds, it takes some searching and special programming in certain cases.

If you're looking for a good piano (sampled) it is going to be *very* tough. Decent standup bass and rhythm guitar (I'm assuming it's like a clean, jazz guitar) are pretty easy to get with an ESI-32 or any decent sampler. However, sampled pianos are tough. I've tried a few piano sample CD's from a friend and have not been satisfied. The pianos with low memory requirements (8 MB or less) just don't sound good all the way up the keyboard. Others require massive amounts of memory and I haven't had that at my disposal. I've been able to try piano samples at "f" and "mf" and "p" but not combine them together for a playable experience. I'm not even a piano player so if you are, you may be even more picky than I am.

I'm sure that there are some CD's out there but I'm not going to spend $200-300 a pop until I find the one I want. You can't really try them out in the store either. You may be better off with something like a Yamaha P-200 for piano and use the ESI-32 for the other sonds you're looking for. While the P-200 is not perfect, it is decent. It is also not the strongest controller out there but you'll be able to split the keyboard so that you can do piano or guitar on the top part of the split and standup bass on the bottom.

If you want to add big band sounds to your sampler (ie saxes, trumpets, bones, etc in addition to bass, piano, guitar), you may find that you'll need quite a bit more than just the ESI-32. Realistic horns take good samples with good programming as well as good sequencing techniques. Unfortunately good samples take up lots of memory as well as polyphony. You may find that you need 3 or 4 separate samplers. It depends on how picky you actually are.

HTH,
Fernando