Originally posted by squeak_D:
It would be great to find a full blown synth that had an arranger function as well.. That would be the best of both worlds... 
Squeak
Squeak you might want to check out the new Roland Fantom S. Although the reviews over at Harmony Central are mixed, (some people don't like it, some people do), I heard it in person and it sounded pretty decent to me. The nice thing about it is it is a Full Blown Synth Workstation. Sampling, Sequencer, Expansion Bays, etc., and it is able to make Loop based sounds that in my estimation sound very similar to the Style Accompaniment on the PSR Keyboards. But instead of just 8 tracks on the PSR 2000, for instance, for Style Accompaniment, the Roland Fantom S can have up to 16 different sounds playing at the same time, all loop based. You have to realise that all Style Accompaniment on the PSR Arrangers or any other Arranger, is just sound loops with some variations, breaks, fills, etc. A Keyboard Wiz at GC demonstrated the Fantom S to me and it sounded essentially the same as my PSR 2000 Style Accompaniment sounds, ie., rich full bodied sampled sounds playing in realtime and with the Keyboardist having the ability to play right along with them. The neat thing about the Fantom S is the Sample Loops you can create are basically unlimited in Variation, Style, Rhythm and Expressiveness. As a comparison the Yamaha Motif can only use 4 sounds at a time. I owned a Motif 7 for a short while but I hadn't explored the Sampler capabilities at all by the time I returned it. The Keyboard Wiz at GC told me the Motif was only able to use 4 Sampled sounds at a time as compared to the Fantom S's 16 Sampled sounds at a time. His demonstration was quite convincing. It sounded excellent. On a side note the Fantom S has only 64 Note Polyphony and the SRX Epansion Cards that they have for it do not increase the Polyphony at all. But maybe they will make one in the future that will increase the Polyphony much the same way as Yamaha made one for the 9000Pro to increase its Polyphony. The Fantom S has 64 Megs of WAV ROM and also 32 Megs Sampler RAM expandable to "288" Megabytes, the largest of any Workstation on the Market.
Best regards,
Mike