Please don't get me wrong..... as I've stated elsewhere, I am NOT on a personal crusade against Lionstracs or Wersi, or anyone. I just wish to acknowledge a basic fact of the arranger world. As anyone who has read my thread about how many of us develop our own styles will see, it's not too many of us. In fact only a couple said they roll their own from scratch, and a few more said they convert and tweak, that's all.

From this, I am forced to come to the conclusion that only a small percentage want to take on the odious task of style development. A huge library of high quality built-in styles, and access to even more online seems to be the main criteria in purchasing, along with sound quality. Only recently, one of the main discussion topics here at SZ was the OOTB 'sound' of varying high-end arrangers, and how much most people disliked the thought that they would need to do ANYTHING other than unpack it and start to play.

THAT is the average arranger user, despite the fact he is willing to plunk down $4k plus for this ability.

I really DO applaud Domenik, and his quest for ever better capabilities, and I DO think that his is the future of keyboards. But I also feel that, in trying to combine the open ended software workstation with the arranger, he is prioritizing big letters WORKSTATION, little letters arranger.....

I, and many others here, already have computer-based VSTi's, and HD recorders, and would love to have something that allowed all that AND a great arranger capability. But not at the cost of a massive increase in workload to get the styles to work well, and develop them myself.

Time will tell, as more of these get into the hands of users, whether the style library that comes with them is as elevated as their price. I anxiously await some detailed reviews, and demos.

One concern I have is, how are the major manufacturers going to respond to their sales being scavenged by these new instruments, that will rely on THEIR copyrighted styles to get sales? Will we start to see encrypted file formats? Will we see a wave of litigation as the majors try to stem the tide powered by their own styles? Will the independent style creators FINALLY get to see some real profits for developing styles for these new creatures? Only time will tell. Maybe they are not concerned, yet, but they will be.... At least if Domenik gets his way!