Fran,
believe it or not, I have the feeling that when using Bandstand and listening to either:

a) PRO midifiles made from Roland itself, or
b) PRO made, 3rd party midifiles intented for use with Roland equipment (SC series etc, produced in the 90's),

without changing anything, Bandstand sounds better or maybe more acceptable or maybe more "Roland HyperCanvas-like" out of the box, compared to Hypersonic2 which sounds more Yamaha-like.

BUT (in capital letters),
a) you have to give it enough time to load the appropriate instruments before you start to play (about 20-30 seconds for the Honky Tonk midifile you sent me,
b) Pray and hope that there are no program changes halfway in the song, because they need time for the new instrument to load.
c) ther are not many instruments playing at once (which was the case with the Honky Tonk midifile) because it will try to use the hard drive with unpredictable results.

During playback of the Honky Tonk, memory consumption was showing about 120MB, and topping at about 45% processor time. ( all that in 48KHz playback, in 90 KHz it stutters profoundly in my system).

Someone with a better PC than mine, (Athlon 1400+, 768MB RAM, audiophile 24/96, lots of garbage programs inside) may find that Bandstand is behaving differently, but I write about what I see.

Bear in mind that it also has some settings I didn't touch, like an EQ for every channel with presets like "Rock" or "lowpass", and some of them sound good. It also has a very "Hypercanvas" like interface, with the same controls, (tracks are top to bottom instead of left to right, with chorus, reverb and level readily accessible).

Bandstand's GM drums are miles ahead that Hypersonic2's GM drums, although they have some quirks when I use certain Casio Styles. (the maracas or something similarly sounding are unbearably loud, they are louder than the snare drum!). Hypersonic avenges itself when you load other drum kits, but they miss some instruments like congas etc, as another Synthzone member pointed out.

Hypersonic has a very fast engine. It loads things fast, and some of the XXL instuments shown in the photo I provided are very big. It has an enormous selection of instruments like guitars and synths, though lacks in some areas, like woodwinds. Never stuttered, except in case i was trying to load a 30 MB instrument while 5-6 other equally large instruments where playing at the same time, but the wait is nowhere as long as Bandstand's.

What I dream of, is a utility which will take a midifile, and change the instruments automatically to the high quality equivalents of Hypersonic. This would provide excellent results. I think one such utility exists fot the Tyros or am i mistaken?

Ahh, I forgot, I tried to record MA-Audio Key Rig GM version also, it behaved very erraticaly, so I gave up. Sound quality was inferior to both the others according to my ears.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to help.
Theodore

[This message has been edited by trident (edited 05-18-2006).]