Fran, I am still on a cane but getting around. The good news is there is a whole lot less pain. It is the first break in pain during the last 3 years. It will be nice once I can again resume normal activities after about 3 months.

It looks like Fran is getting closer and closer to a software based system. Who would have thought?

Bernie Kontakt is considered by many to be the top of the line sampler. There are some issues with it but NI is hard at work to resolve them. There are other good samplers as well, GigaStudio, etc. So it is a matter of checking out the various samplers and how you may wish to use them. I use two:

Kontakt for lead or melody voices
Bandstand for my auto accompaniment

If you can go with a little lower quality of sound then you could use one sampler for both lead and auto accompaniment. I say this since for auto accompaniment you need a sampler which quickly loads instruments but at the expense of slightly lower quality of sound. It needs to quickly respond to program and effect changes.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 03-06-2006).]