Rikki,

15 minutes for the whole conversion process for each style would be my estimate. Doing hundreds of styles would still be very time consuming and boring. But you can select the 40 or 50 that you really like and do a few whenever you have some spare time. You do loose a little of the character of the original arranger. E.g. BIAB claims that, because it can predict the chords and variations that are coming (it's non-real-time), it adjusts the accompaniment to that. But to me it sounds just as fine as I play it in real time with OMB. That's because the styles aren't designed for a particular synth but are full GM compatible. They have just a few basic instruments, mainly drums, bass piano. The biggest problem with style conversions is that you mostly don't have the original synth they where designed for. And the more sophisticated that synth is the worse it will sound on a not compatible synth. Styles from old GM keyboards often sound best after conversion.

About the inavailabillity of good and affordable commercial styles. A lot of the commercial styles are not designed for a particular synth but are plain vanilla GM styles. That way they can be converted and sold for any arranger. Making styles for a particular synth would mean a smaller market an therefor higher prices. Keyboard manufacturers aren't that interested in selling styles as software. Selling styles and new sounds in the form of a new arranger keyboard is in fact a very extreme but succesfull way to protect their software from illegal use.

So where are the styles going to come from? First of all everybody could make some themselves. You don't need to start from scratch. Take an extisting style or midifile and add some personal magic. It doesn't take a skilled musician to make styles. You just need an ear for it. And if you can't hear if a change you made is better or worse, then you shouldn't be playing keyboard anyway. Secondly they may come from one-man-companies in stead of big companies. You don't need big companies to produce styles, but at the moment you would need them to reach the public. It would just take time before the public realised that if they need new software and styles they should't go to the music-store but surf the net. The main reason that they don't do that at the moment is the general opinion that the shareware and freeware that you can download is crap (it often is). Anyway I intend to produce some commercial styles for XG keyboards this winter. Others are already doing so and I'm sure there will eventually be some among it that can compete with the built in styles. Mainly because I find these built in styles high quality but very middle-of-the-road. There should be place for styles that are targeted at different musical tastes.

Jos