Interesting, Dom... I was just under the impression that everyone doing DJ style production was primarily using either Live, or workstation products like MotifXS.

Sadly, you won't find many here that are much into this loop-based electronica. Primarily, arranger players tend towards the older styles, with more complexity in the chord choices and instrument authenticity, than in this DJ-like production. Perhaps there IS a new generation of musicians willing to try DJ-ing on an arranger rather than a laptop or WS, but I doubt you will find them here...

As you said in your first sentence, Dom, MIDI will always (at least for the foreseeable future) have the edge when it comes to the choices in different chord types it is capable of playing back. However, I am not so sure that audio quality is of such a high priority. Witness how important mp3 playback is becoming. Hardly the sign of a concern for audio quality. In fact, I can't remember the last post (other than yours) that made any mention whatsoever about the quality of D/A converters in our arrangers, or what sample rate and depth the final output is.

But we ARE concerned with how authentic the sounds are, and how well they respond to OUR chord input. You know, the whole 'arranger' thing... I often feel there is a chasm between what the arranger makers THINK is important, and what the PLAYERS do. We want to sit down, pick any style, play ANY chord, and have the arranger play back an accompaniment that sounds like real players are playing what WE want them to play (not what someone else recorded), and we want the ability to change what we DON'T LIKE. You can't change the internal elements of a loop. You can't add chord types to a pre-recorded set of loops. You can't take a drum groove recorded on a Gretsch kit, and play it on a Pearl.

You can do ALL of these things with MIDI, and it only takes higher quality sample sets to make them virtually as realistic as un-editable loops. Add in more realistic lookup tables for each kind of instrument, and legato/staccato triggering systems like SA voices, voice-leading technology like Roland's Adaptive Chording, that avoids chord 'jumps' and just changes inversions with minimal 'jumping', and you have something that is FAR more realistic than simple, static, take it or leave it audio loops.

Perhaps there IS a market for an arranger DJ product, although a laptop and Live is FAR less expensive (and more controllable), but I also think this is the wrong place to look...

Personally, I know I don't need this in an arranger, at least, nowhere NEAR as much as I need better sounds, and better, more authentic behavior of the sounds in a style.
And, of course, just like 99% of all arranger players, I don't want to have to think about any of this stuff. I don't want to program it myself, I don't want to do anything more than call up the style, and everything just WORK...

Perhaps dismaying to an engineer, but I believe that the 99% figure is about right... At most, only 1% of the market wants to deal with Linux wrappers, streaming issues, and tailoring large loop libraries for DJ-ing. The rest of us want an ARRANGER... Just like we've got, only better.

Not something more akin to a laptop and Live.

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 01-21-2008).]