I believe it truly is a step in the right direction (although more on that later)... unfortunately, not a long enough step to appease most players, I fear. I can understand Ketron's desire to expand their whole audio loop concept to include musical loops, but surely SOMEBODY at Ketron spoke up and said that, if the system can't handle all the basic chords (and by basic, I don't mean just major and minor!), it might be better to wait until it COULD..?

Ketron's main mistake, I guess, was getting ahead of themselves, announcing the imminent arrival YEARS before delivery, and announcing it's capabilities (in fact exaggerating them - initially, this this was supposed to do audio loops on several parts at the same time) before they even knew it could do them at all.

Obviously, they have run into the wall some of us talked about. Even if the technical hurdles were overcome, the artistic one of producing the sheer quantity of loops to pull this feat off are formidable. Not to mention that an arranger, as a performing tool, is required to do vastly different musics from all over the world. Supplying audio loops for all those different needs, at an affordable price never seemed likely, and a good supply of what is needed simply is NOT available from third party loop jockeys, who rarely ever are even close to comprehensive in their selection of chord types and tempi...

This is all well and good when you are making music that CAN be shaped and directed by the loops available (hiphop, anyone? ), but arranger players tend to use their arrangers to play songs already composed, whereupon, if a critical chord type is missing, you are boned

Sadly, they WERE onto a very good thing. The use of audio loops for drum parts doesn't need anywhere NEAR the computer power to use in an arranger, not needing transposition or different chord types to function. Perhaps if the Audya had merely expanded on that, with audio loops for each and every style, and a vast and expanding (and easy to produce) selection of styles, and had given up on the guitar stuff until streaming technology was mature enough to at least play all the main chord types, this might have been a more timely product (and in today's economic climate, that would have made it more profitable) that would STILL have blown the competition away.

I guess we will never know...

In the meantime, I hope other manufacturers don't go down this path. I honestly DO think that Korg, Yamaha and to a lesser extent Roland (who have a GREAT Guitar Mode, but it isn't integrated with style mode yet) are on the right path to better guitar emulation without the limitations that loops force on you. Mega Voice technology, especially the new T3 NTT's can sound very realistic, and Korg's Guitar Mode is very sophisticated, needing only perhaps some better guitar sample sets to rival, and maybe surpass Yamaha...

Will it better an audio loop for unrivaled realism? Perhaps not for a while, but it has NONE of the audio loop's shortcomings. You can still easily change an acoustic picking pattern to an electric pattern, or steel string into nylon, by a simple PC#. You can edit the picking pattern or strumming accents a LOT easier than the audio loop. You can edit the amount of distortion on the guitar track by using a clean sample into an amp sim.

Hopefully, now that Audya have shown how difficult it is to pull off this stunt, this will put a halt to 'me too' requests from Y, K & R's users, and go back to encouraging them down the path they have already started. I truly believe it the correct one.

And, I'm sorry, but after using BFD, EZDrummer, Groove Agent and the like for a while, I must confess that even using audio for drum loops is IMO the wrong path. Yes, once again you get the greatest immediate realism with the audio, but again at the cost of ANY customization ability. I have heard stuff coming from EZDrummer, and BFD that was indistinguishable from live drumming, but completely controllable.

Just as RAM and ROM prices hit an all time low, surely it makes sense to leverage existing technologies, and simply up the drum sample sizes to the GB size (OK even a few hundred MB is enough!) with more velocity splits and LH, RH alternation, and achieve the same degree of realism that loops provide (the patterns can still be played by drummers on MIDI kits) with NONE of their shortcomings?

OK, pretty soon, Dom is going to chime in and say yes, you can do all that on the MS. And indeed you can. But kudos to Ketron for at least realizing that the vast majority of the arranger market want those loops, kits, and the like actually in the arranger when they buy it... perhaps one day he will 'get it'.

I will be first in line when he does!