Squeak I agree with all you have said, and indeed its essentially what I have been saying all long

The bit I DONT agree with is "....All the MS owners are saying these converted styles are great..., Just show how well the converted style sounds on the MS...."

I have NEVER said that or even thought that!!

I have always said the styles and MIDI arranger side of the MS is average.

And to then have some users say , as you quite correctly pointed out, that the XG VST is more than enough and sounds wonderful!!!! Just makes it more absurd.

HOWEVER the Audio arranger side is quite brilliant..No demos yet but soon enough.

Just getting my loop libraries sorted. I haven't touched them for some time, and I am sure some will need updating...

The MS with the Elastique audio engine can change pitch of samples on the fly in real time, with no "chipmunks" either.

In fact a SZ member Magica Alfa has done some demos using partly audio style creation and utilising the many great Giga/Linux sampler sounds...
http://www.esnips.com/doc/c775b069-a794-4bc0-afa7-2e28dab983cd/Pop-1
http://www.esnips.com/doc/152919db-7637-4bb9-a7ea-30ea7a55f470/Style-Funky
http://www.esnips.com/doc/dd35fe8c-73d7-42ab-bbee-ed444edd229e/HOUSE-STYLE

There are some who say the midi styles and arranger are good enough for most people, but these same people are not actually using the MS to play gigs with...maybe just a tad of hypocrisy there I think.

There are some Media Station users happy to admit it does have some issues and to not do so is, hmmmmm , shall I say rather like sticking ones head in the sand.

My ONLY criticism is of the on board MIDI styles and MIDI arranger operation. I suspect being able to edit on a larger screen will make a big difference. But as I have said before I am no longer interested in MIDI styles. Its AUDIO styles for me from now on.

The other two software problems I had are to be fixed.

But in fairness to me the Performance function was advertised to me and TOLD to me BEFORE I bought the MS to be working fully, so maybe people can understand why I get frustrated with the time its taking to fix it!!!!

But Squeak you hit it on the head with your post. Lionstracs should forget about arranger users per se, and concentrate on the WS aspects of this. I would even go so far as to say remove the arranger all together, but leave the Audio Elastique engine and maybe get more into arps instead.

Dennis