To be honest, apart from the audio loops, so far I'm not really hearing anything in the voices themselves that is much of a leap forward from current arrangers. And I have to confess, I still believe that Yamaha still has a HUGE advantage over the Audya with their SA2 voices. Not to mention Mega Voice sounds for styles.

Thing is, when you are listening to those Audya styles, you are hearing a REAL drummer and guitarist, mostly. And that goes a LONG way to distract you from how ordinary many of the other sounds are. The styles ARE very well programmed, very usable the way they are. But that's a darn good thing, because for the drums and guitar, you can't do a damn thing to them, and all the MIDI parts currently are close to uneditable, and likely, unless Ketron have an entirely new style editing OS in the works (highly unlikely, given their penchant for announcing new things YEARS in advance ), to remain as difficult to edit as the SD-1 is/was.

As with most things (especially computer based things), the first of its' kind is usually overpriced, buggy and in need of considerable improvement. I applaud all the early adopters, SOMEONE has to beta test this stuff But I just think I can wait a while, and let the technology mature a bit more. Who knows... this stuff (audio loops) isn't exactly rocket science, Perhaps a company that DOES have a good track record of flexibility and ease of editing will come out with something similar... (hint hint, Fran )