What everyone tends to forget about closed keyboards is that they are an amazingly INTEGRATED system. People of at least James' skill level have worked for months, years even, to provide you with a soundset that is ALREADY balanced, loops, arps and styles that are ALREADY balanced, and an OS that is ALREADY mature and (relatively) bug free.

All I have been trying to say is that, unless YOU have the same skills that these dedicated TOTL professional programmers and technicians (and unbelievably great musicians) do, what on EARTH makes you think that YOU can do something that takes a team of top pros years to get right?

Yes, blah blah blah... You can SAY how 'open' keyboards have the 'potential' to sound FAR better than a closed system. But every last proponent of them plays down, dismisses or outright ignores the FACT that to achieve this 'potential', you need to already BE one of those TOTL programmers. Every MS demo has only made this fact painfully obvious. Jeez, doesn't anyone even LISTEN to the music we make here at SZ? What on earth gives anyone the impression that we have ANYONE here with those skills, let alone a whole forum of them?

This is simply like someone going onto a forum of Corvette owners, and telling them that, IF they could build a car from scratch, they MIGHT be able to drive faster and better... And there MIGHT be one or two people there that possibly COULD build that car (most of them just drive!), but both of them would realize that it would be an enormous effort to build that car from scratch, and there would be NO guarantee that it even WOULD go better than their Corvette once they put all that time in...

This is what the 'open' fanboys always ignore. We are ALREADY driving Corvettes (figuratively ). You can make some pretty amazing music on a PA2X, T3, Audya and G70 (yes, even that - ask my clients!). Why would you put yourself in a position that you had to work for months, years even, to achieve something you can already do straight OOTB with a T3? The whole POINT of an arranger is convenience. If you are doing full on TOTL pro music production, you aren't doing it on an arranger, anyway. And, if you are doing TOTL computer production, you aren't going to risk your client base on an unproven product from a flakey company that failed to make an open arranger that impressed anybody...

Want to go out live, and maybe perform your trance masterpiece at a rave? Well, the Groove MIGHT be just the product for you

I just think that, for the majority of open fanboys, the idea of an 'open' system is simply a comvenient excuse to forgive their inability to make great music on a closed arranger. 'My music sucks, so it MUST be the gear I'm using... Look! Here's a product that promises me I will sound as good as the pros... so it MUST be good, right?

If you aren't ALREADY making music as good as the pros, buying an open arranger is simply going to make you sound WORSE than you would with a T3/PA2 etc.. And, if you ARE... what are you doing here?