I totally agree, James. Been a fan of Pianoteq since its' initial release, have been into modeling since the VL-1's and thereabouts.

But you always have to take into account, when posting at the SZ Arranger forum that YOUR idea of 'simple' and MANY of those here vary radically!

And also, for me, there's STILL a noticeable gap between the 'expressiveness' of modeling, and its' 'accuracy'. I realize that the amount of variation that you can get from modeling, vs sampling, is huge. But, as I felt that this demo showed, that at times, disregard the expressiveness, and sometimes straight-ahead sampling, if it does EXACTLY what you want it to do, is still a bit more accurate. As a horn player myself, I am torn... I want something to PLAY that gives me the widest range of tone and expression that can be got, and if the price I have to pay is it sometimes not QUITE sounding like the real thing, well, that's OK... But as a LISTENER, I have to sometimes sit up and go 'What was THAT?!' when I hear the model break down and miss the target a bit.

I stuck with the DX7 for YEARS after they were no longer popular, simply for the breath controller sounds. But, in the end, convenience and the improvement in sampled sax sounds made it no longer part of my live performance (still got it for the studio, though!). There's a lot I miss, but there's a lot I DON'T.

And that, for me as a horn player, is the still unresolved issue of modeled vs. sampled...

I still get the impression you think me a Luddite and a technophobe, but I simply consider myself more a realist. Especially here, as opposed to a VSTi forum, where it is obvious everybody has at least a GOOD working knowledge of computer based systems, I tend towards the cautious when using adjectives like 'easy' when dealing with something that is anything BUT to the less well initiated.