I have had my knife and fork and plate ready since the very first day...!

Still hungry! And I mean that sincerely. NOTHING would make me happier than to have the open arranger's potential FINALLY realized. I have NEVER posted against the 'concept' of the idea. Merely it's amazingly poor execution, so far.

The trouble is, open arrangers and soundsets are made, generally, by people and companies with only a TINY fraction of the capital that the majors have. And, although it's no problem to make ONE sound sound great by itself, it's another level of complexity and cost entirely to make an entire, pretty comprehensive soundset all work together. Only those with the deepest of pockets can afford to do this, and hardware sales is what is underwriting it. It is completely unrealistic, IMO, to expect quality at a tiny fraction of the cost that it now takes.

While playing BACK the samples has gotten radically cheaper, any laptop can do the job fairly easily, what HASN'T got easier is recording those samples in the first place. They still take formidable equipment, experience and time to do just ONE well, and you KNOW how I feel about turning a bunch of separately recorded sounds into a whole that all work well with each other!

And sorry, but for proof of this, I offer up how there really isn't ONE software soundset available right now (after having been made for 10-15 years or more) that even PRETENDS to be as well integrated as a hardware arranger. The individual sounds may be far superior, but they don't 'play nice' with each other the way a Tyros's or Roland's do...

For what arranger players do on a daily basis, the way that different sounds all interact is FAR more important that how good each individual sound is.

I can't WAIT to eat my words, trust me. But I have a feeling I am going to be hungry for a long time to come.