No worries Diki...I think I may have misinterpreted your outlook on it...

FWIW I agree that using vst instruments is a "one patch" deal when using styles...the examples you give re drums and bass are true. As they need to be loaded this does cause a stoppage and no PC, Mac or Windows, is anywhere near quick enough, or can "background load" or pre-load if you like, the next patch to use.

This is a fatal flaw if one wants to use more than one patch in a style, or even a standard midi for that matter - with a vst you DO need to allow time.

There is a workaround in a DAW where you can have say two parts assigned to the different kits using two midi channels. One channel for a brush kit and one for the standard kit (to stick with the drum example) and use these instead of trying to change patches. Then in the style you simply reassign the notes from say part C, to that second channel...so in effect nothing changes except the channel number, instant and seamless.

Now of course this does take time to set up, but once setup this can be used over and over again for different styles and songs. In Sonar you can save each as a project file, and even load up a special playlist with all the project setups pre-loaded, 128 at a time. These can be remotely selected.

In the Kronos example I gave, it is a doddle because vArranger recognises the Sonar instrument definition system, (or xxxx.ins) so all one needs is an accurate .ins file for the patch base on the Kronos, edit the style to reflect those msb/lsb and patch data and away you go. Play the style, it sends the correct patch info to the Kronos, pretty straightforward really. It is all only midi after all!! As long as the correct data is in the style, it can use any sound hardware.

Now THAT is the area that is the most tricky as there are very few editors out there for styles. So editing the style to embed that data can be awkward. If this is not done then software such as Dans must do a conversion of the data in real time and THAT is a difficult task, so I agree there.

Essentially using a vst is the same process...get an accurate .ins file for the vst patches (most only follow standard midi anyway - ie 128 patches in bank 0, and no upper banks). In a lot of cases a GM ins file will work as you only need address number slots, not a name. Just edit the GM ins to reflect the names of the patches in the vst assigned to the patch numbers 1-128.

I never said it was quick to do, but 90% of the work is all in the one-time setup of all this data, but it is easy if you have a decent knowledge of DAW systems and midi. As you may recall in one of my posts, I DID say I thought it was all just a bit too awkward for any real-time live performing. And it is for this reason ONLY I went back to hardware. Plus a few other operational tools on the PA series that I find invaluable..I would not have dropped the vArranger system to go back to a Yamaha, Ketron or sorry, Roland arranger...only the Korg and ONLY the PA3

I also wrote , and you must have missed this too.....that I don't think software based arranger systems will replace hardware based ones any time soon. So I was always agreeing with you...I was just presenting the case it was all 100% possible...and that using a VSTi in vArranger was not all that difficult a task given that vArranger is ALL midi based.