Yes the thing people need to do is get right away from the whole GM patches and banks mindset.

Arrangers all follow the GM standards of patches and banks BUT have all the sounds under "ONE" Rom set of sounds...IE all 1000 or so are all neatly lined up in patch lists and upper banks.

With the VSTi concept...all you need IS 128 patch slots....think about it:

Bass VST = 128 Bass sounds
Guitar VST = 128 different guitar sounds
Strings VST same
Brasss VST same and etc etc etc etc

Now all of these are simply selected by the easiest of all MIDI selection the Patch Change. No need to worry about additional "higher bank" programming, or re-setting all of this data if you change synths with their "pre-arranged" order of sounds...

You simply assign ONE patch change in your style for the part and it gets transmitted to the VST. Change you arranger at any time, and assuming it uses the same channels for the arranger parts) no editing is necessary. Even if it uses different channels it is a snap to edit this on the VSTi host.

Now this needs a VSTi Rack (Cantabile, Forte or one of several other choices out there) which has all of the VSTi's already racked up and responding to the appropriate MIDI channel of the style part..

Select a new style that is using bass number 48 for example from the Bass VST, and it changes to that bass, the same process follows for all the other style parts...

Now, all the Arranger makers need to do, is embed a VSTi multi host into the OS systems, the ability to stream from the HDD (or load into RAM for the smaller VST's) and a decent frequency CPU...as I said earlier a dual core of about 3ghz would be plenty..

And there it is....imagine having not just 5, or 10 variations of an instrument, but 128 variations of ONE instrument, with each and every one totally configurable...

Yes it could get expensive as you need one VSTi for each instrument group, but there are a LOT of inexpensive but great sounding (much better than the sounds on an arranger) VSTis out there..

The instruments I outlined in an earlier post that I had already setup using this system, cost in total about $600...that is for Bass, Drums, Guitars x 2, Synth and Strings/Brass...that coupled to the fact you ONLY need an arranger board capable of transmitting style midi data and you could use a $300 arranger board!!! But is would absolutely KILL (in sound quality terms) any current arranger out there.

Obviously using an older arranger (or even a new one) would require the use of a laptop...but the point I am making is that it can be done now, or if Arranger makers added the software and hardware needed...well the sky is the limit.

And NONE of the hardware/software needed is all that costly to incorporate...no matter WHAT the makers claim!!!!

Dennis