Thing is, there's nothing to stop MIDI styles from having drum parts (and others) for a full 16 bar length. Korg already have many style 8 or 16 bars long, which on the drums allows the same degree of lack of repetition, and contributes to many of the Korg styles sounding so good. It isn't a function of the technology, simply of the laziness of people making the styles. You could have two bar loops on an Audya, too..! But Ketron chose not to do that. Nothing to do with audio vs. MIDI.

And sorry, but Yamaha, and others allow different patterns for Maj, Min, 7th (sometimes Dim) which allow you to do the exact same trick. That they don't, often (again, Korg seems one of the best at utilizing this), is not because the technology to do it isn't there... again, it's just that they don't spend the time.

However, doing these subtle tricks is quite easy for someone to do themselves.. Edit the Min sub-variation to move that squeak or slide to another point, or alter a note here and there, rinse and repeat for 7th and dim, save the style... Voilá! Ketron matched!

Extend (copy to itself) the drum track to be 8 or 16 bars long, get in and start adding the odd note, moving the odd note, erasing the odd note, changing the odd velocity... You don't need to do a whole lot to get enough change to make it seem less repetitive. Rinse and repeat on the bassline, the guitar part, however much you feel the style needs...

To be honest, I'm not that keen on endlessly stirring the same ingredients together to try and coax something new out of an arranger. For me, only TWO reggae styles with audio parts won't give me many variations (especially as utterly different they both are!). And you can't make something utterly new from existing parts. Again, one of the strengths of the MIDI system is that, should you find an SMF with a really cool groove, a nice strumming part, bassline, nice percussion, it's easy to grab it and make a style using it (or insert it into an existing style).

So far I have seen no reply to my questions about how easy it is for the user to grab loops from loop libraries and create their own entirely audio part styles... I would have thought this should be primary in an audio arranger. As fractured as the music scene is, as important to young players that easy loop import and editing is, as focused as the factory ROM is on mostly mainstream styles (seriously, two reggae styles?), opening up and making it incredibly easy to import loops and trim them, slice them, whatever the system needs would go a long way to coming to parity with MIDI styles.

But if most of what you can do to get NEW totally audio styles is mix and match the existing ones (with zero editing capability once you have to say match the 'groove' of one audio part with another), again, the benefits don't make it worth the shortcomings, IMO.

Content is King... For an arranger that is so proprietary (can't import audio styles from anything else! LOL), jacking out a copious stream of new, utterly new audio styles (not just drums, but new guitar and bass parts, etc.) is what will put it head and shoulders over the competition. Sorry, but I still believe what advantages it has (trust me, I recognize them) are negated by the disadvantages, and you end up about on par.