And Audya ONLY streams the audio loops for drum parts... It will not, for instance, allow you to put a GB sized piano sample set on the HD and stream it as if it were in ROM.

Look, don't get me wrong. At the current point in technology, yes, you can get an improvement in your drum parts, guitar parts and bass parts by using loops. BUT.... the price you pay is either like 'em, or lump 'em. Nothing you can do with them whatsoever. ROM, if ever I heard it!

However, this streaming technology is on the near horizon. A hardware WS already has it. Many will follow (the advantages are huge). And this will make every slight improvement that audio loops currently have a thing of the past. With none of the loops' disadvantages.

In the meantime, with new styles costing up to $20K a pop, you'd better LOVE what comes with your Audya, because you can't gussy your old styles up to match the audio ones (without using the same parts that the audio ROM styles already do, kind of defeating the point!) and you can't make your own very easily, what few 3rd party ones are out there are aimed squarely at those EU bar players (or Baltic entertainers!) and have little relevance over here, and no-one's going to roll out new styles at any decent rate at $20K a pop.

Audya is Betamax, and MIDI arrangers are VHS. Which turned into SuperVHS, which turned into 8mm, which turned into HD camcorders, which have turned into today's card-based camcorders.

Anyway, yes. This whole thing is getting silly.... Let's revisit this in 5 years' time, and see how many fully audio arrangers are in the market. And how many are still MIDI (or MIDI primarily, with some audio loop capability). I can't wait!