I'm happy for you both... but if I hire a real drummer, and he plays two song's identically, he's not getting hired back!

No two Rhumba's, bossa's, disco tunes, rock tunes, you name it... no two are EVER identical. Listen to CD's much? Find me two songs where the drummer plays an identical beat... let alone the guitarist and bassist, and horn players too. Subtle differences are what make the tune stand out. An 8 bar loop or 16 bar loop of basically the same rhythm doesn't make up for it being the same rhythm.

Plus, the fills... This isn't something we've really discussed. But, quite often, the fills are what sticks in the mind, maybe more than the groove itself. Play three or four songs with the same style (or another style with the drums from the first grafted on) and pretty soon, you can glom onto the fact that those fills are the same every time. EVERY TIME!

It's pretty easy with a MIDI style to get into the fills, and move a note here, a note there, and you have a different fill. Or to copy another fill from a similar style, and then match the kits (can't do that with audio styles unless recorded on the same kit).

If Ketron want to do something that would push arranger technology further, how about more fills..? You need 16 to go smoothly from every one of four variations to every other one of four (including Fill-to-Same). You already made a dramatic improvement by having four Break/Fills. How about upping the stakes on the fill count?

The one big advantage that MIDI gives you is variety. Not only is there a huge backlog of DIFFERENT styles written for your arranger in the same genre, to be tweaked to match your newest, but there are thousands of conversions, from OTHER manufacturers, that you can do the same with.

Instead of two reggae beats, I have dozens. Can't do that with audio...