rikkisbears and all,

You've got it. "Dial a Style" is equivalent to Ketron's Audio Style modelling, however unlike what the name suggests, the modelling is not limited to Audio, so probably "Audio and Midi phrase data bass" would have been more appropriate.

* Select a style (e.g Salsa)
* Go into STYLE VIEW (which displays all the components of the current style (Drums, bass, guitars, strings ... etc).
* Select F1 (DRUMS) and turn data wheel to scroll through MIDI drums bass. Press F1 again to go to GROOVES drum bass. Press F1 again and go through AUDIO DRUMS LOOPS (8 measures long or if you have the AJAMSONIC, 32 measures long). You can have BOTH the Midi and AUDIO drums playing in sync (so you can actually go to the Midi Drum parts and MUTE say the Kick, snare and hi hats but leave the percussion) and have the AUDIO Drums cover the drum parts! AjamSonic adds over 1500 more!
* Select F2 for Percussion track and repeat above (as for drums).
* Select F3 for BASS and do the same. The bank consist of bass lines from other styles plus those of previous Ketron libraries too. AjamSonic adds even more!
* Select F6-F10 and repeat for the Chords 1-5. Now here it gets interesting because you can press F4 twice (Chord4) and toggle between Midi bank parts or Arpeggios - or in the Ajamsonic version even more Professional studio quality Aprs like those found in today's workstations. If you press F5 twice (Chord5), you can toggle and scroll through either Midi parts or AUDIO guitar banks - or in the Ajamsonic version even more Guitar parts, PLUS you can use the AJAMSONIC voices to replace the current MIDI voices and these add nuances to the style parts automatically (similar to SA voices on Yamaha products) such as brass thrills, sax valves and breath ... etc. Check out demos of these at www.AjamSonic.com (the SUPER STYLES [soon to be released - which are Demos 22, 23 ...etc] will also shed some light on the new Audio Drums and Bass!). The banks for all Drums, Bass and Chord parts are not limited to only style parts but also contain other phrases KETRON added exclusively for AUDYA!

To add injury to this degree of flexibility, you can pick a phrase and select a new voice for it by simply going to the Preset voices and selecting a new one (so you could have picked a Nylon Guitar phrase but then change the Guitarist's instrument to say a Pedal Steel Guitar or Strings)! The same phrase is played ... just now with the new instrument!

So what does this mean? You can take the SALSA above, and to chord 1 in variation A, change the current Piano to say the horns from the Big Band style. If GLOBAL (U5/10) is on, this change impacts all Arranger parts (A-D) or if doing fills or breaks, all Fills/Breaks (1-4) or all Endings (1-3) at once. If set to SINGLE, only the current part is edited (e.g only Arranger A). Now for Chord 3, change the current Midi trumpet line to the Midi guitar line from another style within the bank and for chord 5, replace the Midi Guitar strum with an AUDIO Guitar strum from a Country style. See where this is going? As for the drums, I can now take out the current drums and replace with the Audio Drums from a Son or Bachata or ... - endless combination and permutations here! With the AjamSonic upgrade, you can also assign Arps to ALL chord parts (not just Chord4).

* When done, save and you have the option to save with a new name (you just created a new style so the one you've been working on remains unchanged) or leave name unchanged (over-write old style if it was a USER STYLE). Style gets stored in HD (SSD - if new AjamSonic is installed).

The AJAMSONIC upgrade now offers a 120GB SSD (yes, Solid State Drive) which makes access to this huge database an even faster breeze. Ignoring shock to the keyboard as there is no more 'fragile' Hard Disk, you can now travel more with assurance that when you power on your AUDYA, that disk WILL WORK! Plus with the module version in particular (AUDYA 4), you need not worry about what angle it is (HD are limited to a 10 degree incline for ultimate performance). More information on this at www.AjamSonic.com

Hope this better explained it. Editing the actual AUDIO file itself in details is limited but basic modifications such as EQ (low and high), slicing and setting loop point (using internal SAMPLER) ...etc can be done on the AUDYA. Of course most would have prepared the AUDIO Drums at a professional studio (or using software like Protools) where everything would have been edited prior to installing in AUDYA, but hopefully someday, we'll please most of the people most of the time :-)

Thanks.