I have always considered Roland's an arranger that never sounds its best OOTB. For whatever reason, Roland's style makers struggled with getting the balance between each style Part and the RH Parts correct. Mind you, listening to swamped user demo after demo here and other arranger sites, it's a common problem! However, I think Yamaha do the best job of balancing the style Parts with each other OOTB. And, quite possibly, Roland the worst.

So, you buy a Roland, you really need to tweak each style you use. Not exactly the instant gratification that most arranger players are looking for..! But, as an audio professional, I usually EXPECT to have to work long and hard to force anything I buy off the shelf to how I want to hear it.

Add to that, Roland, by dropping the touchscreen, also dropped the OS they have spent the last eight years perfecting, and moved to a FAR more menu driven OS (until you get the iPad apps), which has probably been one of the main complaints I have had to deal with over at Roland-Arranger.com. It's not that you can't actually DO most things other arrangers do, it's just that figuring out how to do it, and getting used to doing it differently than you used to is often more than many casual players want to go through.

Then factor in that the BK-9 was the LAST arranger to come out in the BK series (by quite some time), and you have the situation that a large percentage of players that wanted a new Roland had already got the BK-5 (or passed, because it was something of a cheap feeling arranger - not as bad as an S950, but still quite lower than Roland had made in the past) and it's fair to say that the market was already saturated by the time it came out.

In fairness, Roland, particularly in the US, has been promoting and making dealers stock their arranger line poorly for a decade or more. Their WS's and synths are received very well, but the arrangers have long been a bit divergent from things like the PSR's and Tyros's, gradually getting perhaps further and further away from what the rapidly aging arranger market share is turning into. They have failed to age as much as the rest, I guess you could say. So it has been quite difficult for anyone to even SEE a BK-9, let alone play one in a store. That has been going on for a LONG time, and obviously is a poor decision.

Not only that, but Roland, particularly with the BK-9, have not shipped it with some content that shows it off at its best... The audio loop feature is absolutely a ground-breaking new feature, easy to use, and capable of making the arranger sound VERY contemporary, combining the best of sampled drums with audio loops is virtually the blueprint for modern music, and also goes a long way towards things like Yamaha and Ketron's audio drum features, allowing you to spice up what are already very live sounding drums with whatever you feel they don't do their best on (say some percussion, or brush jazz loops, or synth burbles and arpeggio figures).

But Roland failed to provide a USB stick with the arranger (either in the sale to the customer or to the dealer for him to demo it) with a bunch of these audio loops already set up to show this stuff off, so the feature never got the 'wow!'s it ought to have.

Personally, I still think Roland make fantastic arrangers, easily the equal or better of others, but they do BY FAR the poorest job of marketing and promoting them, and getting them into the stores.

And perception is everything, isn't it? LOL