Funny thing though is, my BK-9 has an expansion SLOT in it! OK, It's a screwed in access panel on the underside, I haven't wanted to void warranty by opening it up and looking, yet, but it leads me to think that somewhere in the design is a hardware expansion capability.

It doesn't look like the same access cover size for the SRX boards, perhaps there's a possibility that it's just an area to add RAM, and then the sounds come in as a download.

Overall, though, I'm honestly not hoping that much for SRX sounds, unless you can cherry pick them and only download what you need. Roland haven't really made any NEW SRX's for quite a while (the Fantom's use a different expansion board with the synth on the board as well as the samples), I've got three of them for my G70, but an awful lot of the best SRX sounds are ALREADY in the BK-9 ROM. I just have a feeling that it would be hard to pick a board where the best things it does aren't already covered, to a certain extent. Maybe the Orchestral board, but stuff like the 70's Keys board (my fave, that I keep in the gig G70 all the time), I used that primarily for the great fat basses and some better clavs.

Well, the BK-9 already HAS some great fat basses, enough that I don't HAVE to have better, the clav is decent (although some of the SRX ones would be nice) but on the whole, unlike the G70, I haven't yet found a sound category that I think I HAVE to have better ones (yes, it's that good!).

However... I would be most happy if Roland concentrated on adding more (and better programmed) SuperNatural sounds, especially more horns and strings. It's Roland's answer to SA2, they got quite a bit of catchup to do, it seems the logical thing to do. Maybe some more detailed multi-velocity percussion would be nice and USEFUL, too (those already in are great, but you can never have too much percussion!).

But, short of that, if Roland want to sell us downloadable expansion, allowing us to cherry pick the entire SRX library is the only thing that will be truly needed. That old SRX card thing is a bit prehistoric, and the boards were designed donkey's years ago, to fill in the gaps in other Roland synths' soundsets that the BK-9 doesn't have, to a large extent...

However, I still stand by my conjecture that probably what we will see in the beginning will be sound expansion tailored for Eastern Europe, and the Middle East (or Far East) to add in more ethnic sounds for those markets where arrangers are very popular. That's probably where the most sales are to be made, at first.