Yes, the only new technology that offers a substantial increase in realism of live sound is (imho) the audio loop tech that Ketron have adopted, but it comes with issues, most importantly is a lack of full chord recognition in many styles. Plus, of course, the inability to change the sound or edit the Part.

So that one style will always sound the same, and you will sound identical to everybody else with a Ketron. I always liked the ease of editing the factory styles and just doing some minor stuff (change one guitar sound for a different one, or changing the snare sound etc) and knowing I had something a little bit different!

There’s something to be said for taking the EA-7 styles and using them in the BK9 rather than the other way round. Roland added the ability to have two or more Drum Tracks to the BK series, but afaik not ONE of the ROM styles used the feature! I guess they didn’t tell the style creators about it, or it was added too late in the style creation timeline for the creators, plus of course, probably 80% of the styles were legacy styles (as most arrangers do) so you couldn’t add an extra drum track without losing an existing track…

However a FEW of the EA-7’s ROM styles made good use of the feature, and are backwards compatible with the BK9 (if they didn’t use some of the new percussion stuff in the EA-7). Some of those BK9 percussion kits have GREAT sounds, it’s a shame the style creators didn’t add them instead of using the pretty sub-par percussion in the stock kits!

Try adding the EA-7 styles to the BK9 rather than the other way round! 🎹😎