My primary keyboard now is a Roland XP-80. I have several of the expansion boards for it to increase my sound quality and selection. I was thinking about an arranger simply because I already have a work station keyboard I'm used to. I was thinking it might be a handy tool if for some reason I get the urge to play a certain tune during a live situation that I wouldn't normally play. Usually I use tracks on CD or custom built sequences. Also, as I mentioned, it might be nice to have it sitting in the studio when I can't personally be there to produce, or if the performer is on cheap budget where they want just to hire the engineer and just trigger some styles for suitable accompaniment. I definitely want to upgrade my sound source though, as the XP-80, even with expansion, is beginning to sound a bit dated to me. Not terribly so, but still I'd just like to have another sound source so everything I do doesn't come out Roland sounding.

I'm easily a few months away from making any purchases, so I have time to think it through and take advice. The studio where I do most of my work also owns gigastudio, so I might just be better off investing in a few sample libraries. I just like the instantaneous gratification of a keyboard though, rather than loading and unloading a bunch of libraries and the midi connections and settings and such.

As you can see, i'm in a bit of a quandry.