Just wondering cos the Fantom has it....

The VA7 shares many sounds with the XV series (and maybe also the JV expansion cards), but the editing possibilites are by no means comparable to the 5080/3080 and the same goes for the effect section, so I don't think that they share the same engine.
Too bad...

This is another example of manufacturers treating arranger players as a species separate from other musicians. You can buy the XV engine in a rack mount (XV-5080, XV-3080, XV-5020), in a half-rack mount (XV-2020), in an 88-key keyboard (XV-800 and RD-700), in a 76-key keyboard (Fantom), or in a groove box (MC-909), but not in an arranger. The Fantom has backing patterns but no chord recognition.

Why can't we have a Fantom arranger, a Motif arranger, a Triton arranger, etc, instead of a VA series, a PSR or Tyros, and a PA series? I think it would be very useful to have sound-program and expansion compatibility with these popular synths.

Clif,
I think that in the future the dividing line between arrangers and synthesizers will become every year thinner. Even today, arrangers like the Genesys and the Tyros are marketed as "workstations" (though this term seems to apply more to the Genesys, given its "all in one package" features). This might be due to commercial reasons (there is a cyclic tendence in the market: workstations were popular about 20 years ago, then faded away as computers became more popular for programs like sequencers); now they are back. Another reason could be the allergy that some "musicians" seem to have towards the word "arranger", but nonetheless I see this as a definite tendence for the future.
Let's see what Roland comes up with, maybe even next year.

[This message has been edited by Dreamer (edited 11-05-2002).]