and little chance of ever seeing someone with 2 AUDYAS,

$10,000 is quite a hefty amount to spend

if AUDYA was MY main keyboard, my XD3 would do fine as a backup

is an XD3 as good as AUDYA?
of course not, but it IS what i currently use for 70% of what i play (the other 30% coming from my G-70),

so if the XD3 is my "main" board NOW, why not a backup, when a better one comes around?



[This message has been edited by leezone (edited 08-12-2009).]

I totally agree with you both. If it wasn't for my issues with the Touch Screen and having to use it to edit items to get favorites setup, this board would have been a definite keeper for me. The sounds and playability is absolutely fantastic. I'm going to miss those Roland Sounds. If I had someone on the books to just program things for me (as some other blind musicians seem to do when they get to the top), Diki and I both agreed this would have been a perfect live rig for me.

I really wanted to try it; I did - even though I had to buy one first; I took a bit of a loss, but it was worth it. I'm really missing it already.

I now am goint a different route and moving away from the arrangers for now. I'll still be monitoring the news and topics around here just to keep up.

Best
Vince

There'll be no news from Roland until the wrangling over the moving of production from Italy to China is resolved - that's the real reason for the "radio silence" about arrangers from Roland since late last year.

Do you mean they in the process of are moving production to China or just wrangling about whether they are going to?

Lee S.

Well since Seamaster has brought it to the surface..I may as well let you all know what I was told...It was suppose to be confidential..but others have mentioned it already...

I have a different spin on the delay...

It is common knowledge, workmanship at the Chinese facilities (Not just Roland's) is sub standard compared to the Italy plants..

Roland is trying to close out commitments with China, and restore Italy locations...or use Japan plants again...
Hopefully by the end of this year...

Now I hope this leak does not stop my contact from "leaking" to me..

i just hope a kick @ss Roland arranger leaks out this September

we need THE TOTL arranger with all the bells and whistles so that all other manufacturers can up their game AND lower their price...

so far the AUDYA is THE ONLY arranger i would buy to "replace" or add to my G-70

Returning production to Europe is going to make the next Roland TOTL (if and when it appears) certainly no bargain...

If $4500+ is the new bellwether for TOTL arrangers (while their WS brethren remain roughly at their price points), how many of us are going to be able to go down that path. I, for one, haven't seen a 25% increase in my business this year (the increase over the old $3500 mark)...

The thing is, I don't see any new or remarkable technology from Roland even on their WS's. How anything new is going to trickle down (the usual direction for innovation) from the WS's beats me. About the only thing of any note is the voice allocation system from the ARX Brass board. Hardly groundbreaking. And the SA type voices on the new Atelier, which have failed to impress me, at least.

There are many 'refinements' that could be made to the G70's OS (see the New Features forum at Roland-arranger.com for a compendium) but none of them would significantly change the G70 into something worth a grand more...

Me, in the meantime, would HAPPILY pay quite a premium (at least $100) for a new OS that SERIOUSLY addresses all the remaining OS clunkers.

The reason why arranger manufacturers have a high price on their arrangers as opposed to workstations is because they know arranger users have been paying a high price already.


They know from their research and from past experiences, the market for arrangers just have to have the newest and latest arranger and price is not an option.

Until their figures tell them otherwise, they will continue to do the same thing.


Just look at how many persons who went for the T3 when there was the T2 that did the same thing.

Yamaha certainly fall into that category to me with their incremental upgrades in each model. They have this down to a fine art at this stage too which is why they are the biggest arranger keyboard manufacturer in the world.

The secret sauce to making Yamaha arrangers is based on two things.

1: Knowing that the majority of arranger users cannot program, nor do they have any interest in doing that or creating their own styles. Because of that it's easier to make the keyboard simple to operate and so the focus should be on making it sound fantastic out of the box and give enough to allow users to customise the keyboard so that they can access what it offers quick and easy. In other words it's all about the short term wow factor.

2: Because of number 1 above, the same people will never notice that each keyboard only offers an incremental upgrade because when Yamaha add something like MEGA Voices these people see this as an entirely new feature and not what it really is, just an updated sample library that could have been sold for $100 to them.

If you were to tie down the average Yamaha T3 user and to show them how much more a KORG Pa2X can do that the T3 can't, they would just switch their brain off because they don't understand all the technology and how far everything has moved on.

Oddly enough, this is what the majority want, which is why Yamaha are the biggest sellers of Arranger keyboards in the world.

My 2 Cents.

James

[This message has been edited by Irishacts (edited 08-15-2009).]

James that is the best post I have read here in years....truer words were never spoken. Well said.