If you are going to want to send the drums over to BFD or EZ Drummer, or something like that, then the arranger HAS to send MIDI for the drums, not simple one note triggers of a loop...

The thing is, you are STILL looking for inspiration while you are making the 'mock up', so you want an arranger with great styles, but, OTOH, you want to replace almost everything anyway, so it HAS to be MIDI for all the parts. The Audya's drums, bass and guitar audio loops will either have to be used 'as is' or you will have to play them by hand completely, as there is no MIDI out of an audio track.

I think you MIGHT want to consider perhaps a PA800 to save yourself money... you probably already got an 88 or 76 in the studio, yes? So you can MIDI that to the arranger for an expanded keybed, and the rest of the PA800's capabilities are almost identical to the PA2Xpro, other than sample RAM (and you'll be using VSTi's for that).

Plus the PA800 has speakers, so it's a piece of cake to take it home, or to a different room in the studio, and work on a song while other stuff goes on in the main tracking room, or over to a friend and collaborator's (or the artist's) house for a writing session with no need for a sound system.

Just curious, though, why you think the T2 is getting long in the tooth...? Is it a MIDI issue, or are you getting bored with the styles (lot's of Korg conversions available)? If you are replacing almost everything, one would think that the source arranger doesn't really matter all that much... just the styles that it plays.

Diki
a. yes I have a 88K controller (the Studiologic VMK 188 Plus).
b. This is my home studio, we hire a pro studio once we record everything.
c. I have my PA a home.
d. main reason for changing the T2 is to have a 76K arranger (not enough room to set up both arr and controller together).

I appreciate that I could save some money using cheaper kbs or sw as Band in a Box, and similar, but still a 76ks arranger is a better all-round solution as today.

ciao
A

Well, no arguing from ME about how important a 76 arranger is!

But I have often wished that I DID have a little lightweight arranger with speakers, simply to be able to easily go round to a writer's house or home studio and do some quick guerrilla writing... not enough to actually get one yet, I make do with what I've got, but if writing with others was my MAIN need for an arranger, I might consider one of those.