Both Stage performers and Home performers...know quality VST's are superior sound over current arranger keyboards..

It's actually a matter of what's convenient and/or whatever suits your needs.

Ian

Ian Performing live is my passion...the battery between a live audience & a performer is magical !!!

No comparison Fran in navigation arr vs vst on a pc etc....playing live.....none Imo.....that's what I'm talking about..

Depends on the performer, of course, and quite often it is simply the "entertainment" factor that wows the audience rather than pure playing skills.

I like playing at home every bit as much as playing live, and I like the change, at least for now.

If I get bored, I can always pick up a gig or two and have some fun.

It's all about having the choice.

Ian

Most stage keyboardists I know use dedicated VST players such a Muse Receptor or something similar.

VST's have never interested me for "live" performing, especially with an arranger, although, now that I have more studio and home playing time, I may find them useful, especially in recording.

Still, the Tyros4 does an admirable job for my needs.

Ian

Muse receptor is one of those things that removes the hassle from using VSTs..

Once you created a new sound, just save it in your muse playing list... and it works just like any other module on stage, send midi program changes and use that most awesome piano...

it just takes loads of times to set up....

Early last year, one of the guys using the studio brought in a Neko 64 but we didn't get the chance to use it and used our now since retired Roland Jupiter 8 instead. He was wanting analog strings, and the Roland did the job very nicely so I did not get a chance to hear the Neko.

Have you ever used a Neko or something similar?

Ian

Dan, how about one of the most requested songs of all time, Brown-eyed Girl. It will be easy to compare it to our own arrangers, as I'm sure the vast majority of do it.
Thanks,

no not really.... i always perceived the Neko as a chaotic collection of programs... there was no workflow that turned it into an instrument, so it never got ahead of a PC with an external midi keyboard... at a huge price...

Even lions tracks did better in creating an instrument, yet they failed to see that high quality sounds out of the box are a requirement..

i think the way to go in the future is a dedicated controller like Push, APC40 or even Maschine in combination with a daw and software has the future, because they offer a good workflow and dedicated control interface...

The upcoming NI komplete kontroll S keyboard might actually be the closest thing to turn a VST (the whole NI ultimate collection) into a hardware instrument, with a hardware workflow feel... I think they might succeed where Neko failed... a dedicated interface and workflow..



however, all these fancy DAW solutions mis one thing when compared to an arranger... and that is content... you need to create the content yourself. and even when they come with content like Varranger or live styler, you need to tweak every style until it sounds acceptable..



Thats why i returned from software to arrangers about 2 years ago... and just love it... On top of that, the playability of the T5 SA2 and Ensemble voices beats almost all VSTs, unless you like controlling an instrument with 39 keys, 7 switches and 3 wheels in realtime...


Things are changing to slow.... but if software finally grows to maturity, it will be because of people like Dan