Something about the good dying young...Technics, General Music, maybe Roland next? Hope not.

Chris Anthony is the best product arranger demonstrator I ever heard.

I understood Roland isnt doing to bad, they have the aira series being a red hot success, also their pianos sell very very well.. And even the ea7 seems to sell well in asia..

Sad thing is, Technics didnt die, they just changed jobs...

Not only the demonstrator, but also the instrument gem sk series was way ahead of its time.... The SK880 is the only instrument i still regret not having bought...

Its a synth, a stage piano and an arranger workstation in a single instrument... It was a very pro instrument...

Utilization of a hard drive was Ketron and General Music breakthrough.

When I 1st heard the SD1, it literally blew my mind feature and sound wise. I was the Ketron X1 demonstrator and one of the 1st people to see the SD1 keyboard in the USA.

Since drums do not respond to chord changes, steaming/syncopated audio drum tracks direct from the hard drive, was genius.

When the question was asked, do we need audio drums ? I laugh a little because in my opinion the answer is YES. Dating back to 2001.

Back in 2001 it made more sense than today as the drum samples were worse.
Based on the video of the Roland E-drums I posted, I think it is really far-fetched to say that such drums would still lack realism if they were used in full quality in an arranger style. I think there are still much more significant things and sounds to be further improved than the minimal differences in sound between good e-drums played by a human and acoustic drums recorded by audio.
The real bottleneck when performing are the PA systems, which still don't succeed in giving the impression of a real drum set to be played in the room.