Just trying to help. I see you searching, and searching ... thought a friend's advice would make it easier. We all wear our hearts on our sleeves at some point. That's not a sign of weakness .... it's a sign of humanity. Hang in there, pal.

Eek a lot of action in just 4 hours!
Arrangers are 85% software. There's NO REASON that development should have ceased circa 2000, although IMO it pretty much did. Probably because by that time, hardware and software had evolved to the point that it covered 90% of the "use cases" for the target market. Arrangers use the played notes to trigger and transpose a stored musical pattern. After watching the Montage video and the one Donny added the other day, my conclusion is that arrangers can already do MOST of these things.

One easy improvement arranger manufacturers should incorporate, is the ability to specify "arranger hold" or "sync stop" FOR EACH STYLE TRACK, instead of for the style as a whole. That jumped out at me right away. Some of this functionality is possible by using two or more arrangers MIDI'd together, but that gets expensive and awkward.

Arranger KBs could also add note transposition algorithms geared specifically toward arpeggios. Functions like "chord sort," the ability to specify the octave range of a pattern, etc. Yamaha already has at least two different algorithms which are built into the Montage, MOx, Motifs, etc. The exact details of how the intelligent chord following works are not fully described in any of the manuals, and I dug all the way back to the Motif ES! It's possible that the algorithms are the same as the ones used by Yamaha's arrangers for their style parts, or for arpeggiated multipads. The next time I'm in a music store (and who knows when that will be!) I intend to experiment with this, especially the chord fingering.

IMO it would be easier to add chord-following arps, per-track triggering, velocity-based control, etc., to an arranger, than it would be to add simplified chord recognition and full-on style control to a synth. So with the next firmware update you could have a "Genos Prime" that would do almost everything. IMO there are a few reasons this convergence hasn't happened, and probably never will. First: arrangers are profitable cash cows. Companies are making huge profits peddling fully-developed 20-year-old software in a shiny new case to a generally older and economically established clientele. They are priced high because the market will bear it! Most of us have been willing to pony up for the next new model with few changes. So there's no financial incentive for the companies to incorporate this new functionality. Second: the product families appeal to different target audiences. "Old fogey" arranger players probably aren't asking for arps or this kind of fine control. Many would perceive this kind of customization as "too much work." A lot of young people make music on their computer, so I'm not really sure who the target market is for top-end workstations. Regardless, I doubt they are asking for more schlager beats (at least in the U.S.!) Third: internal corporate structure. Among all brands, arrangers and workstations are developed by different divisions. There may be jealousy, rivalry, fenced budgets, etc., that prevent data sharing, or just a lack of communication and understanding of each other's products.

When Tracy posted the Montage thread a couple weeks ago, that was a real eye-opener for me. I heard about the Motif's "one finger play" and chord-following arps years ago, but the details weren't readily available, and it just seemed like a lot more work to get to the same place. Now I'm not so sure... And as far as integrating this functionality into arrangers, that integration might be as simple as a MIDI cable and a rack unit. Definintely an area I intend to explore in the future!!