hansilein wrote: Hello
Have any of you had problems using a mic or others via audio in on Roland BK7M arranger-module?
I get at chorus-like sound - headphones typically

I believe there is a bit of latency on audio ins with the BK series. You will also notice that the audio ins transpose (using the BK's rather sub-par pitch transposition algorithm) when you transpose the keyboard, making it pretty much useless unless you never transpose!

The chorusing is probably from you hearing your 'head voice' and then the slight latency of the A/D converters. Is there any chorusing if you record the output?

Converting styles is something of a labor of love, more an art than a science. Back in the GS/GM days, sure, there wasn't much other than notes and controllers in a style's Parts, needing little other than tweaking for dynamics and effects.

But Yamaha changed all that years ago, with the advent of articulated sounds that use notes at the bottom of the note range to do stuff like guitar chokes (abrupt cutting off of the chord) and the like. This has only got more and more prevalent with the ability to use SA sounds in styles, with Korg's Guitar Mode. Nowadays, Yamaha and Ketron have styles using audio data that cannot be played on anything other than their own machines (unless you sample the audio Parts and map them to a sampler, a huge undertaking), and Yamaha's new Genos has drum kits with vastly expanded sounds (tons of new hi-hat articulations in those unused low note numbers on other arrangers) that will probably migrate slowly into the next generation of PSR series.

There are also differences between the CV engines of Roland and Yamaha (the different types of chords - maj, min, 7th, dim etc. that the style is programmed for) that can often lead to noticeable differences between the original and the translation.

The GOOD news with Roland (or bad news if you look at it a certain way!) is that they have done little to make older styles incompatible with new arrangers. So, perhaps rather than missing your Yamaha styles (which will always be a bit iffy in Roland arrangers), you might want to look up the vast legacy style selection from Roland's own library. Yes, they'll need some TLC to sound as good as the new ones, but far less than translating a style from a totally different style engine.

All this tends to lead to the job of translating being a FAR more difficult task than it used to be. The G800/1000 days were the high point for easy translation, and it has all gone downhill since then!

Have you got the 'BK-LB01 Extra styles' collection yet? Ton of stuff from the G1000 and earlier days there. Translation (or at least patch selection and balancing) has already been done for you, but there is also room for making them better (none, AFAIK, use any MFX at all, so there's one simple way you can jazz them up!). If all you have is the BK's ROM styles, this is a great place to start...

Some Roland's do have a Style Creator section in them. Sadly, the BK-7m doesn't.

The new E-A7 does. Plus multipads, a sampler and a ton of front panel controls. Perhaps this is an affordable solution?