Right, it seems I have missed most of the serious discussion, but Ill chuck my two-penneth worth in;

I read this thread about 2 months ago when I decided I was going to make the change from Hardstyle to Techno but it confused me so much and didnt clear anything up.

I have bought some bits of Hard Techno and some bits of Schranz and at first the only way I could tell the difference was by which section of the online record shop I was in..... but now I have listened a little more I can now see there is quite a difference between the two.

I use the way that I structured my Hardstyle sets to aid me; people say that Hardstyle is Hardstyle and there cannot be any progression through a Hardstyle set, but there are tunes that when you listen to them you would not think of using them at the end of your set as they are too floaty/light and the same with some others you wouldnt dream of starting a set with as they are grinding and pounding and need to be played at the end of the set. If I was in the mindset of making up new genres I would have called them "SoftStyle" and "HarderStyle", but that would have been silly!!!

Now take this into the Hard Techno/Schranz debate; The couple of tunes I have have been listened to, mixed and recorded and replayed and the stuff that is IMO Hard Techno is the stuff you are going to play at the start of your set; yes, its still hard and if you follow a Hard Trance DJ its still going to scare a dancefloor for a couple of minutes, but its going to aid the progression of your set through to the "Harder Techno", or as our german friends have decided to call it, "Schranz"!!!

As for the cheesy element of Schranz, there are cheesy elements in EVERY genre of music, Techno, Hardstyle, Hard House etc etc you will always get a producer of any style that will have a cheeky idea and will have the equipment and the need to release that cheeky idea onto vinyl. I have had ideas to encompass an S Club 7 record into a Hard Techno remix, yes it would be the cheesiest thing you had ever heard but the derisory comments it would attract would bounce off me because it was only a bit of fun. I am pretty sure that producers of any sound that do cheesy stuff know thats what they are doing, and dont really care as long as the money goes in the bank at the end of the month.