[linux-audio-dev] Slashdot: linux-based music keyboard workstation released

[Benno Senoner]

Hi,
a few clarifications about the Mediastation X-76

I think it was inappropriate at this time to post this on slashdot but 
you cannot hide a website from the
technology hungy geeks.

So far so good:

I'm one of the guys involved in that project. (as external software 
developer)
The Mediastation was designed by Lionstracs  http://www.lionstracs.com
a small italian company specialized in audio/midi electronics.
Some of their former projects included the Megafloppy, a small hardware 
device with
a floppy connector and a builin HD where you could store hundred of 
floppy images on the harddisk
that were seen by the keyboard's floppy controller like ordinary 
floppies (thus the device was compatible
with almost any keyboard).
Another device built are the Solton 128voice MIDI expanders  ( 
http://www.solton.de/ )
build on the DREAM MIDI chips from Atmel.

After designing a keyboard (a few years ago) that did not go that well 
because it was an embedded system
built from scratch and every low level OS component had to be written 
from the ground up, they decided that
Linux was the only way to escape the mess and of the proprietary 
embedded solutions.
AFAIK the planning of the Mediastation hardware components began about 
2-3 years ago,
meanwhile the Linux Audio APIs and applications were slowly maturing 
which seemed to prove that
Linux was the right bet.

here are some preliminary specs:
http://www.lionstracs.com/index.php?module=Static_Docs&func=view&f=/specs.html

Currently there are a few people involved in software development, 
mostly LADers.
Part of the software will be made in/house and part will be GPLed apps 
that are tweaked for perfect
integration within the Mediastation enviroment.
Most of the inhouse apps will be GPLed and of course all tweaks of  
GPL-ed apps will be released.

read this too if you are interested:
http://www.lionstracs.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=4

The company is small and their financial means are not that big but they 
have a few quite bright
minds when it comes to hardware design.
Should the Mediastation sell well then they will certainly involve more 
LADers and other developers
 to improve the software, all within the open source spirit without 
nasty NDAs and other crap.
I think the Mediastation could become a nice platform for thirdparty 
(commercial and not commerical)
developers to build their own modules and applications to make the 
Mediastation a very flexible
portable music studio (much more than a mere keyboard).

If you have further questions or would like to contribute to the project 
let me know.

About the price, AFAIK it will be $4k - $5k, kinda expensive if you ask 
me but OTOH other
 companies flagships (with expansions etc) are in the same range.
For example the Korg PA-X Pro: 
http://www.korgpa.com/products/pa1xproinfo.asp
with MP3 player expansion, optional harddisk is in the same price range 
while
offering limited flexibility and future expansion possibilties because 
of the proprietary, fixed
 embedded design.
The Mediastation uses a PC ATX board which can be swapped out with newer 
mainboards, CPUs,
 RAM can be expanded to suit your needs (with an Opteron 16GB of RAM are 
not a problem, do that
on other keyboards), the audio is provided by standard soundcards while 
the MIDI is provided by a custom
 engineered board. The button panel communicates via a serial interface 
with the PC, the LCD uses a
framebuffer based chip, builtin analog mixer can route 24 stereo in/outs.
It's quite modular and it will be easy to creade higher higher-end 
models with better audio I/O specs
(multi I/O 24/96 cards), faster CPUs (for softsynthesis, sampling etc).
I think one of the big pluses of the Mediastation will be that users can 
update the software and add new applications
 when they get written by simply pressing an UPDATE button without 
needing to be a computer geek.
The strenght will be a combination of good hardware, good software and 
it's user/developer community.
I think no other keyboard maker has shown that kind of openess because 
everyone thinks the competitors will
copy the concept.
Ok with open source the risk of copycats is even bigger but I think the 
value of an opensource system is provided
by beating your competitiors with cutting edge software that is backed 
by the community.
The cloners that will make a proprietary system out of it will always be 
a bit behind. (I could be wrong too ..)

I don't know when the Mediastation will be available but I guess not 
before Q1 2004.

I cannot say it for sure but it's probable that the company will show a 
prerelease at this year Winternamm NAMM.

I'll keep you updated when there are some news about this keyboard (like 
audio demos, GUI screenshots etc).

Thoughts ? :-)

cheers,
Benno
http://www.linuxsampler.org



Paul Winkler wrote:

>http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/10/197202.shtml?tid=110&tid=121&tid=141&tid=187&tid=188&tid=189
>
>Looks like the site is thoroughly slashdotted...
>I haven't actually been able to read anything there yet.
>
>There's some of the usual ignorance posted in the comments.
>Moderators, mod the good stuff up :-)
>
>  
>