[linux-audio-dev] Lionstracs Mediastation, LinuxSampler, Linux at NAMM

Hi, just back from NAMM, just a few infos for the interested people: Lionstracs had a booth demoing a preliminary version of the Mediastation X-76 ( http://www.lionstracs.com ) I've read a thread here about people complaining about the price of the keyboard. ( $12,000). I fully agree, the problem was the distributor trying to ask an exaggerated price. Too many men in the middle (distributor, retailer) each one wants a big cut of the pie while the producer of the actual iron usually earns only a fraction of the price the user pays. But you know since the distributor hosted Lionstracs at his booth you cannot complain about the price they want to set :-) Anyway see Domenico's (Lionstracs head) posting: http://www.lionstracs.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=7 the new price will be around $6200 which is much more in line with current keyboards. AFAIK: Korg's flagship the PA X-Pro is about $4500, add mp3 playback expansion, sample RAM expansion (from 16MB to 32MB :-) ) and you get into the $5000 - $5500 which is comparable to the Mediastation X-76 price but the X-76 much more iron (256 DSP voices vs 64, 512MB sample RAM vs 48MB sample ROM, not to mention what you can do in software with the Athlon 2400+ CPU (LinuxSampler, softsynths, ardour etc). Anyway if you want to see a couple of videos of the Mediastation X-76 in action (with crappy audio since it was taken with a camcorder in the noisy NAMM halls): (the guys were playing the keyboard over an mp3/wav song that ran in the background, changing the sounds interactively (mostly by pressing one single button , eg organ family, and then select organ patch) You can play them with mplayer/xine too but I think you need the win32 codecs installed. Length: 2:22 size 23MB http://www.lionstracs.com/~demos/video/x76smooth1.AVI Length: 4:58 size 48MB http://www.lionstracs.com/~demos/video/x76delmar1.AVI (The GUI at 3:00 in the second video is Paul Davis that tells the keyboarder to shut up with his 120dB noise :-) ) Domenico told me probably they will sell individual parts too so people can build their own keyboard without paying an arm and a leg. (eg case + MIDI keys + LCD , custom VGA with Linux supported GFX chip etc) As said this company tries to be open as possible and its success depends on the success of linux audio too, so I think it's in their interest to support LAD people. For example developers could get discounted keyboards in exchange of code etc, there are many possibilities. Domenico is in talks with Mathias Nagorni about coming at the upcoming ZKM with a Mediastation to show it off and that he can meet developers offer some paid work for developing new apps (or adapt existing ones) for the keyboard etc. BTW: many top engineers of the big 3 keyboards makers came to see the X-76, seemed quite puzzled that a penguin-powered keyboard exists :-) regarding LinuxSampler & NAMM read this: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=3758500&forum_id… I was quite surprised about the positive reaction. Other Linux stuff was Plugzilla, a hw expander (a Linux PC) that runs VST plugins (I've meet Marc Lindahl and Joe, very nice people), then there was the Muse Research box which is AFAIK similar to Plugzilla and the Hartmann Neuron was there too but I have not had the time to chat with them. (it is linux powered too but they don't tell you so on their website). ok shutting up :-) cheers, Benno http://www.linuxsampler.org