> I love people when people makes such allegations. > Where did you get the proof that it is crippled ? > It's a full fledged PC with [...]
I love when people quote me out of context. The next thing i said was "withold the cripple, but double the cost" It is the full-flegedness that I dislike. > but the target of the keyboard is the professional > musicians that want > a turnkey solution or developers that want to create The main problem I have with this is the idea that the best thing for musicians is a turnkey solution. That's the advantage of a computer. This workstation has all of the advantages of a computer, but also all of the disadvantages. The benefit of hardware is its simplicity. Extra functionality here does nothing but obfuscate. The funnest and most intuitive synths to work with are the ones that are knob-laden and menu sparse. > To quote Domenico, the main hardware engineer of the > keyboard, according > to him > the Mediastation is the Ferrari or Lamborghini of > keyboards :-) > The company is small and can not produce high > volume, low margin gear. I respect Italian design - from lamborghini to ducati to farfisa to gucci (use the google!) However, I don't understand the appeal of expensive inneficiency. I think the pinnacle of car design is the optimal combination of cheapness and niceness (like Toyota), not the maximization of the latter (Lamborghini, Rolls Royce). This applies to any piece of hardware. > There are tons of boards (just look at > linuxdevices.com), but unfortunately > audio is quite demanding in terms of CPU power so > you end up using > a standard ATX PC board again. huh? The news here is that someone is actually using a PC board to make hardware. The norm is cheaper, smaller processors that are more specialized. That's why I can't run konqueror on my korg. > If you use a cheap embedded linux board you will > have to add powerful > audio hardware, middleware layers, DSP with custom > applications etc ... > that will drive up the cost again. DSPs are cheap. Call TI and you can get some free samples. you don't need to "add" powerful audio hardware. This scenario you are referring to of the super-expensive synth only refers to if you insist on using only off-the-shelf parts. Obviously, this isn't wnat the big synth manufacturers have to contend with. For them, it's circut design, DSPs, etc. high initial investment, but in the long run, much cheaper parts. Okay, so this is a nice expensive computer. Great. I just don't see this in any way as big inroads into embedded Linux and audio. -ciao, Thomas J. Webb __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree