Originally posted by richard_shiflet:
I admire Domenik and the work he has accomplished with the Mediastation. It is amazing that as a small company, he has been able to create such a versatile and powerful instrument, far surpassing well established large keyboard companies in their technological improvements!
We as the keyboard consumers deserve a lot more than we are spoon fed by the industry. My early years working with keyboards saw huge leaps forward in keyboard development. Remember when the Kurzweil K250 was first released? Or when the Yamaha Dx7 first hit the streets? Or the first time you heard heard the lush pads on the Roland D50? I know everyone has their nostalgic favorites, but my point is that we had a lot of amazing advances in keyboard abilities in a rather short period of time. But in recent years I have grown very bored with trips to the music store.
Too often new keyboard debuts are just repackaged tech that we have had for years. We’re often asked to pay way too much for the slight improvements we’re given. I think that if anyone is willing to try and break this mold that we as the SynthZone community, should celebrate!
The success of Lionstracs, or any other forward thinking company, will only push all keyboard companies to improve. Lets not hold back any progress with negativity, but cheer it on. We as keyboard players are the ones who benefit!
I eliminated the first paragraph so as to avoid any personal references, but the remainder of this post beautifully articulates my feelings, as well. I believe that avant-garde features (necessarily) come at a cost of operational complexity, which might compromise it's commercial success. However, as long as we (musicians/consumers) continue to demand more and more features from these instruments, we also need to be willing to invest more into learning to use them.
There are clearly, still 'wrinkles' to be worked out, but I continue to believe that this hardware/software (easy upgrade) approach is the way of the future.
I also believe (and this will be controversial) that it's 'boutique' status relieves it from having to compete directly with purely commercial boards like the Tyros3 and PA2x. After all, it is far more that 'just an arranger'. Still, some nice high-quality styles would certainly help with it's commercial ambitions. JMO.
chas
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