I think the Mediastation made a couple of missteps from day one. Now, it's becoming increasingly harder to un-ring that bell. The first was to call (or intimate) it an 'arranger keyboard'. Once you go down that road, you expose yourself to every past, present, and future, arranger owner, all of whom are going to tune out every other (in some cases "great") feature of the KB and key in on how it stacks up as a single-purpose, dedicated, gig-ready, ARRANGER. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a Swiss Army Knife anywhere that will drive a screw as well as a good Craftsman screwdriver.

Next, WORKSTATION. Most of the above would still apply if marketed as a workstation. As Diki has pointed out many times, without application-specific content (in this case, loops, arps, and vast and modern sound libraries), it would be very difficult for it to compete against the the MOXS's and Fantom G's of this world, and the virtually unlimited resources (financial and R&D) of their parent companies. What's left? VSTi player? Practically any modern KB controller and a laptop can duplicate those functions, and at a much cheaper price. Sequencer? Nearly any BOTL sequencer on any BOTL laptop (the same one playing your VSTi's) can more than match anything you're likely to find built into any KB. The problem is, the person with the cash to spring for something like the MS (or OpenLabs) probably already has most or all of these functions. So who needs this 'Frankenstein'? Certainly not the arranger-playing OMB. Not the gigging 'keyboard player' in the local band. Not the Studio guy, who has access to all these functions at a much higher level. Old, retired, well-to-do, ex-Wersi/Lowrey/Bore-everybody-at-the-party types? Nope. That group can barely figure out how to get their email (those that have it). The 'Young 'uns'. Not really. The latest generation of WS's has a stranglehold on that crowd.

The sad truth is, at this point in time, there really may not BE a market for this type of innovative product. If we are to be honest, as much as we wish Dom well and as much as we would like to see him push the envelope to the limit, this piece remains more of a curiousity piece than an object of our desire. What we want is something that comes in and wipes out that thing that we've ALREADY identified as our 'weapon of choice', be it arranger, workstation, super-synth, or whatever. Until that time, any attempt at real innovation (I'm not sure that I consider cramming a bunch of applications together into one platform, real innovation) is going to be met with armies of both supporters and detractors, both with good points to be made. JMO.

chas