Hello Domenik.
Can you please answer my post above, I put do you have a UK distributor where we can all hear and play your instrument?

Unfinished products for credulous customer? And they know it?

I guess, for me, the whole point of an arranger, versus a full-blown workstation, is the instant gratification aspect of it. I have a fully loaded Kurzweil 2500S and a huge library of sample disks, and indeed you can do incredible things with it.

But....... if I want to grab a keyboard out of a box and go gig with anybody, anywhere with no preparation time, I'll get an arranger from one of the top three (and everyone knows my liking for the Roland OS and form factor!) every time.

I can do everything that Mediastation does (mostly) with my home rig with computers and software, along with the K2500 and G70 for extra sounds, but on a gig, to be honest, both the T2 and the G70 have all the capabilities that most live musicians need, and with a minimum of setup and learning curve.

As I said, I believe the computer/keyboard hybrid is the way of the future, but one of the current roadblocks is a sound-set as well developed and tweaked as the best of Roland or Yamaha. Last video I saw of Mediastation in arranger mode, it was triggering the Hyper Canvas VST, a toy compared to the current top of the line Roland sound-set, yet alone the T2's incredible voice selection.

Developing a coherent, comprehensive new sound-set seems to be almost beyond the capabilities of Yamaha and Roland (now that Roland have semi-abandoned the Sound Canvas concept for their G and E lines) and no software plug-in that I've heard yet offers as many different sounds, and more importantly, as well balanced a sound-set.

Remember, it is not sufficient to have a great alto sax sound and a great tenor sax sound (for example)...... they also have to be interchangeable, with an equal power and equal eq requirements, equal 'touch', all the things that make it so, in the middle of a solo, you change from tenor to alto and don't have to make any other adjustment.

Now add in the drum-kits, the different basses, ALL the myriad sounds we all need, and the job of balancing and making consistent is herculean. Even Yamaha (IMHO) never got it as right as the Sound Canvases did. You play an SMF from the original Sound Canvas on any Roland arranger up to the G1000 (the last to use only Sound Canvas samples), and no matter which newer sounds from the G1000 you used to replace the original ones, the balance and eq were still spot on.

This is the achilles heel of the computer/arranger... finding (or developing) a coherent sound-set that rivals the built-in ones of the top three, if the available commercial sound sets have difficulties combining wide choice with wide compatibilities. The big three have had decades to develop their sound-sets, and as of yet (once again IMHO) I haven't heard a commercial sound set that rivals them for across the board compatibility....... (and even Roland, now they have abandoned the Sound Canvas concept, are harder to voice as interchangeably as they used to).

It's easy to add a great Giga piano library, or Giga bass library, etc. to a Mediastation, but it's a far more difficult task to set them up so that they can be called up at any time to replace another sound, and the volume will be perfect, and the eq will be perfect, etc., etc..

Not so much a problem at home or in the studio, but on a gig there is no excuse, no time to tweak, no time to go home and balance it..........

Wow, I never thought I would see the day when innovative and advance musical technology would be looked down upon.

The negative talkers on the mediastation seem to only focus on whether VSTs would work on a live gig. They actually would as long as the processor is fast and reliable IMO. Like you would do with any arranger, you prepare for a gig before the gig. You set-up the keyboard i.e. EQ, sound and style volume adjustment, song list, reverb, effects and so on.

No professional working gigging musician really just plays the on board sounds and styles on an arranger with out tweaking before using the keyboard.

But the ability to use VSTs is just one good feature about the Mediastation. It’s also a full audio workstation. Where as an arranger from one of the big five manufacturers is just for live gigs, the Mediastation and other computer based hardware units would serve a gigging musician who is in to song writing and recording and could take their work on the road in just one unit.

The other “negative” that some persons attribute to the Mediastation is actually a major positive. The fact that the Mediastation is “incomplete” and is always having updates is one of its strongest qualities. It is not that it is really “incomplete” but they are really adding new features to the mediastation as they become available.


Again, the makers of the Mediastation are trying to change the way we think about keyboards. They are trying to make us think in the same way as we think about computer hardware and software. If you buy Sound Forge 7, when they release Sound Forge 8, would you say that Sound Forge 7 was incomplete”? Probably not. Sure Sound Forge 8 probably had some bug fixes but it also offered some updated features and so on. That is how we are taught to think about computer software. And for the most part, you don’t have to change your hardware.


Contrast that with the Yamaha Tyros 1 and Tyros 2.

In order to do an upgrade, Tyros had to get a new hardware. Now if Tyros 1 was built with upgrade in mind, the new features on Tyros 2 should not have required any new hardware changes. New styles, SA voices, systems settings and operational features should not have required Tyros 1 owners having to get new hardware.
With the Mediastation an upgrade like that would never had required a hardware upgrade.

The only thing stopping the Media station from becoming a major player in the keyboard market is A1 PR and marketing and A1 distribution.

But I am sure for those who have a Mediastation and who are gigging with a Mediastation the benefits probably far out way what ever legitimate negatives there are.


BTW, I don’t have a Mediastation nor do I work for the makers of the Mediastation. I am just one who is able to know innovation When I see it, and one who has an open mind and understanding of keyboard and computer technology.

Very well stated. Sure, I think all software driven products should meet a certain operational standard before they are released but I agree that subsequent upgrades are an added bonus.

We already accept this with our computers. A similar attitude must be taken with software driven keyboard systems.