Folks,
Sorry, I saw this thread too late to actually hear the samples which had precipitate this whole brouhaha. It is regrettable to see this happen. This is the reason why abrasive, offensive posts by some members spoil the experience for everybody.
I can recall Craig's negative experience with the Mediastation, but it seems that Domnik did the honorable thing and gave Craig a full refund. I am not sure if any other manufacturer would do that. I know if I buy a car sight unseen, and then don't like it, I could shake my fists in anger and disappointment for a long time, but I'd never get my money refunded. It seems, however, that instead of buying himself some good will, Domenik ended up with a case of vindictive sour grapes. Had he not given Craig a refund, at least he would have ended up with a sale - I can't imagine the amount of negative posts towards him being any greater.
This should be of concern to all of us, because at least here in the US many cities do not have full-service arranger dealerships, and are not likely to hear a keyboard first-hand. While the direct-sales approach is the one that a smaller manufacturer might adopt to reach out to a dispersed market, Craig's post-refund behavior makes it unlikely for Liontracs or anybody else to try this approach.
Having said that, I believe a part of skepticism stems from the fact that most of us have never heard a Mediastation. Seeing a well-produced video demo would put to rest some of our doubts (not that you can't fool people with video, but it would be much more believable).
The one thing that Liontracs is sorely lacking is a good marketing leader, who can dedicate his time to promoting the product in the marketplace, and focus the activities of the developers in a particular direction.
Originally posted by trtjazz:
If for no other reason, I would not buy a Mediastation, due to the way it's representatives have acted on this forum and their continued amateurish attempts at representing it to the public with their demos.
Terry
Terry,
you already mentioned that you don't benefit from the offering that Mediastation is putting on. Since you don't care about portability and good user interface for the software-based solution, this is probably not going to be a big loss for Liontracs.
However, to me the behavior of the Liontracs representatives plays like that of the techies, who are excited about their product, even though in their minds it is more advanced than in its physical embodiment. Being a software engineer myself, I can spot this among the Liontracs folks. While this is not a proper way to project your product onto the marketplace, I can't fault them for it, any more than I could fault a child for getting excited about a new toy - that's what they do.
To me, the actions of other manufacturers are much more offensive - those of the established companies (I won't name names), that supposedly monitor the posts on this forum, and still end up producing for us, the live arranger players, keyboards that force us to use the touchscreens and behemoths that weigh nearly 50 lbs, while still giving us only 61 keys to play on.
To me, that's reall gall.
Regards,
Alex