Hi SZ folks sorry for the delay, for the impatient, here are some videos of the Mediastation X-76 at the NAMM. More infos here will follow soon.


NAMM spot of the X-76: lenght 46sec, size 8MB
http://www.lionstracs.com/~demos/video/x76spotnamm.AVI

Delmar Brown (was keyboarder of Sting, Springsteen and others) and Bernd Wurzenreiner (hammond organ jazz organist, worked as Demonstrator and Stylesprogrammer for Technics and Roland) playing the X-76
Length: 4:58 size 48MB

http://www.lionstracs.com/~demos/video/x76delmar1.AVI

Bernd playing some smooth Jazz showing the ability of the X-76 to do interactive mixing of songs and switch sounds with easy to use single keystroke functions (which allows for easy interactive playing, no complex menu trees to go through)
Length: 2:22 size 23MB
http://www.lionstracs.com/~demos/video/x76smooth1.AVI

More more stuff will be posted soon on

http://www.lionstracs.com

cheers,
Benno



[This message has been edited by sbenno (edited 01-24-2004).]

Thanx Beno.....sure was hard to hear anything being played over top the large crowds and noise during NAMM...but at least we got to see the keyboard in action..Anxious to see other more detailed videos in the furtur. Thanx for sharing.

Ciao

OMG, that has to be the worst demo I have ever heard. If this was to prove that you guys have a keyboard and were at NAMM, then I get the point.

But man, I wouldn't distribute this stuff. It's just God aweful.

My sympathies and thanks for trying Benno....

I have to agree if the point was "see we actually do have a working demo" then that it was. If the point was to show the board off, you're kidding right?

Between your audio samples on your site and this as a video demo, you guys really need to hire a couple of pros (no offense) to put something real together for both audio and video demos.

On top of everything else I kept watching to see if it drew any crowd at all, and it didn't.

Between this and the soundless, talking demo of the Neko I'm really starting to doubt the viability of this type of board.

Don't you guys and Neko ever watch the demos from other companies on how to demo a board? You really should you know.
Terry

------------------
jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

The video shots were taken with a portable cam so you cannot expect high audio quality. But as said at least they show that it's not a hoax like keybplayer said :-)

kbrkr: Just for curiousity what's the thing in the video that sucks, only audio quality or the player, the music, or the whole keyboard itself ?
Be sincere no one is going to bite you :-)

Anyway top engineers and product managers of the three "big boys" among keyboard producers were at our booth and to me they looked quite ... how should I say ... puzzled when domenik demonstrated them the Mediastation's capabilities.
I did not hear critiques of any kind, on the contrary one of the big boys engineers said he wants one for himself :-)

I hope the demo guys will do higher audio quality demos and post them online soon. (perhaps the best would be do a separate mp3 of the audio track of the video (captured directly within the keyboard).

Chris A: you said you never heard it playing. What day was it ? The demo guy played at least 6h a day (except taking some smoking pauses). I think you were unlucky and plus you should have asked for some of the guys when the demo guy would be back.

aliev: LinuxSampler is not the Mediastation's main engine. It's an add on and is not required for basic MIDI/arranger playback.
The MIDI synthesis is performed by Dream chips.

Hint: some musical instrument company in the US wants to license the Mediastation technology and those guys performed extensive testing before making the decision.

If you are interested Domenik from Lionstracs told me that the X-76's street price will be about one grand and a half more than the Pa-X Pro.

cheers,
Benno http://www.linuxsampler.org

terry I agree with what you said. No one pretended to use these videos to show off the keyboard's sound capabilities. The fact is that both the hardware and software guys gave priority to finish and fix the iron and the software so website stuff and other lower priority stuff was left behind. I know it's not ideal marketing but you know ... trade show put great stress on engineers in order to get the iron going for the show.
I think the only solution is to make videos of each function of the X-76 while being in a studio and putting online separate high bitrate mp3s so that people can judge its audio capabilities.
This stuff takes time and as said above hw/sw development takes priority over this so I guess it will take some more time to the videos appearing online.

Regarting "drawing the crowd". The fact is that the NAMM did not seem that crowded plus we had a guitar booth near us with some guitar superstars giving autograms all the time which deviated people in that direction :-)

Anyway speaking frankly no keyboard booths were particularily crowded, NAMM visitors loving only guitars :-)
Keep in mind that NAMM is not an end user tradeshow so AFAIK the attendees are mostly music companies, distributors, dealers, store owners and some music company employees that get some free badges.

cheers,
Benno

sbenno
Even though you didn't ask me...."What part of it sucked?" Again you're kidding right? Poor audio quality is one thing, I couldn't hear the sounds at all period except some faint noise coming from the board. There were no screen shots with the demonstrator explaining the functions etc.

These vids look like some amateur shot them just to prove they went to NAMM, again have a look at a real demo of a board, they either do it in a studio or before/after the crowds arrive at NAMM and actually go through the board and play it explaining along the way what's going on.

Hire a marketer.

The styles on your site at are at least starting to get closer to showing something.

Terry

------------------
jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

Hi Benno,

I'm sure it was just a case of bad timing that there was nothing going on each time I stopped by. I did stop by the MI booth each day of the show - usually early morning or late afternoon. Typically I was on my way to an appointment without much time to hang around but I did keep checking in - just in case. The only occasion I did have some time to spare was on the first morning of the show. You guys seemed to be having some kind of problem with the convention's power feed and there were electricians everywhere.

Anyway, I'm sorry I missed it. Hopefully I'll catch up with you in Frankfurt.

Great, you are here!

1. You are promise to sell 1 board to me to Moscow. When I can get it? I will add laptop with VSTi instruments (as I\O it'll be Mediastation) sinth and additional keyboard controller (second manual) + 2 Bose PAS systems. As I understand, it will be about $6000 + $2000 + $400 +2*$2300 = $12000 for super-ultra-high-end keyboard setup. VSTi I count for free

2. Let me give you an advice: all you need now -- spend additional money to hire a) marketing people to produce quality demo and b) preset programmers to produce your own default presets of sounds and styles and etc. People will be assessing not your keyboard per se but quality of you sound and style presets in all the shops in all the countries. Converting presets of others will be unsufficient (partly to loss of musical nuances during converting of formats, partly to marketing format of keyboard comparing, first thing people do with new keyboard, they compare presets of different devices).

Good luck to you enterprise!

Benno,

What is important to me during a demo in order of importance is:

1) Clarity of sound - a direct feed into the recording equipment is always preferred. I understand this is impossible in this environtment, but there was too much background noise to even focus on the Liontracs voices. The instrument could NOT be heard.

2). Clarity of video - the camera was panning all over the place. Just put the thing on a tripod and let it rip. Closeups of the performer playing the keyboard using it's functions from overhead, selecting buttons, watching the display change as the modes change are always of great interest to prospective buyers.

The first demo whereby an LCD TV display was filmed resulted in the video signals being "out-of-sync" causing a strobing affect in the video. How is a potential customer going to find value from this?

I think you had a wonderful opportunity to video a few prominent musicians using your keyboard, but the video does not do them justice. The lighting was poor.

Al

Sbenno,
I'm sorry to tell you but I fully agree with the other members : The WORST 'demo' I ever saw !!

It is not that difficult to introduce and explain, while playing the Mediastation using a line-output to the camcorder.....
If I were you I'd never show this material to anyone.
Until now Liontracs did not show me anything that could impress me and that is very disappointing, especially because many many things were promised.

Roel



[This message has been edited by Roel (edited 01-25-2004).]

Thank you guys for feedback, I'll forward these infos to the relevant people so that they will hopefully produce demo videos in the studio (but it will take some time so a bit more patience is required )

Chris A: yes it was definitively bad timing I hope too we can meet in Frankfurt. (but I don't have infos if the company will be there so I make no promises :-) ).

aliev: AFAIK first keyboards will be shipped in about 3 months. They will be available through european distributors too so you don't need to get them from the US.
Regarding styles and presets, don't worry the guy that is making them has worked for a few major keyboard brands so he knows what he does. But as said final judgement can only be made when high quality mp3s will be available or better trying out the real keyboard.

cheers,
Benno

I was at the NAMM show and saw the machine in person. It looks and sounds great. The only sound loaded was an electric piano which the guy jammed along with to an mp3. But the whole idea is that it's open architechture, and it does look VERY promising in that regard.

-Michael

Finally somebody had heard the thing ! From the descriptions, photos, the machine looked very formidable.

I cannot believe any of the senior arranger guys from synthzone did not get a chance to try out this thing. What unfortunate situation !