Ok could not resist not to partecipate to the discussion ;-)
some clarifications: I'm not the BOSS of the linux audio developers. There is no boss there, the LAD (Linux audio developers) is a group of people that meet around a mailing list (linux-audio-dev) and organize real-life meetings and workshops too, a few times a year (check out
www.linuxaudiodev.org, Events section).
Regarding the mediastation: is it really and innvoative concept since it combines the ease of use of a traditional keyboard with the flexibility of PC hardware and the Linux operating system, an industrial strenght unix-like OS that powers many of the datacenters of Wallstreet's investment banks (Merrill Lynch), animation studios (Dream Works), and other countless sectors where extremely high reliability is required.
So if Linux is good enough for Banks, is it reliable enough for making music ?
Definitively !
Keyboards with Windows XP in it may be nice because their eyecandy GUIs etc, but seriously I would not risk to play live with a device that is Windows based.
Plus from the vendor's point of view by chosing Windows you are dependent from Microsoft for both upgrades, bugfixes and as a keyboard maker, should you have special needs, Bill Gates will just ignore you because you only sell units in the 100's (or 1000's) range and they will not change or improve the OS only to suit your needs since it will economically not pay off for Microsoft.
Not to mention that Microsoft's goal is to make you pay for the usage of their software not for the purchasing.
This probably means that in future you need to pay a yearly fee in order to continue to use your Windows OS. Would this acceptable for a keyboard vendor/user ? I don't think so.
I admit many cool software synths/samplers and sequencers are available on Windows.
This means for example the openlabs Eko can use any of them but this approach has several problems:
- not well integrated with the keyboard.
The keyboarder want to press 1-2 keys at max and have their sounds/players/styles etc loaded. Fiddling around with a windows desktop on the live stage is silly (and as domenik said, you will end up spending more time clicking around on your desktop than playing music).
- windows is nor designed for real time (audio is a real time application), nor has it proven to be stable enough, despite Microsoft's claims that Windows XP eliminated all stability problems of previous windows versions.
Why did we choose Linux ?
It allows us to stay competitive in both technical and economic terms.
We can customize every aspect of it, optimize it and tune it so that is performs just like a dedicated keyboard OS but with the power of a general purpose OS.
The Mediastation has its own powerful DREAM MIDI synthesis chips but since the keyboard will come with a 2GHz CPU you can run software synthesis and sampling too.
The plus of the Mediastation will be that you will be able to get new features and capabilities by simply hooking it up to the internet and pressing the UPDATE button.
For example for the next months we are preparing a really powerful sampling engine that will be able to stream multi-gigabyte samples directly from disk and even able to import formats like the .GIG where serveral extremely high quality sample libraries are available.
And all software updates will come for free for a lifetime, with lifetime online support through forums, chat etc. Can other keyboard makers claim the same ?
Our goal is to make all the software that powers the Mediastation open source so that users can customize it, improve it fix eventual bugs etc.
This means your hardware investment will never be obsoleted not even in the case that Lionstracs goes out of business (hopefully not ;-) ).
The the same open source development model that turned Linux into the fastest growing OSes with entire nations switching to it (see China, Southcorea articles on slashdot.org) and that is now one of the biggest threats to Microsoft (Stevel Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO said that), can be applied to the Keyboards market too and will probably shake up the entire industry.
The big vendors probably cannot afford to risk this move because this is an uncharted territory and most of the bigs lack technical knowledge in the Linux audio field because they sticked to their proprietary hardware designs (only recently Yamaha invested in Montavista, an embedded Linux company, but I guess it will take quite some time until they release a Linux based keyboard plus it will probably be closed using proprietary APIs).
The Mediastation is a big bet and as any new "invention" it carries some risk but we think the time is right because several factors are playing well together like linux being very stable, linux audio/midi programming interfaces mature (ALSA), PC hardware being powerful and cost-efficient, excellent hardware design of the mediastation (button controllers, internal mixer circuit boards, dream MIDI synthesis etc).
The mediastation's buttons are not hardwired to the various functions since all the handling is done in software. This means that user could customize the keyboard's functionality to suit his neeeds, add new modules, or let thirdparties to implement new functionality, either for a fee or for free.
VST: many of you would probably want to run VST plugins on such a PC based keyboard.
Well as you know we do not run Windows because all the disadvantages mentioned above.
BUT .... thanks to emulation technology it is possible to run VST plugins in a Linux enviroment. The emulation technology is still not perfect (mainly due to GUI issues) but there are already reports of a growing number of plugins that run perfectly under Linux.
(the DSP performance of VST plugins under Linux is the same as under Windows since the VST .DLLs are called directly like native linux DLLs and the plugins does not know that it does not run under Windows).
So we have two ways for VST: wait for the VST emulation technology improving.
Or provide an easy to use VST porting framework so that VST developers can take the source of VST plugins and recompile it under Linux.
The possibilities are endless and we will make sure that the Mediastation will be open as possible.
And all this added functionality will be available with the simple pressing of the UPDATE button.
The nice thing is that if you buy the Mediastation today you will get the same functionality as the person that will buy it in a year because the software update system always syncs up to the current relase.
Want more power ? Did you know contrary to Windows, Linux is already fully optimized and cabable to run on 64-bit CPUs ?
As soond as the AMD64 Opteron mainboards will be reasonably cheap (I guess a few months) we will build the Mediastation 64-bit model, where you probably can measure the number of voices in the thousands range ;-)
As you see, the Mediastation will never be obsoleted and it is not a simple "PC in a keyboard case". I would say it is a new trendsetter, a device that will give unlimited power to musicians without sacrificing ease of use.
Some sceptics still not convinced that Linux is not good to do real time audio ?
See these benchmark diagrams that I made with my latencytest tool, a tool that puts the machine under an extreme load (writing large files running CPU hungry tasks, stessing the video card etc) and measures the minimum audio latency you can achieve without getting dropouts, crackles and pops:
The box was a Pentium 133, not a 2GHz CPU .... ;-)
http://www.gardena.net/benno/linux/audio/2.2.10-p133-3x128/3x128.html cheers,
Benno
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