Hi All
Just paid my weekly visit to the Lionstracs site and it now shows an official base in the UK.
In addition the site also mentions that it is hoping to make its first public appearance of the Mediastation during September 2007.
As the Pakefield Keyboard Festival is in September, hopefully this is where it will be showcased, and therefore should mean that anyone attending the Festival will be able to compare it with all the other manufactures products, (Including the Big 3) thus finally answering the question as to how it compares.
Here is the link to the UK site http://lionstracs.co.uk
Looks like the Autumn (Fall) in the UK is going to be exciting.

Bill

Maybe, if UK laws are different to Italian ones with respect to copyright infringement, the sound developers of the UK can get a writ served... No doubt Dom will have copies of the GIGA Tyros2 disks on hand for evidence....

At the very least, every professional sound designer in the UK ought to show up and 'explain' their position to him!

I would certainly like to be a fly on the wall when the Tyros2 Yamaha people have a chance at confronting him directly...

[This message has been edited by Diki (edited 07-11-2007).]

a lot of bragging about how good and "professional" this board is over "plastic home keyboards"... well have a listen to this.. you be the judge
http://lionstracs.co.uk/product_index.aspx

(click on the "HERE" link for the demo"...

My Casio SA20 bells sounds better .
A lots of Gigas for ...nothing.
dANIEL
PS: Good luck Lionstracs on UK!

[This message has been edited by dani_76_es (edited 07-11-2007).]

[This message has been edited by dani_76_es (edited 07-11-2007).]

......and there lies the fatal flaw in this product.....

Diki, you're really starting to get missional on this issue. Worse, personal. We don't even know for sure if anything illegal is going on, we're not experts on international copyright law. If it is, let it get sorted out in the courts. Dom will have plenty of co-defendants, including the "big three". If he's going to be prosecuted for something, it should be for putting up that awful demo.

Seriously, IMO, Dom needs to get more "musical" people involved in his operation and shift the emphasis from engineering and technology to MUSIC. Hiring the local kid from the high school jazz band to do your demos is not going to cut it.

How would I rate the MS at this stage of it's development? Based soley on what I've read, probably not quite ready for prime time. But I think we have to first acknowledge that it's a niche keyboard and at this juncture, not a real bona fide competitor (much less threat) to the "big three". I think that it is an (important) experiment in the application of cutting-edge (but existing) technology to the keyboard industry. I think that it is more than an arranger, more than a synth, more than a workstation, as they are presently defined. I also think that it is probably the most logical next step in the evolution of keyboard technology. At the same time, I think it represents more of an assembly process, a clever combining of existing technologies, rather than a bold new approach. It's primary assets are upgradability and expandability.

The MiniMoog was musical. The DX7 was musical. The Hammond organ was musical. At this stage, the MediaStation is not yet "musical". Only then will it attract any reasonable market share. JMO.

chas

[This message has been edited by cgiles (edited 07-12-2007).]

I have read a bit further on the UK site, and it looks like they will be bringing out a 76 note version of the Mediastation at the same price point as the Korg PA800 and Ketron SD5, (Typically a third less then the TOTL Arrangers from the Big 3) which should really ruffle feathers, as it means that you can add a couple of High Quality VSTs for the same price of a TOTL Arranger.
Hopefully it will appear at Pakefield, allowing real players to make the decision on its capabilities.
Enjoy whatever you play

Bill

I can't help but wonder if this issue with the Mediastation is more personal than anything else.

I wonder how 'personal' it is to the sound designers and manufacturers of the arrangers that Dom will HAVE to clone to get any sales at all, given the utter failure of the MS without piracy..?

I have nothing personal about the issue at all. I have never net Dom, never played an MS, never met in person anyone from Lionstracs.

But how the stink of this behavior doesn't register with SOME of you (and it does appear more like the supporters of this piracy are fewer and fewer, but vocal) confounds me.

This is simply a case of a 'work for hire' - the hugely expensive task of going out and actually RECORDING pianos, strings, saxes, the myriad of sounds in a TOTL arranger, then assembling the patches from those hugely expensive recordings (anyone is welcome to try this if they doubt how difficult and expensive it is!) - being 'stolen' by a competitor looking for an unfair advantage.

Note, also, that Lionstracs could go out and ask Yamaha if they could license their sounds. Of course, you can imagine Yamaha's reply! Secondly (and I suggested this a LONG time ago), Dom could license a collection of the better VSTi's and legitimate GIGA collections (Colossus, maybe), and build a BETTER than T2 soundset, and have HIS styles developed for that. BUT NOOOOO........

Dom's answer to the problem is to clone his competitor's sounds AND styles, despite the action being in a VERY grey legal area, and offering this as the solution to the problem of the MS being unusable (as an arranger) in it's factory state.

And look, guys, just because this MIGHT exist in a grey area, does it feel right to you? Does this feel 'fair' to Yamaha? Does this feel 'fair' to the other companies that stand to lose their expensive, legitimate soundsets (THEY sure as hell didn't get their sounds the easy way, by stealing their competitors'!)?

No, to me, and many here at SZ, this stinks of someone exploiting a chink in the law that will soon be plugged.

Remember this, all of you with MP3's not taken from CD's you own. Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, everyone started trading these, and giving them away for free like bubblegum cards. 'Why should we worry about if it is 'legal' or not?' they said. THEN the law got changed (or enforced), and now you can't use these without running the risk of prosecution. Not to mention the devastation to the record industry and it's employees (us!). You ever wonder WHY there is so little good new music out there? How about they can't afford to develop it like they used to?

Apply these actions to the arranger industry, and see what new development speed slows to. If it were YOU that were in charge of green-lighting a six or seven figure investment for YOUR company, that you knew would be pirated by your competition as soon as it hit the streets, would you think twice (or three times, or not do it at all!) about making that commitment?

Either ALL intellectual property deserves equal protection, or NONE of it does. You can't just pick and choose. Because intellectual property is a concept, not it's individual components. If YOUR hit tune, or YOUR brilliant software deserves protection from piracy (they were the result of YOUR labors and investment), so does Yamaha's soundset.

As I said, this is nothing personal. You don't need to know the thief that stole into your neighbor's house and stole his stuff to hate him for for what he did. Or what right have you to hate him when he steals YOUR stuff?

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING