Hmmm.. I see they have a bunch of sounds and effects built in and guess what...? the majority of it is freeware stuff that is readily available on the net.

My guess is that they have some kind of bundling deal going with Lin Plug ( commercial - Delta III, Cronox ), but I wonder how they compensate the freeware developers.. ? They have some kind of arrangement too I would guess..

BTW, if you're not that impressed with the sound demos, looking at what it has bundled in for soft synths, I'm not terribly surprised.

It has a few very decent freeware offerings in there - Green Oak crystal, lallapolooza lite, but these are both basically analog synth emulators. The remaining offerings probably aren't even among the best freeware out there.

Truth be told, there are very few good freeware sample based / gm modules out there. Free soundfonts like Personal Copy or Magic SF will easily surpass any of the LE Sampletank stuff sonically.

BTW, I think all of the built in effects are freeware as well. The kjaerhaus effects are quite good though, and they rival many commercial offerings I've demoed.

The concept is ok though, and it seems like it might be a pretty decent value at the mediastation LE asking price of $2295.00, but not at close to 5 grand or more for the other versions.

I've spent less than that for a laptop, a controller, speakers, a USB quattro soundcard / midi interface, expanded ram, DAW- Midi software, software arrangers, many ( and I mean many )vst instrument plug ins, effects and sound modules, and I pretty much have all that I could ever want. At 5 grand, Neko gives you a great interface to work with, but see how the bucks add up when you add all the rest of the stuff.

I'm just not convinced that it's going to be so much better than what I have now that it would be worth spending about double or more for what my softsynth system cost.

AJ