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Yep good way to do it...BUT, anything, anything at all, your fault, my fault, no body's fault (Quote from a movie!) that crunches the CPU during live play...enough that the CPU can't get the sound into RAM...and...Dropout happens.
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It's more like down to your own doing than anything else. There are no unexpected spikes in CPU usage under linux as it's not going to start running processes in the background like Windows does all on it's own.

So really any drop outs you experience are caused by your own doing and the fact your running far too much at the same time for the resources you have.


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The OS and complete system must be optimized and have safeguards to try to prevent this.
But, it can happen in the right situation.

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About the only thing you can tweak is the latency buffer. There's nothing else that can or needs to be optimised. But your right, drop outs can happen in the right situation. For example, Spectrasonics Omnisphere would bring the best of PC's to their knees.

I guess it's a matter of getting to know the system and know it's limitations. If you find your the type of user that's running into problems, or the VSTi's you prefer are all hungry ones. Then an upgrade of the resources would be needed to work efficiently and without drop outs.

Take Domenico for example. His personal keyboard is running on the Asrock 770Extreme3, 6 Cores, DDR3 and he's got RAID with two 10,000RPM HHD's. lol.... power junkie.


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IMHO, with Windows this is more concern than Linux? The CPU speed and all other aspects must be way overkill to hopefully prevent this.
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Yes, totally. As I mentioned above, Linux runs very flat, there's nothing unexpected. The only increases in the system resources are your own doing and what your running.


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Then, what about very heavy polyphony????
And who can really predict how many notes may need to go at the same time?
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If all your running are samples, then your poly count will be hundreds of notes. It's far far beyond any closed workstation or arranger, that's for sure.

Regards
James

............... Every time I start to try to understand the Mediastation in hopes of maybe considering getting one as I love the open architecture systems verses closed..
I read things like this above and wonder if you have to be a Computer Scientist to understand how to operate one?....is it as EASY to use as it is DIFFICULT? or what? Simplicity on stage is a key concern.

Yes, and just to add to that, my comments above which do talk of drop outs are extreme cases where the end user is totally pushing the system very very hard with big VSTi's.

The only thing I ever had to do was to adjust the buffer to 256. Once I did that, my MS had more than enough grunt to meet all my needs and I'd consider myself a heavy user.

I've not had a drop out or glitch in sound every since. My spec is the same as Dennis, but with only 4GB of RAM.

Regards
James

Hi Dnj



No, if anything we have wondered into an area you don't need to consider at all. The keyboard is not a PC in a keyboard case at all. Think of it as operating Closed Keyboard that's can accept any new software or harware upgrades you will need in the years to come.

What I mean by that is lets say you want to just switch on the keyboard and just plan it. You DO NOT at any point have to load a single PC program. The sounds on the keyboard are displayed no differently than they are on a Tyros. It's a simple table with sounds down each side of the screen and page up and down buttons.

When you press the ASIO button to run a VSTi, you still see all the sound of the VSTi displayed in the exact same way. You do not see the actual VSTi running on the screen unless you actually want to see it.

So for the most part you will never see the external programs running. Everything is displayed from within the Lionstracs OS, just like you see them on typical closed keyboards.

As you grow with the system and you want to to add your own sounds, modify the default banks, built your own libraries, add new VSTi's and then integrate all of the above into the Lionstracs OS so they are all displayed like a normal keyboard would display them..... You still don't need to have a degree in computers as my free LSCP Gen program is your Editor / Librarian that does all this for you.

It actually writes the system files for you

So bottom line is, there's nothing stopping anyone from just switching the keyboard on and just playing it. You do not see a single PC program running if you don't want, and you do not have to load any software. The OS make you truly feel like your playing a closed keyboard.

So forget PC spec's. The chances of you ever needing to care about all that is extremely unlikely. It's an OPEN keyboard that operates and looks like a Closed One until such time as you intentionally want to do something the OS doesn't offer by default.

Regards
James

Just to jump back to the Tyros.

For anyone interested in importing samples, Extreme Sample Converter supports converting from many different formats to Tyros 2 format.

Once you get the data to Tyros 2 format you can use the normal free tools available to get the data to Tyros 4 format.
http://www.extranslator.com/

Extreme Sample Converter also has the ability so extract sounds from VSTi's and convert them to Tyros sounds.... and much more.

Regards
James

James thanx so much for the confidence builder coming from you who I highly regard and trust really boosts my expectations.
I'd really like to see a few demos using the Mediastation going thru some of the major style categories like, Ballad, Latin, Ballroom, Rock & Roll, Dance, World.....
All done in a quality SOUND Video...so many of the ones on the internet are done very poorly sound wise..this certainly turns off potential buyers...
Another thing I wold like to see is a Demo of the Mediastation using a Vocal Harmonizer program in real time also.

As soon as NAMM is over I will seriously consider my next step toward an Open systen unit..is there much difference between the Groove & the Mediastation?

Again thank you James for all your efforts.

Hi All
All operating systems run programs in the background to keep things running smoothly, however if it is only doing one job (Running Music Software) then most of the background tasks are not required.

In PC based keyboards, or PC systems dedicated to music production, all the background tasks and programs that are not required to produce music are turned off, and the OS optimised for the job in hand, (Any OS can be customised to specific tasks) consequently you don’t get any problems with the CPU spiking etc.

Hope this helps to put your minds at rest

Bill