MIDI Keyboard/Computer: Neko64

An anonymous reader gushes "Just got back from NAMM, and saw the coolest thing for music geeks - it's a MIDI keyboard with a dual Opterons and a 15 inch touchscreen. While other vendors crow about 5 inch screens (Now With Color!) these guys have a beautiful UI on a live performance instrument that is also awesome studio gear. 4 interchangable control surfaces, and battery backup to boot! If the power cord gets yanked out in the middle of a performance, there's plenty of time to bitch out the roadie and get it plugged in without missing a beat. These guys truly Get It."

Comments

The one thing missing on all those pages...

[bc90021]

...is the price.

How much is this thing likely to cost? And since it's essentially a server and a midi-instrument all rolled into one, will anyone outside of major studios and universities be able to afford it?

awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time I ever played with Reaktor I thought to myself "damn when is somebody just going to put a PC in a synth with a lightweight real-time customizable OS (open source if possible), a big screen, lots of programmable control surfaces, and a something flexible and powerful like Reaktor?"

And here it is .. except for the OS. Still this is pretty damn cool!

PS: Anybody else get a chuckle out of this:

NEKO 64? frees you from all of the frustrating limitations imposed by closed, proprietary systems, while still maintaining the virtues of an all-in-one keyboard instrument. ..later..

NEKO 64? is so versatile it can virtually run any plugin or application designed for the Windows XP operating system including products from Steinberg, Native Instruments, Synapse Audio, IK Multimedia and many others!

I guess their definition of "proprietary" is different than mine!

It's probably not so important for the average musician but I hope all the interfaces are MIDI or otherwise accessible by the programmer.

Re:awesome!

[brsmith4]

I think they are refering to the hardware, not the software. Think about it.

Already dieing

[RobPiano]

Someone will need to mirror this soon.

I know there is this rift right now in the community. Some people hate laptops on stage, some people love it. I'm a big pusher of the "Powerbook"/build your own interface. I don't see particular use in incoporating my computer keyboard into my piano keyboard. I personally prefer just to put my laptop on the top. Mind you I also prefer to have 88 keys.

This is probably a very cool toy, but I don't think its a "must have" for anyone.

Re:Already dieing

[Basehart]

Tying a keyboard to the computer isn't such a good idea for a number of reasons, the most obvious being the inability to move up to a bigger, or better, keyboard.

In the days of the Prophet V, Emulator, Juno 106 Etc. the keyboard was a part of the whole instrument, tied in via several cables. So if you really wanted the Prophet V sound, but didn't like the keyboard, you were screwed.

Today there are few compelling reason to having the all in one thing going on, unless you really must have an all in one unit. Just stick a couple of modules into a rack and control them using a keyboard that has the feature set, and the type of key action, that really suits you.

Better still, just run all those synths and samplers in soft mode within a G4 PowerBook.

OpenSynth NEKO 64(tm) as in 64-bit? *hum*

[danalien]

I read the '64' *green'ish* as they mean it uses 64-bit computing (if you check their other products, one would see 'a simple brand' and a 'simple + 64 added to it barnd)...and they go on to say "64 bit Processing"

*anyway* what I wanted to say

is how could it be 64-bit computing, if they run 'Microsoft Windows XP Professional' ?

Am I missing something? do they run something specially licensed from M$? *something in those lines?, like 'they're running a beta of their upcomming 64-bit XP..'?*

One minor problem....

[haggar]

I make music for hobby, and am married to a musician - plus, I know lots of other people that make music for a living or for fun. I know that these people are put off by the slightest alien noise, when they "work".

And this device consumes a lot of power. Have a look at the specs: "Whisper Quiet Cooling Fans (Internal Chassis, Processor & Power Supply)"
Well, they may be whisper-quiet, but they'll annoy all the musicians I know. Some of them have chosen iMacs for the only reason that they were quieter than anything x86. I may not be that picky with regards to PSU fan noise, but all others certainly are.

Of course, I expect that such an expensive and complex piece of gear must have had some serious marketing and product management work done before they nailed the product specs, right? Therefore, these particular PSU fans are actually unhearable. I hope. Hmmm......

Re:One minor problem....

[a.koepke]

Why do they need fans at all... they should have developed some sort of water-cooling/heat-pipe for this sort of device. The other thing you can do is put in a high Mhz CPU and under-clock it so that it runs a lot cooler than normal.

Ummm, no

[Gogl]

Maybe if by "music geek" you mean "guy who knows more about computers than music". Any *actual* music geek would prefer a good, straight up keyboard: 88 keys, hammer action, weighted (at least partially, preferably fully), and minimal other crap. Maybe a pitch bend wheel or a few programmable hotkeys, but not a gigantor LCD screen and a full qwerty keyboard: that's just going to get in the god damn way.

Re:Ummm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh don't get me wrong, i agree with you regarding this product :-) I was just having some fun. Actually, while i'm a guitarist, over 90% of my time in the studio is spent behind synths because i make electronic music. Most of it is working with a spread of three or four different hardware sequencers all synced together, working the mixer, filter effects, improvising riffs and so on.

A very big chunk of the synth market these days isn't traditional pianists any more, it's the "synth dude" standing in the shadows at a Limp Bizkit concert or the guy performing techno at a rave or someone in advertizing who's putting together a "post-post-modern" electronica tune for Mitsubishi. I think this product is aimed at those people, not at the pianists. I would certainly never buy it - computer you can't upgrade, synth that's heavier than a small car, ugly big screen lighting up the stage... but yanno... someone out there will probably go nuts. Actually it'll probably be used a lot at music schools where they can put one on each desk and let the students compose, record and remix without needing to move to another machine.

Re:Ummm, no

[FreeBSDbigot]

Any *actual* music geek would prefer... hammer action, weighted (at least partially, preferably fully) [keys]

Not necessarily. There are plenty of styles of keyboard playing (think Hammond B3) that are hindered by weighted keys.

Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional

[Zapdos]

Is listed as a feature. It will give the musician the ability to blame a virus for a missed beat.
Did you update your keyboards anti-virus?
Does it require MS activation?
I do want a keyboard with DRM, just in case I need to pay some royalties for playing "Happy Birthday to You"

Re:required /. joke

[Holi]

Umm no XP.

Can a 32 bit OS use 16GB of memory?

Omg! LCD! Omg! Opteron! ... b.f.d.

[cpu_fusion]

- "An anonymous reader gushes"
- "These guys truly Get It"
- Runs on Windows XP
- (No sound samples on the web site)
- (May just be a "shovel us money" prototype)
Um like ... this is news? I could like, hobble something like this together with a laptop and an old keyboard, ... could I be on Slashdot then? Please?

and last but not least...
It's all about the music for godsakes. If you need this piece of gear to sound good and can't do it on a freakin' roland juno-106 from the 1980s... or a piano ... please, break your hands now and spare my ears.

(Not flamebait, and/or troll... just a musician that is sick of crap like this. It is the opposite of inspiring.)

Re:high

[jackb_guppy]

But it is called open and the talk about the its openness, until you reach the end...

Windows XP.

They don't totally get it.

Re:high

[Phs2501]

Well,

a) Windows is where the pro audio software is in Intel land. People probably want to install out-of-the-box performance software on this thing, otherwise there's really no point.
b) It looks like the computer hardware is standard. Nothing is stopping you fom installing another OS on it. The site even says, "NEKO 64(TM) utilizes industry standard micro-ATX motherboards and processors that allow you to run standard operating systems." (Emphesis mine)

Of course, you may not be able to talk to the sound hardware once you replace the OS. Start reverse enigneering! :)

Re:"Open" Labs?

[bugbread]

You're thinking "open" as in computers. They're talking "open" as in music equipment platforms. Most music equipment uses huge amounts of completely proprietary systems. Their reference to "open" means that you can buy off-the-shelf products that have no ties to the company that makes the keyboard. If you want to install Fruity Loops, Reaktor, Acid, Reason, Traktor, Logic, etc. you can. This is very VERY open when it comes to music equipment.

And, yes, "open" has a lot of meanings. Open source, open store, open marriage, open secret. To speak of which, do they even mention "open source", or is it just a slashdot thing where readers see "open source" whenever they see the word "open"?

Big fat hairy deal

[C10H14N2]

Basically they've packaged a software synth into a cheap keyboard. I'd rather spend the cash on a decent dedicated, properly weight keyboard and connect it via midi to whatever. Software synths have been around for ages, this is nothing but bells and whistles.

"Semi-weighted?" What the hell is that? A euphamism for "cheap piece of crap?"

Whatever. No professional will be impressed. Oooh, a $1500 computer with a $500 keyboard for $6,500. Wow. I'm thrilled.

Let's see, a fully weighted proper 88 key Korg SP-500 is about $1,500. That leaves me $5,000 for rack mounted synth modules and computers. Considering rackmount Triton modules go for about $1,400, you could have three of 'em plus a decent keyboard AND a proper computer with scoring software for the same price.

Screw these guys. This is crap.

x86 is to music, as Linux is to games.

[CherniyVolk]

They are targetting musicians, with x86 hardware.

Good luck.

Let's ignore the consumer level crap, Bose computer speakers, Sonic Foundry, Creative's Audigy 2 for a moment.

If you get into real audio production, professional quality: Mackie/JPL monitors, MOTU Digital Performer or Logic, and MOTU/M-Audio sound interfaces... it's best to have a Macintosh becuase your options are very limited without one.

Problem with that keyboard is that all the bells and whistles are going to raise the price through the roof. Professional musicians or sound engineers might want to take advantage of it's computer interface, and wish to run their favorite software; which likely only runs in MacOS X/Classic.

It's price tag is ~7k. http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2003/Neko-64. html
Making it nothing more than a super-expensive conglomerate of consumer level crap. Who's likely to buy it? A keyboardist would rather spend that money on a real keyboard that has all the keys, this one only has 60 keys. With that money, a real savvy person might buy a new G5, some MOTU equipment and have enough for a nice Yamaha keyboard and be assured he's got the beef for studio quality mixes.

I predict this machine, will become yet another obscure piece of equipment/technology for a slashdotter to refer to years from now. The only picture of one, then, being on Geocities.