Design Your Own Audio Controller

pronobozo writes with a link to "a cool interface called LEMUR for controlling audio applications. 'LEMUR is a handy and modular touchpanel based controller designed for audio and multimedia real-time applications. Our technology associates multitouch capabilities with visual display. LEMUR is provided with an extensible library of User Interface Objects such as faders, switchs, pads, keyboards, strings, etc.'" It's also vaporware at this point, but looks cool enough I hope it really reaches the market early next year as the site promises.

Comments

Hmmm

[telemonster]

Man touch panels can only track one "press" at a time... I'm not sure if it is limited to capacitive touch systems or resistive touch systems (that one is definitly not IR)... but I wonder if this unit suffers from the same issue?

Also the lack of midi output is odd.

Re:Hmmm

[telemonster]

It's been 4 days since I read it, so maybe I'm fuzzy on a detail or two! Should I read it again? It said 100mbps network output... which makes it sound like a tablet PC with a software.

Re:Hmmm

[telemonster]

Groovy. A long time ago I tried to use a Thinkpad 700X tablet as a home theater controller. Got them for $5 each since no one wanted tablets. Found out it requires a pen to actually register on the screen (much like the newer tablets that have showed up on the market). Funny how history repeats itself.

No MIDI Support?

[GameGod0]

The website mentions that the LEMUR isn't a MIDI device, instead it uses something called OSC (OpenSoundControl).

How does this affect the LEMUR's ability to interface with application such as Cakewalk's SONAR?

Does OSC provide a way to interface with MIDI applications?

*thinks*

[NightDragon]

This is surely a nice idea, i personally hate having to use my mouse when mixing music, but i think the magic questions will be : Just how functional is this? Is it going to have a lot of flashy bells and whistles and doodads, or is it going to be efficent?

and of course, "just how many arms and legs am i going to have to give to have one?"

In case of the Slashdotting...

[Kinetic]

Mirrors, including the video files, are at MirrorDot.

Re:Infomercial

[Fnkmaster]

There are now marketing firms that specialize in grass roots marketing efforts, by putting out semi-phony blogs and probably pimping things on supposedly "community-driven" sites like Slashdot. As soon as the market gets big enough, the marketers will be there. And Slashdot is numerically significant and a good spot to push technogizmos on the geek thought leaders.

I would be surprised if people didn't try to use Slashdot in this way. Just look at how Roland Piquepaille has made a business out of getting Timothy (I think it's usually him) to publish his inane Slashdot submissions, which ALWAYS have link-backs to his "summaries" of various news stories in his blog. He's Slashvertizing for his blog, so he can get more advertising hits.

What does it all mean? Well, you just have to be a little more cynical around here I guess. In any case, it's nothing really new - used to be we'd see vaporware announcements and the like float by, but the submission writer and the sketchy company weren't usually one and the same. Now sometimes they are.

Similar device by MIT

[jerometremblay]

I love this kind of device, and I can't wait to finally be able to acquire one for a reasonable price. I've been keeping an eye on a similar device called AudioPad for a while now, which works with a projector and drawing tablets.

The devices are similar, but the MIT project seems to place the bar higher concerning potential UI innovations instead of re-creating existing hardware virtually. (Look at the IP Workbench example video and see what I mean...)