I was talking about all the built-in sequencing/arp programming in the high-end workstations. I would never sit and program sequences in such a tiny-LCD display press button press button and press button with shift key environment.... Doing all the sequencing in Logic is painless.MrDuke wrote:Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I disagree on my part (not that this hasn't been discussed ad nauseaum). Nothing beats the immediacy of a hardware workstation or a stage piano, when changing sounds live, for instance. As far as the ease of programming...maybe so, depends on the product. An iPad is a great UI (anything "hands-on" is), but keyboards such as Roland's JP80 have touch screens as well (and actually an iPad app that complements it...).ksandvik wrote:
As for all these workstations... I don't need them. I use a laptop or soon an iPad. Easier to program than looking through menus and sub-menues
Having a million presets from the get-go also helps. Not to mention that some of those megabyte keyboards still miraculously sound better than gigabyte Kontakt instruments...
I used to play "bread & butter" gigs live with a Fatar/Studiologic + a Mac laptop, but gave up on it - it was just such a hassle. AND you had to program a set into Mainstage anyway...which was kind of unreliable and CPU-heavy anyway.
As for Mainstage, I actually stress tested it this week, three live keyboard gigs with two different bands, about 5+ hours each gig, Mainstage running on an old MacBookPro 2008 model that has just gathered dust, 3Gb RAM (max:ed out). No single crash! Worked like a charm. And I packed up/down faster than the drummer. Now, imagine running all that on a MacBook Air with SSD and faster CPU. Oh, and I was lazy and didn't even bring an audio interface, straight out from the audio output to keyboard amp. Doubt anyone heard the slightly less Hi-Fi sound. I used the default Keyboard template, programmed the eight controls to control the templates and four buttons to switch between the sets and patches. Took a minute, painless.
I was mostly thinking about big workstation models with built-in OS/UI systems, you slap in an iPad and use that as the control surface. Job done.
And if we talk about HW keyboards, me thinks Nord still has the edge as they are focusing on a usable instrument rather than a computer-wannabe. But let's see what NAMM 2013 brings. For me I don't need those arp/sequencer battle tanks.
? or finally release the K3000 ?
