Why no MIDI keyboards with 7" hi-res displays?

[basslinemaster]

I bought a Linx 7 tablet at the end of last year, which has a 7" 1280 x 800 display, and the tablet only cost £80, with a £30 rebate when I sent them my old (and extremely slowwwwww) Android tablet, so the screen can't cost more than £10, can it? Yet we don't see MIDI controller keyboards with decent displays, as far as I know, the Akai Professional Advance keyboards are the first ones that have a colour screen, and it's only 4.3". I presume a 4.3" screen costs much more than a 7" screen, since there must be tens of millions of 7" tablets being sold every year, maybe hundreds of millions. It's as if the keyboard controller manufacturers are stuck in the past and haven't realised that technology has improved.

[BertKoor]

Maybe the screen hardware costs $10, but only if you buy a million from the factory. Synths are produced in much lower quantities. And touch screens are troublesome to operate on stage.

[basslinemaster]

I wasn't suggesting using it as a touchscreen (though since the technology is dirt cheap, there is no reason not to have it), and I'm sure you don't have to buy a million to get it at a very reasonable price...

[chk071]

The question is, apart from what Bert wrote which is right, what would be the need for such a big display if you can fit the informations on a 4.3" or smaller display? If it only beefs up production costs, and does have no benefit over a smaller screen, isn't it quite useless?

[basslinemaster]

The question is, apart from what Bert wrote which is right, what would be the need for such a big display if you can fit the informations on a 4.3" or smaller display? If it only beefs up production costs, and does have no benefit over a smaller screen, isn't it quite useless?

No, that isn't the question...
A 7" display is hardly 'big', and probably costs no more than $10 more than a 4.3" display - and why a 4.3" display in the first place? My question was - why aren't loads of MIDI keyboard controllers coming out with 7" displays, since, as I explained in my original post, my Linx 7 tablet has one and only cost me £50 after rebate, £80 before, and therefore the manufacturing costs of it can't be more than about £20, and therefore the screen can't be more than £10, if that.

To the person who said something about the cost being prohibitive if you aren't buying millions of screens - WTF? Do you think somebody sets up an entire factory just to produce 1,000 screens for a keyboard company, and thus they cost a lot? They are all made in the same factory as the screens for tablets, and you ask the manufacturer how much it will cost for 1,000 - they then sell you 1,000 of the ones they are already producing. It isn't rocket science...

[whyterabbyt]

To the person who said something about the cost being prohibitive if you aren't buying millions of screens - WTF? Do you think somebody sets up an entire factory just to produce 1,000 screens for a keyboard company, and thus they cost a lot?

Nope, they wont set up a production line for that. They might set up a production line for a company who want a million, though. For the thousand, they'll come out if there's already a production line in place.

I notice you keep making assumptions about things being 'probable' but they seem not to be based on any actual experience of business, so lets rephrase it in something more familiar outside business supply chains.

Do you think you'd pay more (weight for weight) for cereal when you buy a pallet of cereal boxes versus a single one-serving box? Or even just the largest box on the supermarket shelf versus a single-serving box.
If you dont buy your own cereal, feel free to ask someone who does eg a parent with kids (clue : there's a reason bulk boxes are called 'economy size').

Why do you think that would be, if the company is producing tons of the stuff and shipping pallets by the thousand?

Do you think that if you were buying a million kg of cereal to rebrand that it would be cheaper per kg than buying 1000kg to rebrand?

You see, just because they make a certain number of units doesn't mean that you get the same price no matter how few units you buy. It might cost them the same amount per unit to make 1.001 million as it does 1million, but they're still going to charge more if you only buy a thousand.

In fact, why would a company selling millions of units even worry about selling thousands? Perhaps they wont even bother, so you'd actually be dealing with a different company, one that buys in bulk and sells to companies who want smaller amounts.

Basically you're assuming you can buy only 1000 from the original manufacturers. Maybe, though, the manufacturer doesnt sell smaller runs than 100,000 so you have to go through a company that buys them 100K at a time, and sells them in smaller lots with a markup attached.
Maybe they dont even sell them in lots smaller than 5000, though, so you have to go to a company that buys from that company.
That's one way component sourcing works. That's on top of the manufacturer charging more for smaller numbers purchased at a time.

They are all made in the same factory as the screens for tablets, and you ask the manufacturer how much it will cost for 1,000 - they then sell you 1,000 of the ones they are already producing. It isn't rocket science...

Yes, and assuming they actually sell them to you in the first place, they'll charge you more per item because its a smaller order. It isnt rocket science, but it is fairly basic business; economy of scale in a supply chain. It might be worth reading up on it.

[Jace-BeOS]

I've repeatedly read that Android tablets are being sold at loss in order to get them into as many people's hands as possible. Google subsidizes them, Samsung makes them at loss, etc.

That's what I've read.

[bmrzycki]

Samsung makes them at loss.

Nope. Others may decide to sell them for a loss but Samsung most certainly sells them with a profit margin. They're not Google; they make money off of the hardware they sell.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Why don't they all have endless rotary encoders................the bottom line

[basslinemaster]

Here's the sort of screen I'm talking about, on a fairly affordable keyboard:

https://www.musicstore.de/en_GB/GBP/Fam ... 003628-000

(I haven't watched any of the videos on it yet, so I don't know how good the interface is.)

How I LOLed at Whyterabbyt's usual paranoid, defensive response, scared of people questioning things and coming up with new ideas. My phone cost me £24 and comes with a 3.5" touch screen, my 7" Windows tablet cost me £70 two years ago, and so on. These screens can't cost more than £30 even in low numbers, and the advantages they offer are huge - obviously.

[Numanoid]

The SynthStation doesn't come with it, but lets users dock their iPad in it

http://www.akaipro.com/product/synthstation49

[basslinemaster]

For Whyterabbyt, who went off on a massive rant without even bothering to do a simple search on Alibaba:

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/7 ... 0.0.lZyiEy

No MOQ as far as I can tell...

Or:

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/7 ... 0.0.lZyiEy

MOQ of 5... $8.49 each.

So again I ask, why aren't manufacturers offering them, and why are they treating us af if we are idiots when they offer woefully inadequate displays and charge a fortune extra for keyboards that have them? Doubtless every potential customer already has a smartphone and a tablet or laptop, we know how much these things cost (well, apart from Whyterabbyt... LOL)

And I'm not talking about it just being a touchscreen - you can easily have, say, twenty buttons underneath it, in two rows of ten, and have on screen parameters that you adjust up and down with those buttons, thus you can have hundreds of adjustable parameters, without having to go through so many menus, and without having to have hundreds of buttons. Obviously this is why we use DAWs in the first place.

[BertKoor]

You know nothing (and nor do I) until you try to design & manufacture & sell hardware. Its a friggin complex thing ya know... Apart from the synth engine you then also need the OS to support graphics and develop a full gui. Do that without paying attention to detail (read: spend tons or a million in development) and the synth is a goof-up.

[whyterabbyt]

Here's the sort of screen I'm talking about, on a fairly affordable keyboard:

https://www.musicstore.de/en_GB/GBP/Fam ... 003628-000

(I haven't watched any of the videos on it yet, so I don't know how good the interface is.)

How I LOLed at Whyterabbyt's usual paranoid, defensive response, scared of people questioning things and coming up with new ideas. .

If you're too fuckwitted to understand an explanation of economies of scale, so be it.
Kind of deleriously shite response to something that simple, though. You know, because it makes f**k-all difference to me whether something is more expensive than some random entitled little arsehole thinks it should be; attempting to leverage their tiny little cranium with the most basic explanation of why that might be barely makes me invested in the explanation, let alone the risible 'paranoid' or 'defensive' you rather pathetically resorted to.
As if 7" touchscreens were a new idea in the first place; Ive had one hooked up some MAX/MSP stuff since it actually was a 'new' idea, and you were still needing assistance to remember not to shit in your hands.

Then again you're hardly the sharpest knife in the box, especially when you're whining. Must be hard being you, hope you've got someone to help you with the hard stuff like doing your shoelaces and not trying to eat the cutlery.

Oh, and the fact that you had to wait about a f**king year before resurrecting this to say that such a thing was now available actually proves my point. Not that you'll be able to work out why.

[chk071]

How I LOLed at Whyterabbyt's usual paranoid, defensive response, scared of people questioning things and coming up with new ideas. My phone cost me £24 and comes with a 3.5" touch screen, my 7" Windows tablet cost me £70 two years ago, and so on. These screens can't cost more than £30 even in low numbers, and the advantages they offer are huge - obviously.

Um... companies don't make profit at all with selling such cheapo devices. They could as well dispatch ball pens with their logo on it. It's advertisement, if anything. And MIDI keyboard manufacturers are also not Samsung, Huawei, or whoever. It's a very small market compared, where you have to consider any additional expenditure. We could see MIDI keyboards with 7" hi-res displays, yes. But the MIDI keyboard would surely cost 1.000 € at least then, because, you would also make the keyboard's features respectively, because a M-Audio Oxygen with a 7" hi-res display surely won't cut it, so you will be implementing a better keybed, higher quality knobs and sliders, lots of blinky lights, illuminated drum pads, and what not. And a appropriate software to run the displayed values and graphics for the display. It's really not as easy as "simply screw a nice display to it". Actually, thinking about it, it probably would be a better idea to just develop keyboard software to make use of an iPad or an Android tablet. And even then, that surely would cost the manufacturer a lot, so i wonder if all this is worth the effort anyway, as you'd most probably will be working on your computer's display most of the time, rather than the keyboard's display anyway.